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Miyamoto stopped Hyrule Warriors from being more Zelda than Dynasty Warriors
Crossovers must be tricky to develop – which fanbase do you cater specific mechanics to, and how much of each series' flavor do you implement while still making a coherent experience that can stand without its fanfare? Early talks concerning Hyrule Warriors certainly covered these questions, but more interestingly, Nintendo Life's interview with Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and Metroid: Other M producer Yosuke Hayashi revealed that Hyrule Warriors was initially meant to be more Zelda than Dynasty Warriors. When Hayashi approached Aonuma with hopes of collaborating on a Zelda project, he suggested the pair rethink what's possible for a Zelda game. He still intended to create something that resembled the mainline Zelda series more than the Dynasty Warrior games, however. When Zelda series creator Shigeru Miyamoto heard, he stepped in: Rather than adding Dynasty Warrior mechanics to a traditional Zelda game, Miyamoto insisted that Hyrule Warriors should focus on "grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warriors experience," the opposite of what Hayashi originally envisioned. We'll see how the unexpected blend turns out later this month. If you're curious enough to unwaveringly brave the adventure regardless of reviews, there's still time to pick from Hyrule Warriors' pre-order costumes. [Image: Nintendo]
Putting the 'Yaiba' in Ninja Gaiden Z
Yaiba means "the blade of a sword," Keiji Inafune explains in this developer diary for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. It is, somehow, the subtler component of the protagonist's full name: Yaiba Kamikaze. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is being developed primarily by Spark Unlimited, the Los Angeles-based studio also responsible for Lost Planet 3. In the video, Inafune says the studio is "exactly what we wanted" because they were able to bring a unique perspective to the ninja, unifying Western and Eastern visions on the classic archetype. "To appeal to both, it made sense for us to work together." Inafune then goes into an astute metaphor about how game development is like building a house – at least, we think it's astute. We've never built a house before.
Team Ninja split into two groups in Tecmo Koei reorganization
Parent company Tecmo Koei will restructure its flagship studio Team Ninja into two individual groups, Ichigaya Development Group 1 and Ichigaya Development Group 2. In a statement today, Tecmo Koei confirms Yosuke Hayashi will oversee Group 1, while Fatal Frame series alum Keisuke Kikuchi will get a bump up to head of Group 2. We've followed up with Tecmo Koei to confirm how this reorganization may affect others at the Japanese development house.This news comes at a busy time for Tecmo Koei, who just launched Dead or Alive 5 Plus on the PS Vita and is currently gearing up to port Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge to the PS3 and Xbox 360 on April 2. A demo for Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge is currently available on both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z brings east and west together for zombie and ninja authenticity
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z developer Spark Unlimited was apparently very passionate about working on the franchise. Spark is working with Keiji Inafune's company Comcept, and met with Ninja Gaiden franchise developer Team Ninja through there."But, actually from a different route they actually came up with a concept for a Ninja Gaiden game on their own and presented it to us," Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi told Siliconera. So when Comcept brought Spark in, everyone involved already knew each other. "Now, we met with them and they feel like three parties are one team," Hayashi said.Bringing a western developer on board, Hayashi believes, will help Yaiba get its zombie content right. "We see ninjas portrayed in Western games, and they aren't real ninjas," Hayashi noted. "There is something off about them. Zombies are a creation of the West. We feel we can bring the authentic ninja-ness and by teaming with Spark, they can bring in the authentic zombie-ness. We can really come together to make a very unique zombie experience."
Fans requested bigger breasts in Dead or Alive 5
Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi said earlier in the year that for Dead or Alive 5, the team was "trying to focus on the real women that surround us" and "being realistic" in the character designs for the new game.This may have been inspired by response from Tecmo's operations outside of Japan, according to a Gamasutra interview with DOA5 director Yohei Shimbori. "We were getting feedback from the overseas offices to tone down the sexuality -- to tone down the sexiness of the game, and of the characters," he said. However, feedback from fans after playing the early demo told Team Ninja a different story."We actually got a lot of feedback from people who were playing it, saying, 'We want bigger breasts. Make the characters more like that,'" Shimbori revealed. "That was kind of surprising." Given suggestions to tone down the sexuality, and suggestions to increase the hypnotic, lava lamp-like motion taking place inside 90 percent of the game's shirts, which would you choose?If you were Team Ninja, that is.
Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi on appealing to everyone with Dead or Alive 5
We caught up with Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi during the Tokyo Game Show for a quick chat about Dead or Alive 5 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, the studio's upcoming collaboration with Keiji Inafune's Comcept.This interview is split into two parts. The first, dealing with Dead or Alive 5, can be seen above. The second part concerns Yaiba and Mr. Inafune. Keep an eye out for part two later today, because we just happened to run into someone very closely involved with Yaiba's development (and Soul Sacrifice ... and Mega Man).
DOA5 lead: Japanese view of women in games 'not going to change'
The Dead or Alive franchise is notorious for its blatant emphasis on sexy female fighters in tiny, physics-defying outfits – in the western world, at least. In Japan, this form of female representation is "common sense," Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi tells MCV."With the representation of female characters in the Dead or Alive franchise, we've always wanted to make the girls look as attractive as possible, and that's something that's not going to change for us at all," Hayashi says. "We are a Japanese developer, and we're making the female characters with our common sense and our creative sense. When you take that to countries outside of Japan, it tends to be very misinterpreted in some cases, people considering it sexist or derogatory, etc."In February, Hayashi said Team Ninja would attempt to shift focus in Dead or Alive 5 away from sex and violence, heading instead in "a direction that contains emotional experiences that can move players." It's entirely possible that Hayashi was pandering to western sensibilities with that statement, but it's also possible he plans to combine deep, emotional experiences with sex-infused character models. There's nothing immoral in making beautiful things, as Hayashi sees it."For us, within our culture, we're showing women like that, and we're trying to make them look attractive," he says. "We can't help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it's a bad representation. Within our nationality and within our national borders, we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we've made those characters the way they are and we're not going to stop doing that."
Team Ninja's Hayashi says 'no plans' for Dead or Alive 5 character DLC
Don't expect any supplementary character DLC for Dead or Alive 5. Depending on how you feel about Freddy Krueger surprises, this could be an important revelation.Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi says there are no plans to offer post-launch character DLC in Dead or Alive 5. In fact, he thinks the practice wreaks havoc on the balance of the game – essential in any good fighter. "Even with over 20 characters that's still a real challenge," Hayashi tells Videogamer. "If we had 50, how much more time would need to balance the game? It gets that much harder to get it right, and it's already very difficult to get right."Hayashi also doesn't like the idea of different players with different character rosters. "It's a similar thing to if certain people have all these characters and others don't. It makes it an unfair game, and we don't think that's the right way to go for fighting games."
Hayashi: Team Ninja taming its 'sex and violence' image in DoA 5
Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi says the studio's perspective has changed since Tomonobu Itagaki left in a huff in 2008, and even though most of its 200 staff are original team members, Hayashi is calling them his "new team." The most obvious shift is the new team's focus on creating an emotional experience, rather than eye candy, Hayashi tells Gamasutra."The old team was known for making games that just had two primary elements: Sex and violence," Hayashi says. "It was very obvious. The new team, we want to take it to a new level -- to a direction that contains emotional experiences that can move players."That's right -- Team Ninja wasn't emotionally invested in all the sexy gameplay you had together, and now it's looking for something more meaningful. Hayashi may find his new, more mature gaming experience in a Dead or Alive crossover with Virtua Fighter, a la Street Fighter X Tekken, Edge reports."In terms of collaboration titles, there are staff on our team who just love fighting games and if there was any chance to do that we'd actively, possibly do that," Hayashi says."The first 3D game I played was Virtua Fighter; that's the IP I respect most. Virtua Fighter was the father of 3D gaming, so it's very well respected."For now, one thing's certain: The women in Dead or Alive 5 will be more respectable, well-rounded (emotionally) than in previous titles. "We've always had the sex factor in the game; in the past, the female characters had to have big breasts, they had to have scanty dress," Hayashi says. "In DoA 5 especially, we're trying to focus on the real women that surround us: the voice of a female, the mannerisms. We are being realistic about it."
Ninja Gaiden 3 leaps to retail in March 2012
We've got good news and we've got bad news, folks. Let's start with the good: Ninja Gaiden 3 will arrive on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 next March, with a Wii U version to follow at some point after that. Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi told as much to a crowd of journalists in San Francisco this afternoon, according to our reporter on the ground. Now, friends, the bad news: despite a new easy mode, and the notorious absence of a known masochist at the helm, we're still quite confident that Ninja Gaiden 3 is gonna be super duper hard. Like, way hard. Maybe you haven't played the other two? 'Cause they're both pretty hard games, guys.
Dead or Alive 5's 'fighting entertainment' means even crazier stages
Team Ninja pulled an Apple-style "one more thing" at its pre-TGS party, announcing Dead or Alive 5 at the last minute and showing an early trailer. At that event, studio head Yosuke Hayashi called DOA 5 a "fighting entertainment" game, something distinct from other fighting games. Later, in an interview at Tecmo's TGS booth, I asked Hayashi to clear up that terminology. The early generation of fighting games, around Street Fighter 2, he said, "had some of the most outrageous graphics, fun gameplay, and really a lot of stuff going on." He implied that, in comparison, modern fighting games emphasize online competition over wowing players with unprecedented visuals. "It's not as over-the-top, it's not as much of the entertainment aspect that the originals had, and so they seem a little bit dull, in some aspects." The term "fighting entertainment" represents an effort to return spectacle to the genre.
Ninja Gaiden 3's 'Hero Mode' allows more players to experience the story
Ninja Gaiden 3 is Team Ninja's first full Gaiden game post-Itagaki, and it looks like things are progressing a little differently. For one thing, it's got a sort of easy mode called "Hero Mode," which adds automatic dodging and blocking of most normal attacks, to which I can imagine Itagaki's head shaking, making waves in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I asked director Fumihiko Yasuda (who also did design work on Sigma 2) about why such a ... friendly mode would appear in such a typically unfriendly series. "We really wanted to flesh out the story this time around," Yasuda said, "so we wanted people to enjoy that story and get used to the game as it is. In the past the games were really hardcore and we couldn't get players to stay with us and complete the game." Team Ninja is "redefining" Hayabusa's image, and wants people to experience that whole story without dying over and over again or throwing the game into the disposal in frustration.
Hayashi: Ninja Gaiden 3's dismemberment-free gameplay adds meaning to the violence
Ninja Gaiden 3 won't feature the frequent decapitations and other freeform dismemberment of its predecessors. You may think of this as softening the impact of the violence in Team Ninja's famously brutal series, but it's intended to be quite the opposite. In fact, if anything, Team Ninja lead Yosuke Hayashi made it sound even more sadistic. "For Ninja Gaiden 3," Hayashi told me, "we wanted to focus on the act of cutting someone down, and what it's like to actually kill someone with a sword. Once you start lopping off limbs, your enemy goes from being a living thing that you're killing to just a thing." And to hammer the point home (or katana the point home, if you prefer) that these are real human beings you're flipping out and killing, he continued. "When you're actually cutting into a person, and you feel them getting scared, and the blood is spraying right on you, you hear their dying breaths in your ear -- that's the kind of visceral violence we're going for in Ninja Gaiden 3." In the demo level I played, by the way, the enemy soldiers start pleading for their lives as soon as you begin attacking them. At this point you might think, as I did, that you're going to start feeling guilty about cutting into all these bodies. That's ... kind of the idea. "Ryu Hayabusa is a dark hero," Hayashi explained. "If people want to take the easy way out or a cleaner way out -- not killing people -- that's not what the story is about and what Ryu Hayabusa is about. To be a dark hero, you have to do bad things in order to do good."%Gallery-133725%
Dead or Alive 5 in development, heading to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012
There's a brand new Dead or Alive game in development, and it's heading to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi offered "a glimpse in the future" of the DOA franchise during tonight's TGS 2011 Tecmo event, during which he asked that we shut off all recording equipment (thus the lack of a thrilling image above). In a teaser trailer of a pre-Alpha (read: very early) build of Dead or Alive 5, Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa faces off against rival Hayate on top of a brightly lit urban area -- perhaps the Shibuya digs we're currently writing this from? Hayashi teased dramatic new levels, and even went as far as to call the game "fighting entertainment," rather than "just a fighting game." (Note: It's a fighting game.) Update: We've added the first teaser trailer above and a ... tantalizing image just after the break. Keep it cool, big guy!
Team Ninja will consider Vita game following Ninja Gaiden 3
A Ninja Gaiden game for PlayStation Vita remains an immaterial idea while Team Ninja gets Ninja Gaiden 3 ready for its 2012 launch. The developer has received a PlayStation Vita system to test and eventually chop in half mid-air, in an incredibly expensive variant of Fruit Ninja, but hasn't progressed beyond the consideration phase. "We've received a PlayStation Vita system and are thinking about it," said team lead Yosuke Hayashi in a recent PlayStation Q&A. "Having said that, right now we're focused on Ninja Gaiden 3 for PS3, and after that's complete we'll start to look at ideas such as bringing out Ninja Gaiden on PS Vita because of course we'd like to expand the series." Alright, let's toss in another concept tinged with "of course." Beyond the Wii U port (and planned 3DS game), Team Ninja will need some way to sell at least one more iteration of its latest Ninja Gaiden game. A Vita port mashed up with a Greek letter seems like a solid alpha bet.
Ninja Gaiden 3 will be compatible with PlayStation Move
Ninja Gaiden 3's obsession with conveying the feel of a katana -- while it slices the flesh off a man's bones -- is now supplemented with another vicarious attack. What does it feel like when a glowing, squishy ball bounces off a skull? Team Ninja has announced PlayStation Move support for the PS3 version of Ninja Gaiden 3, presumably enabling spirited swings and forceful bops in your offensive arsenal. Studio lead Yosuke Hayashi claims that it will "bring players even closer to the game's protagonist Ryu Hayabusa," which is a particularly unfortunate occurrence if you also happen to be a generic soldier, a demon, an evil ninja or ... anything that's alive, really. Ninja Gaiden 3 is set to slice up PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 owners in early 2012. A Wii U version is also in the works.
Ninja Gaiden 3 has complex multiplayer mode, will be more accessible
Ninja Gaiden 3 will feature some form of multiplayer gameplay, according to an interview in the April issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine. Project lead Yosuke Hayashi characterized the mode as "complex," but didn't offer a comparison to Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2's online co-op missions. He noted that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions would launch at the same time, unlike past iterations in the series. Additionally, NG3 will supposedly be more accessible to new players, while retaining the challenge that fans have come to expect from the franchise. "We know that many fans feel good about the difficulty level, but we are taking a slightly different approach," Hayashi said. "It's not that the game is going to be easier -- nothing like that. It's just that we are trying to make a whole game, a more exciting game that can be enjoyed by anyone, but at the same time, hardcore gamers will be able to feel and appreciate what the series is about." Hayashi said that the franchise's main character, Ryu Hayabusa, will be the only playable character this time around, and that the game's story "will focus more deeply on Ryu Hayabusa's life and lifestyle and feelings and thoughts." Our first question -- how does Ryu feel about ninja dogs? And, say, giant flaming armadillos? This stuff's important!
Dead or Alive: Dimensions touch screen controls designed to reduce stress
The touch screen controls in the upcoming 3DS fighter, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, may seem like sacrilege to brawler fans, but developer Team Ninja seems confident that they cater to many different players. The controls allow players to execute any technique or combo with a simple tap, essentially throwing practice out the window. Speaking to Siliconera, Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi noted that the touch-screen controls were implemented to "give players a chance to enjoy the beauty of 3D fighting games without having to work out too much to get to [a high level of skill]." He added that different players can use the controls in different ways; obviously, the controls offer an easy way to deliver combos "without much stress," but they can also be used to help players memorize combos or remember ones they may have forgotten. Based on our own experience with the game, we know of at least one other function for the touch screen -- a "win" button.
Samus won't be playable in Dead or Alive Dimensions
Recent Dead or Alive Dimensions gameplay footage revealed the presence of a Metroid-themed level, complete with Ridley getting all up in the fighters' business. At the end of the clip, a spheroid Samus rolled in, leading many to believe she was being teased as a playable character for the 3DS fighter. Speaking to Eurogamer, Team Ninja leader Yosuke Hayashi countered this assertion. "This time she's not playable," Hayashi said. "But Samus Aran will be shown in the game. She comes to help the player. That's the collaboration shown there [in the trailer]." Hayashi suggested that a playable Nintendo character ran counter to the team's goal with Dimensions, which is "basically to create the best version of Dead or Alive." As for that non-playable appearance, it'll be an unlockable bonus. Hayashi encouraged players to find out how to unlock the bounty hunter helper on their own.
Team Ninja's Dead or Alive: Code Cronus and Project Progressive canceled
For Dead or Alive: Code Cronus, the long-delayed action game from Team Ninja, there is no longer any question as to its status. It's just "Dead: Code Cronus," now. Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi confirmed the project's cancellation in an interview with Famitsu (translated by Andriasang). After all these years, Hayashi said, "It was just on the framework level." Also on the chopping block: "Project Progressive," mentioned in passing in this 2007 interview with former Master Ninja Tomonobu Itagaki. These two dropped projects aren't the only evidence that Team Ninja is looking forward. "We're developing [Ninja Gaiden 3] with the idea of restarting at the beginning, saying, 'We'd like to make the action game that's most interesting for the current era.' With this meaning, it's going to be a game that's not bound by the past more than necessary. Of course, we will be valuing the past," Hayashi said, "but in a good meaning we'd like to make it into a game that's not tied down by the past." The image released at TGS actually holds vague clues about the content of Ninja Gaiden 3. Hayashi teased that Ryu Hayabusa "seems to be doing something with [his] right hand," which is covered with unnatural-looking blood. Team Ninja also has Dead or Alive: Dimensions and Ni-Oh in the works. Hayashi expects Dimensions to be released first, followed by Ninja Gaiden 3.
