Itagaki: No More Ninja Gaiden

Team Ninja hype man Tomonobu Itagaki no longer wants to work on Ninja Gaiden games.

Kotaku interviewed Ninja Gaiden guru Tomonobu Itagaki on his plans for the future of his career and the action ninja franchise, only to find that the leather jacket-wearing, shade-sporting Itagaki does not want to continue with the series his team has revived.

"Personally I think we were able to create the definitive 3-D game in this series, so I'm not planing on making any other games in the series," Itagaki explained. "So I hope fans treat this as a swan song for the franchise. I think we were able to achieve everything we wanted with this game so anything else would be extraneous."

He added that it "would be ridiculous," for him to try to and develop a final "swan song" game in the series.

Itagaki aims to create something "totally new, completely unrelated to anything I've done before. Not any part of any existing franchises."

He's thinking about another action title, potentially with a war them set in the Pacific during World War II.

"I think the Pacific theater of World War II is a interesting topic," he said. "I think it would be cool to work with an American developer and do a game based on the Pacific Theater. I think it would be cool to do something like what Clint Eastwood is doing for that time period."

The idea came to his mind in the midst of the interview.

"That's what it's like to create something; you start from nothing and you have to clear your mind and come up with new ideas," he described. "I'm interested in that period of time, for my generation, that was an event that influenced us more than anything else. I think that would be an interesting topic to explore."

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Props to ending a series with a 2 instead of a 3.

No props to revisiting WW2, especially if he wants to work with an American developer. I mean, if he wants to do some crazy shit like Operation Darkness, fine, but God dammit I was hoping he'd be doing something original.

Oh well. We'll see what comes up in the next couple of years.

well, this is a pisser.
I've been looking forward to seeing if he'd actually make a third, or just re-make the second one a couple of more times like he did the first. I can understand why he's tired of ninjas, after ninja gaiden, black, and sigma, all practically the same game, I'd be fed up with it too. maybe if he let it ride for a while rather than continually beating us with the same game, we could've gotten through second to a third by now.

+ for trying to stay fresh and swich genres
- for saying it might be *shudder* WWII
- for relying on the "oh, sales are good so let's re-release it with a spiffy title" strategy

This is the saddest day of my miserable life.
This is one of my favorite series.
I have been a fan since the original in the arcade.
This sucks diarrhea out of a moose's ass!

knumpify:
I can understand why he's tired of ninjas, after ninja gaiden, black, and sigma, all practically the same game, I'd be fed up with it too.

- for relying on the "oh, sales are good so let's re-release it with a spiffy title" strategy

Those are actually going to be more Tecmo wanting to cash in further, actually. And as for Sigma, that wasn't even Itagaki. He looked it over, but a whole other team that wasn't Team Ninja worked on the port.

Wha...? If this was any other series, I would understand completely. But this is Ninja Gaiden, godammit! The most perfect action-adventure-beat 'em up created. Two games and a load of expansions just isn't enough.

"I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if thousands of fanbois cried out in terror & were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened"