Ninja Gaiden: The Essential Interview

We visit Team Ninja to meet once again with one of our fave game creators, Tomonobu Itagaki, and members of his team Yoshifuru Okamoto and Yutaka Saito, to discuss Ninja Gaiden 2 AND Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for DS.

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Itagaki: As many people know, Team Ninja is a very competitive team. So when I know there are products out there that we're going directly up against and that we need to basically destroy as part of the competition, then I of course will do the necessary research. But I don't really pay a lot of attention to other games on the market just to play them.

Kikizo: So you don't spend time petting your cat, going "How do we destroy Mario?"

Itagaki: We don't have any intention of going up against Mario. But I think Mario is worried too, not knowing exactly what direction he needs to go in.

Kikizo: Yeah, he's how old now? Mid-life crisis and all that, I guess.

Itagaki: [laughs] But you know, modern games as we know them practically began with Mario, so we have to respect that. The mustachioed plumber is going to outer-space next, so we have to see how that turns out.

Kikizo: OK, so how about music? Ninja Gaiden's music was incredible and we noticed some music from Ninja Gaiden 1 in this game?

Itagaki: Yes, the overall musical is based for the most part off of Ninja Gaiden 1 - the Xbox game. There of course are a number of new compositions added in to kind of spice things up, but it's certainly building on the basis that was in the previous game.

Kikizo: Blocking was a very important skill in the original. Is it more about slash action for the DS?

Itagaki: Yeah, it's more of an offensive game.

Kikizo: On that front, how many different weapons can we expect him to wield? Any new ones that we haven't seen Hayabusa wield before?

Itagaki: This time around it's only going to his signature weapon, the Dragon Sword. Obviously it would be ideal if he had a lot of different weapons, but our first goal with this game is to get people to understand and enjoy the new control scheme, and we feel that the stylus control stands on its own and creates a kind of different paradigm than the Xbox, which was about changing weapons. Plus the game is called "Dragon Sword," so we want to kind of focus on the Dragon Sword and have him use that throughout the game. Instead of having a kind of "horizontal expansion," if you will, by just adding new weapons, we're creating an entire new genre of game in the Ninja Gaiden franchise, in a vertical direction. So we want to expand more on the control of the Dragon Sword and say "Yes, it's the Dragon Sword weapon, but look what you can do with it using this DS control scheme."

Kikizo: It's like in Ninja Gaiden for example; you'd upgrade the weapons and unlock new moves - I noticed in the demo you already have the Inazuma Drop, you've got all kinds of slashes...?

Itagaki: In the demo you played, there are a lot of things that have already been unlocked. Also, it's "Izuna Drop," not "Inazuma Drop."

Kikizo: Oh, thank you for the correction. Is that a wrestling maneuver?

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