Interviews// Ninja Gaiden Sigma - Producer Interview

SPOnG caught up recently with Team Ninja’s Yosuke Hayashi, Producer and Director of the awesome Ninja Gaiden Sigma on PS3, an unashamedly hardcore gamer’s game and one of the first major, third-party developed PS3 exclusive titles to really rock our world in 2007.

I also met with Mitsuru Tsutsumi, General Manager of gamers’ favourite Japanese game developer and publisher Tecmo - both pictured right, along with a totally gratuitous shot of a model in a small leather-ette bikini dressed as the new playable character, Fiend-Hunter Rachel from Ninja Gaiden Sigma.

If you don’t have a PS3 yet, Ninja Gaiden Sigma may well be the reason you have been looking for to start saving up for one. Read on to find out more.

SPOnG: Hi there, how long have you been in the UK now?

Yosuke Hayashi: We arrived yesterday.


SPOnG: So, what’s the plan for the week? Are you touring Europe with the game?

Yosuke Hayashi: Well, the main thing is this UK event in London today [indicates the rather swish hotel suite we are in, complete with HD PS3 set-ups running the game - and a tasty model dressed as sex-vixen Rachel from the game].


SPOnG: Cool, well we are here to talk mainly about Ninja Gaiden Sigma. What is new or specific to the PS3? We’ve seen a lot of the new playable character Rachel today… what else is new in the game?

Yosuke Hayashi: Well, when you think about the PlayStation 3, the most important thing, to me, is its performance and particularly its graphical capability. It has enabled us to create the best possible graphics and visuals for the game.


SPOnG: And what is new about the game’s storyline?

Yosuke Hayashi: The original Ninja Gaiden consists of sixteen chapters. In Sigma, we have nineteen chapters – the additional three which you play through as Rachel. So these three additional chapters open up a whole new area of the Ninja Gaiden story as you learn Rachel’s background story.


SPOnG: And what about new weapons in the game? You’ve got a dragon’s claw, a tiger’s fang… anything else?

Yosuke Hayashi: Well, I’m of the opinion that just increasing the number of new weapons is not necessarily ‘a good thing’ and rather than simply increasing the types of weapons available, what I have put most energy into is improving the intuitive nature of using the weapons. We have asked ourselves ‘How can we make the weapons we have more effective?’


SPOnG: Another new move in this game is that you shake the Sixaxis controller to create different magical power effects with each of the two characters, Ryu and Rachel. One major difference between PS3 and PS2 is the controller and the lack of rumble [with Sixaxis]… is there anybody at Team Ninja that misses the rumble?

Yosuke Hayashi: Well, we wanted to improve the fun of the game. It doesn’t need rumble. It’s a small thing, you know. We kind of wanted to prove that without the rumble function we could still make an outstanding fighting game.


SPOnG: Do you think we will see the return of rumble on PS3 in future?

Yosuke Hayashi: It's totally up to SCE [Sony Computer Entertainment].


SPOnG: One of the things that was very popular with past versions was the Master Ninja Tournament – is this likely to return?

Yosuke Hayashi: Well, all I can say is that the downloadable content is currently under preparation so sooner or later we will be able to make an announcement about this.


SPOnG: How is the game going to work with PS3 Home? Will we be able to win Ninja Gaiden trophies for our Home, errr, home?

Yosuke Hayashi: I’m really interested in the concept of Home, but SCE hasn’t provided any information to us yet on Home, so even if we had an intention of adapting the game, including Home trophy features or whatever, we currently just don’t have the information on how to do it.


SPOnG: Are you working on the DS version of Ninja Gaiden? [due out later this year]

Yosuke Hayashi: No, not directly, though we have a very large able team of people and the DS team actually work next to my team, so I do get to see a lot of the game. I’ve seen the progress of the development and every time I look its becoming more and more interesting.


SPOnG: Finally, a quick question about the other big games we’re expecting from Tecmo – Project Rygar on Wii and the recently announced Tecmo Bowl – when might we expect to see those games?

Yosuke Hayashi: Project Rygar later this year in Japan and the US. If possible we would like to launch at the same time, but that all depends on the localisation. Tecmo Bowl will follow sometime later next year.

SPOnG: Thanks for your time and enjoy your stay.