ninja gaiden: dragon sword
Stephen Totilo sat down with Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword producer Yosuke Hayashi last week during the devs tour of NY and managed to squeeze some pretty interesting and different information out of him.
Take for instance the fact that Dragon Sword is the first Gaiden game that Hayashi's mom has endorsed, or that the game was designed to be played at the speed of penmanship:
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masahiro kanagawa
It wasn't until Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi stepped off the plane in the States this week that he heard about the connection some in the Japanese media were trying to draw between his recently released Ninja Gaiden game and the rampage of a disenfranchised gamer at a shopping center near Tokyo.
"We were just talking about it. We didn't fly in until last night and I didn't know about it until I got off the plane," Hayashi said through a translator Wednesday afternoon. "They told me there is stuff going on in the media in Japan, there is a game that was involved and it just so happens it was Ninja Gaiden DS."
Masahiro Kanagawa, 24, told police that on March 19 he decided he wanted to attack his sister and a local elementary school, but changed his mind and instead randomly picked a home and went inside and killed a 72-year-old man. Four days later, police say Kanagawa went to a shopping center and stabbed eight people, one of which later died.
The day after the stabbings, at least one television station pointed out that Kanagawa had a copy of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword in his bag when he was arrested. The game went on sale in Japan on March 20 and police told at least one outlet they are looking into a possible connection.
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ninja gaiden: dragon sword
I had a chance to sit down with Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi, producer of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, in New York earlier this week, where he had flown to help launch the portable title in the U.S.
Hayashi spent much of the day sitting at a table near the front doors of the Nintendo World Store quietly talking to patiently waiting fans through a translator, posing for pictures and signing autographs.
It was, he said, the first chance he had to talk to the public about the game, a game he feels people were waiting to come out.
"The fact that people lined up at the store today to purchase the game, that feels good," he said.
Hayashi said the project started out not as a way to get Ninja Gaiden onto the DS, but as a way to create an innovative action game for the portable.
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review
Team Ninja's stab at bad-ass ninja action on the Nintendo DS has arrived, with Ryu Hayabusa and the demon ninja hordes he must defeat looking tinier than ever in Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. The game is almost entirely controlled by simple stylus motions, using techniques that may already be familiar to DS gamers who have played The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. While the scope may be smaller, the team at Tecmo doesn't appear to have skimped on the production values.
The question is, however, can the white knuckle action of Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden work on a handheld? We'll tell you what we loved and hated in the review.
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launch party
Tomorrow (Wed.) will see the Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword launch party at the Nintendo World Store in New York City from 2pm - 6pm. The game's producer and director Yosuke Hayashi will be on hand to sign autographs and met and greet the crowd. If you purchase the game there you will be granted one of those nifty Dragon Sword Ninja styli. There will also be demo stations set up around the store so you can try before you buy.
Also, as I reported last week, tonight is the launch party for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII at the Sony Metreon Center in San Francisco. The event goes from 6pm - 9pm and space is limited to 200 people.
And if that's not enough for you, our own Crecente will be attending and telling you all about his adventures at the Tecmo event in New York. Launch events, ho!
tragedy
As alluded to
yesterday, here is a screen clip from the Fuji TV nationwide network news attempting to draw a link between the senseless multiple stabbings by suspect Masahiro Kanagawa in Ibaraki Prefecture and gaming. Fuji TV flashed a clip of
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and wrote this at the bottom of the screen:
Found in the suspect's bag was this katakana hack and slash game software—
Keep in mind that Kanagawa first murdered someone on March 19th and that
Dragon Sword didn't go on sale on March 20th. Days later, he then proceeded to stab 8 bystanders, killing one, on March 23rd. As commenter Muu has pointed out, Kanagawa also apparently had several
Eye of Judgement cards on him as well. Truth is, his reasons for doing this run deeper than any pixelated ninjas. Nothing like dime store Freud to help explain complex tragedies! Makes everything all better.
Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword [My Game News Flash]
Kotaku
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