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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Kikizo: Absolutely! I love legendary ninja techniques.
Itagaki: Ninjas fight from above, right? They'll be jumping around on trees and on rooftops... So they would grab a guy from behind... [gets up and demonstrates the hold using one of his assistant producers as the hapless victim] and drop down from a tree top or something, you know, thirty or forty feet, and crush the guy's head open.
Kikizo: A very friendly greeting with gravity, then.
Itagaki: So this is a technique of the most powerful ninja in the history of Japan. He had never once been defeated using this technique. There was a female ninja who tried to defeat that technique. She put the sword through herself, through her back into him when he grabbed her. [demonstrates with his AP, up to a point, using a sheathed short sword] She thought that would kill him. But that legendary ninja was wearing chain mail, so unfortunately it was ineffective.
Kikizo: Close though.
Itagaki: Yeah, close.
Kikizo: So what do you think is the best way to escape the Izuna Drop?
Itagaki: The best thing to do is just avoid it at all costs.
Kikizo: Hold on, let me just make a note of that...
Itagaki: [laughs] So it's the same thing with Hayabusa. If you don't want to be killed by Hayabusa, you'd just better stay away.
Kikizo: OK. It's a good thing he's on the good side.
Itagaki: Just remember that justice is defined by the beholder; it's different for everybody. I'm sure everyone in Europe understands that painfully well.
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