Ninja Gaiden – Developer Commentary (2023)

Three years had passed since I joined Tecmo. The president of Tecmo was an imperious man who'd grown Tecmo into a mid-sized game company in a single generation; he'd often propose ideas out of nowhere and issue instructions to his subordinates, which would immediately become law.

Mighty Bomb Jack, the first game I directed after transferring from sales to the development department, was a hit, and so I'd earned the trust of the president, which in turn meant he felt comfortable throwing curveballs my way whenever they presented themselves. One day, I was summoned to his office once more:

"Ninjas are in vogue in America right now, so make a ninja game! Listen up, I want something that goes ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-taaaaaaaa!"

At that moment, I had mental flashes of a ninja kicking their way up a wall, with a ta-ta-ta-taaaa!-esque tempo. Soon after that meeting, I ordered a ninja magazine from America; that magazine made me realize that the American image of a ninja sat somewhere between sorcery and kung fu, as their merchandise pages featured things like nunchaku alongside shuriken and kusarigama.

As I skimmed the magazine, I began to picture a ninja running through a city at night, imagining him kicking between buildings and scrambling onto rooftops. From there, we began by prototyping a wall-jump mechanic: the proposed specifications were akin to those of Ninja-Kid, where you'd cling to a wall, hold the direction away from the wall and press jump to kick off to the other side, rinse and repeat; however, due to a misunderstanding by the programmer, the final implementation functioned in such a way that, if you jumped onto a wall and kept the jump button held down, you could kick off the wall by simply pressing left or right. Even so, it was an appropriate system—one could speedily traverse walls by tapping left/right on the D-pad, and it perfectly synced up with the ta-ta-ta-taaaa! tempo we were aiming for, so I decided to keep it as-is.

The wall jump was emblematic of the intended tempo of the game, so I wanted to come up with stage designs that would best showcase the wall jump, which ultimately led to stages with a lot of vertical traversal. When constructing the game date, I used Castlevania, a game I was really into at the time, as a reference, but the speed and tempo of our game was different, and adding that constant up-to-down movement turned our game into something else entirely.

Ninjas naturally use ninjutsu when battling foes, so I devised a system with special techniques that consumed ninjutsu power. The player-character's standard attack is a close-range sword swipe that hits enemies directly in front of them, so I thought those power-up moves should cover his blind spots: the straight-shooting shuriken, which hits enemies at a distance; the flame attack, which travels in an upwards diagonal fan; the windmill shuriken, which tracks back towards the player-character after being thrown and can be swung in a pendulum-esque arc by jumping over it; that leaves the big blind spots directly above and below the player-character, and so I added the spinning slash move, which allows a jumping character to become invulnerable and deal multiple hits.

The broad thinking behind balancing the power-ups was "situational advantages and disadvantages": we envisaged different use cases for each technique and designed the stages accordingly. The intended flow of the game was one of playing smoothly without having to stop. That ta-ta-ta-taaaa! directive given by the president made perfect sense to me—put another way, he wanted a free-flowing, fast-paced games, and so the power-ups were positioned to best facilitate that flow: for example, placing the flame attack just before introducing enemies that attack diagonally from above, or introducing enemies that charge in from the front and back after giving the player the windmill shuriken. That said, due to designing around the power-ups in this manner, the game ended up being incredibly difficult for those who only fought with the standard sword. (I remember watching Arino from Yoiko struggling to beat the game on Game Center CX and thinking, "wow, he's completely ignoring the power-ups...")

The game's maps were designed on Tecmo's specialized map paper. For each stage, we'd first decide the total number of horizontal screens for that stage, and then draw the terrain for each screen, with a focus on that up-to-down-to-up stage pathing, as well as maintaining a balance between the visual appeal of the terrain vs. the difficulty of traversal.

Once the terrain was laid out, I decided which enemies would appear and when/where, through the use of a homemade viewfinder: I created a scale out of cardboard with a screen-sized window cut out of the center, which could be slid around the paper map to simulate scrolling. Ryu, the player-character, is locked to the center of the screen, and thus the center of the scale, making it easy to visualize which part of the screen would be visible to the player at any given time. Using this, I'd construct the enemy appearance data while imagining the movements of the player: "when Ryu reaches this part of the screen, the enemy will spawn at x, Ryu will run over and destroy them," and so on.

Incidentally, the enemies were set to spawn at the immediate edge of the screen... in hindsight, I should have had them spawn from further beyond the screen, so that they wouldn't immediately respawn by just slightly scrolling backwards, but we simply didn't have that knowhow back then, so it is what it is. All the same, it's certainly true that this quirk reinforced the flow of the game as being one of constant forward movement: that's part of the unique appeal of Ninja Gaiden, and it's somewhat ironic that its extreme difficulty was what captivated so many gamers in its day.

Our background data structure was modeled on that of Castlevania. Until this point, Tecmo's games, including Star Force, stored data in a 16x16 tilemap format. In Mighty Bomb Jack, our horizontally-scrolling screens were constructed by combining sets of data meant for either the upper- or lower-half of the screen, but it was virtually impossible to produce Castlevania-esque backgrounds using this method. Upon further research, we discovered that Castlevania seemed to be using 32x32 tilemaps, with four 8x8 images combined into a 16x16 data block, and four 16x16 blocks merged into one 32x32 block.

By arranging these tilemaps, it would be possible to create the kinds of backgrounds we were after, and so the programmer was considerate enough to create a "construction mode": pressing the Start button during the game would bring up a 32x32 cursor, which could be moved with the D-pad and cycled in order by pressing A+Up/Down. Once you'd gone though this process and assembled a stage layout, you could press Start once more and Ryu would drop down from the top of the stage, allowing you to test your layout right then and there, which was extremely convenient. (The collision data for the terrain was baked into the 32x32 tilemap.)

Thanks to this mode, we were able to quickly make slight changes to a map, play it and make tweaks where necessary, and it played a major factor in improving the quality of each stage. While I tested each map, I'd imagine the game flow for each scenario, as dictated by the appearance of the enemies, and from there I'd continually go back and forth with the paper map, devising and inputting the enemy data values with the help of the viewfinder.

One day, news broke about a new, upcoming ninja game from Namco: it was titled Mirai Ninja, and what's more, it was coming in tandem with a movie directed by Keita Amemiya. This fired up the staff—"we won't lose to Namco!"—and at the president's instruction, we decided to send a game announcement to Famitsu.

The title of our game at that time, as chosen by the president, was "Ninja Gaiden"—I remember thinking, a side-story to what, exactly?, but the president wasn't one for listening once they'd made a proclamation, so we went with that title, and on the morning that our announcement was published in Famitsu, I received a call from him:

"Seeing it in print made me realize that the title doesn't have enough impact, so come up with something else! I'm driving over there (to the development building) now, so think of something before I arrive!"

Talk about tough... the president's coming in their Mercedes from the Kanda HQ to the development building in Asukasa near Honjo-Azumabashi, which only gives me about 15 minutes!

The first thing that sprung to mind was the kanji for "dragon"—I wanted something that looked powerful, and a kanji with a lot of strokes seemed like it would fit the bill. I immediately ran over to the team and said, "let's say the premise is that the protagonist wields the legendary 'Ryuken (Dragon Sword)' in a battle against a shadowy organization... yeah, and his name's Ryu! Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja who travels alone to America in order to avenge the death of his father... something like that? We'll call it 'Ninja Ryukenden'! All good?"

Just as I was about to confirm the decision, the president arrived. When I told him what we'd just came up with, he said, "Good idea! Let's run with that!" and the title was changed then and there. It's surprising what ideas can be produced under desperate circumstances...

By the way, the international title is "NINJA外伝", with "外伝" written as kanji and "GAIDEN" rendered as furigana. That was another idea that came down from the president: "Americans love kanji!". From there, I came up with a story concerning a dragon sword and the statue of a demonic god, that involved a shadowy cabal and the CIA.

I love movies and anime, and I've always had a fascination with visual expression. I'd always wanted to combine narrative, visual expression and games, so naturally, I wanted to commit myself heavily to the production techniques used in the intermission screens, for which I coined the term "Cinema DISP."

At the time, games mostly still used simple, single-image "ichi-e" images for intermission screens; for games, story was seen as a simple bonus, and that was true both in arcades as well as on Famicom. Even though this particular dream never came true, I'd always loved movies and wanted to work in the film industry, and I wondered why developers weren't using the functionality of the Famicom to replicate film-esque camerawork and production.

During my work as a helper on Captain Tsubasa, which was being directed by a colleague, I came up with various ideas for visual expression and experimented with those ideas while constructing the story events. I did a little study on the functionality of the hardware and the parameters of the programming, and from there I began drawing up storyboards with the idea that, if I prepared the graphics like so and made use of the program in this way, then here's the result! When I presented my designs to the staff, they were like, "Whoa!"

I enjoyed surprising the team like that, so my ideas became more and more elaborate: I tried things like using backgrounds and sprites in tandem to create a sense of perspective, and using raster scrolling to produce a three-dimensional effect, taking advantage of the ability to interrupt the scrolling speed of the background mid-scanline.

I think these methods of visual expression were largely inspired by Japanese "limited animation" techniques. As opposed to the full animation display by Disney, for example, the Japanese animation industry cultivated technique to express movement and camerawork by, say, pulling back on the background or sliding around cels, in order to reduce the number of cels that needed to be produced. Those techniques ended being so useful for Famicom development, as the Famicom was very limited in both functionality and storage capacity.

Ultimately, around half of the game's ROM capacity was allotted to the Cinema DISP. At the time, I don't think there were any other games that put so much emphasis on the visual scenes, and they certainly weren't pursuing cinema-style camerawork. I wanted to make a game that was movie-esque, so I dedicated a lot of space to Cinema DISP, but it goes without saying that if I thoughtlessly added lots of images, that space would be used up in no time, so I tried all sorts of ways to fit as much as possible into the given space.

The Cinema DISP. screen used a CinemaScope-esque landscape ratio. If you show a close-up face shot on this screen, you can reduce the data size of the character by using sprites for the eyes and mouth—that tight face shot is impactful, and when screenshots of these scenes are printed in magazines, they're eye-catching even if the printed images are small. This technique also allows you to change the character's gaze or lip movements via sprite work, killing three or four birds with one stone.

By preparing various bust poses, you can scroll or move the sprite to imply the movement of things that aren't visible on-screen; furthermore, by changing the direction and speed of the scrolling in tandem with the movement of the background, you can replicate various camera-esque movements.

Although we put a lot of effort into the story and visual production, we were most mindful of the fact that we were making a game, and that the game itself was the main focus; Cinema DISP. should never be a hindrance, as that'd defeat the purpose of its inclusion. To ensure this, I thought it important to connect these scenes to the players' emotions; players' excitement is at its highest immediately upon buying a game, and maintaining their excitement is crucial.

Cinema DISP. wasn't just thrown in for its own sake: after kicking off the game with an exciting intro, the player should quickly come to grips with the controls, start taking out enemies one by one and rush through the stage until facing off with the boss, at which point the Cinema DISP. is reintroduced to bridge their excitement to the next stage. For that purpose, it's prudent to punctuate easier sections with shorter scenes, and to present longer scenes with unexpected twists after challenging climaxes. Rather than simply clearing the stages one after another, I wanted the player to identify with the emotions of Ryu, and to share those same feelings as they entered into each stage.

For the bigger moments, we prepared a wide-scope Cinema DISP. that fills the entire screen, like, for example, the scene where Ryu is gazing at the enemy castle from atop a cliff: in this scene, both the castle and cliffside drawn in front of the castle are rendered on the background layer, with raster scrolling used to scroll them out of sync with each other to create the illusion of camera movement. Ryu and the top of the cliff are rendered using sprites, and by scrolling them in the other direction in sync with the scrolling of the cliff in the lower background, they're able to hide the seams in the background that are produced by the raster interrupts.

In the ending scene, the sun rises vertically from over the raster-interrupted horizon, and the color of the screen changes as dawn breaks. These full-screen displays were held back for the latter portion of the game, and were only used twice as I thought they'd be more effective if used sparingly.

There were no other Famicom games going to such lengths at that time, so the media and public alike were quite surprised by what we'd achieved. Nowadays, they might not seem particularly out of the ordinary, but the fact that we were doing this on the Famicom is what made it so special.

Roughly half of the allotted ROM capacity was dedicated to Cinema DISP., and there were no other games out there that committed so much of their precious memory to presentation. However, it would be detrimental if the core game itself were to pale in comparison to other games, so we focused on devising ways to use the remaining space as efficiently as possible.

I personally visited the visual staff at their desks, asked to see the visuals they were drawing and worked side-by-side with them in search of methods to reduce their size as much as possible—for graphics that extended past a convenient size by just one pixel, we'd alter the angle so that they'd fit, and for in-stage objects, we'd find and identify instances where we could save a few bytes by shifting their placement data a pixel either way.

As we continued to take these measures, this path of efficiency took root within the visual staff, and they started drawing graphics that were maximally impactful but with the minimum possible size footprint, without having to be told. When it came to the Famicom, whose software was limited to an extremely small capacity, there was an obvious difference in the quality of graphics between the developers who employed such methods and the developers who didn't. On that note, I think Tecmo's visuals at the time were comparable to those of Capcom, who were considered one of the leaders of the industry. In fact, our goal at the time was to overtake Capcom!

Development of Ninja Ryukenden was progressing smoothly, with Ryu being able to run, wall-jump and perform ninjutsu techniques. One day, as per usual, the president summoned me to his office... and when I entered the room, I could instantly feel the vibe: someone was angry about something.

"I heard from O-buchou that your ninja runs with a "cramp-gait"?!"

The president was hard of hearing in one ear, so he spoke loudly at the best of times, but this time he was even louder and more intimidating than usual.

...but what exactly did he mean by "cramp-gait"? I didn't know, but just based on how it sounded, I could infer that it meant a goofy way of running.

"I mean, I don't think so..."

The moment I objected, BAM! The president flared up and started yelling even louder. He was ranting about something or other, but to me it sounded like the cacophony of distant thunder, so indistinct that I couldn't make out a thing.

It was clear to me that there was no resolving this issue unless changes were made, so I met with the designer to discuss how to change the running of the player-character, and in an effort to identify just what was wrong with it, we began suggesting various alterations.

At that moment, the president wandered over—and in a cheerful mood, which was a stark contrast to his earlier rage. He took a look at the running animation on the screen and said:

"Wow! That looks much better!"

"Well, we, uh, haven't made any changes to it yet..."

The president looked a little embarrassed, and said:

"...well, based on what O-buchou said, I expected something more limp-y, but this doesn't look too bad..."

The designer, T-kun, then said something bold:

"Well, if even one person saw it that way, I'll just have to redraw it! It'll look even better when I'm done!!"

"Alright then, I expect good things!", said the president, humming as he left.

In the end, once the redraw was complete, he did look even cooler than before.

At the time, I thought the president was being needlessly strict, but now I believe that the president, manager and every other employee had a keen interest in everything the company was making, and that they were eager to ensure they improved even by just a little, and that they sold well; I think it was for the best that each and every product was seen as important by the company and the staff. Tecmo was a mid-sized company with 200 employees, and the development department was quite small, housing only 20~30 people, but the fate of the company was in the hands of every game we made and, in hindsight, I think that was a good thing. On the flipside, Namco, and later Bandai-Namco, released over 100 games every year and were actively developing twice as many, and while operating on such a scale had many economic advantages, only a small number of those games were poised to have a significant impact on the company, and to gain attention within the company, one had to claw their way up the ladder on their own.

A jungle stage appears midway through the game, with swamps depicted under the holes in the platforms, killing the player if they fall in—T-kun, the designer in charge of the visuals, was very proud of the color used to draw the swamp, and said "This is a color rarely seen in other Famicom games!"

The Famicom supposedly offers 64 colors but in reality, there were only 54 available colors as certain colors would not display when specified. The master palette wasn't evenly distributed across RGB, either, and was heavy on shades of red while light on shades of blue; that's why there were so many Famicom games with brick-wall backgrounds.

Because the graphics were constructed from a combination of a small number of colors, the tones and overall quality of the images were determined by which colors were selected for each palette—in essence, the designer's sense for color was on full display, and the quality of the images from game to game varied wildly. I think the artists of this era were ultimately being judged on their sense for colors, and in that respect, I think Tecmo's artists were top-notch. At the time, we worked in competition with our would-be rivals: "Konami won't beat us in programming! Capcom won't beat us in visuals!"

Shortly after the commencement of the Ninja Project, the company held an interview for a mid-career hire, and I was the person who interviewed them: the interviewee was a former animator for Gainax and, because they could draw, wanted to work as a graphic designer. There were four dedicated planners at Tecmo at the time—the other three could all draw but I couldn't, so it was left to me to interview them to potentially join my team.

We spent the interview talking about movies and anime, and because we seemed to share a lot of common interests, I decided to hire them to join the team. That person's name is [Masato] Kato, and he went on to work at Square, where he was responsible for the scenarios for Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, and more recently, GREE's Another Eden.

I immediately set him to work on Ninja Ryukenden, placing him in charge of enemy graphics. Compared with animation work, which consists of drawing animations based on pre-established images, working on game visuals, which allows you to draw more freely and express more of your own tastes, must have been more rewarding.

He came up with original design after original design—the spinning kung-fu guy and the hopping gargoyles were both his ideas, and it was fascinating to see how, after I'd written out the specifications for how they should move, he'd add unexpected little twists to match. The boxer that appears in the first stage is an enemy that was added based on a design he submitted, and through this back-and-forth process, our ideas for the enemies continued to expand.

Also, as a former animator, the Cinema DISP. scenes, which took up so much of the ROM space, were like second nature to him, and he was very intrigued by the anime-style direction.

The heroine, Irene, was also designed by Kato. When I saw her unique hairdo, I immediately recognized it as being inspired by Rachael from Blade Runner, but nobody else on the team noticed; I also loved Blade Runner, so I let it through as-is. Did you pick up on it?

During the transition to a new stage, an illustration and title (like "Chapter 1: Destiny") slides in, and a short jingle plays: this is called an "eye-catch". I've loved anime since I was in high school and regularly watched shows like Lupin the 3rd, Mobile Suits Gundam and Future Boy Conan, and in those anime, similar eye-catches are displayed before and after commercial breaks. I thought they were really cool and set the tempo, so it felt natural to include them in the game.

As it happened, that specific production effect was rarely seen in games at the time, and it was very well received. What's more, when I tried it out, I realized that they also functioned as a break in the action, and offered a convenient means to changes scenes in the story. In this way, Ninja Ryukeden's direction was heavily influenced by the techniques of the anime I'd watched during my student days.

I really like the sound of Ninja Ryukenden, as it's full of cool, fast-paced background music. The music was extremely well-received by fans, and there's no doubt that it played a factor in the popularity of the game.

My focus with the BGM was to impress upon the sound team the image of Ryu—a ninja shouldering his own destiny, charging forward in the face of immense evil—and requested energetic, up-tempo songs. Additionally, in accordance with the story, I'd explain the scenario for each stage and Ryu's emotions in that moment, and have them write music with those points in mind. Once it's done, they'd let me know and then play it for me, and I'd tell them what I pictured in my mind as I heard the music, and from there, a tune might be assigned to a different scene or even scrapped, and so I'm guessing we made about twice as many songs as were actually used in the final game. I guess peoples' image of me was a director who was particularly picky about music

My decisions were always made by imagining how I'd feel when a tune was playing in the background of a given stage, as the player was controlling Ryu and taking out enemies while advancing through each stage; I believe BGM has a profound effect on guiding the player's frame of mind as they play. What's more, for Cinema DISP. sections, I'd even go as far as specifying the exact timing and tempo of the audio.

However, because the programming environment was designed to allow the programmer to write requests for music directly into the program, it was ultimately up to programmer Y-kun to enter those requests, and after listening to the many tunes that had been completed, Y-kun would occasionally put in submissions for music that didn't match the stage specific by either myself or the sound engineer. There were times where I'd test the latest build and be surprised by what I heard when I played... personally, aside from a few specific scenes, so long as the vibe and tempo were near enough, I didn't mind too much, but I think the sound engineer wasn't too happy about it.

Ninja Ryukenden has become infamous for its "extreme difficulty", but that was not our true intention. During the final tuning period, we set up the enemy spawn tables and item placement, making careful tweaks to place items with reference to the movements of specific enemies, and to ensure fluid gameplay could be maintained through the use of special attacks.

Back then, the evaluation of the difficulty was left to the team and I. One of the artists was an avid gamer and they were able to beat the game without any trouble, and said that it was really fun. Additionally, while I was never a particularly skilled game, at the time, even I was able to clear the game, even during my bleary-eyed state of being up all night—I even tried deliberately delaying my reactions and pressing the buttons a little later than was natural, and even then, I could still beat the game. Therefore, the difficulty seemed just right...

...but, that was possible because I determined all the enemy placements myself: no matter how bad I might be, or how deliberately delayed my actions might be, there's no getting around the fact that I knew precisely where and when all the enemies would appear. The entire team had already played the game hundreds of times since earliest stages of tuning and were extremely familiar with it, but no real player will start the game with hundreds of hours of experience, so you can't determine the appropriate difficulty level based on the team's level of play.

As a result, the final game was deemed to be "extremely difficult". From then on, we always made sure to enlist a "debug virgin"—that it, someone completely unfamiliar with the game and its content, like someone from management—to play the game during the final balance sweep.

The enemy that duels Joe Hayabusa in the opening scene appears in the second half of the game as the masked monster named Bloody Malth, and those who've played the game will never forget his like: "If you proceed beyond this point, you will come to know... hell on earth..."

From here, the game enters the final stretch, with increasingly difficulty stages culminating in fights with Jaquio and The Demon; however, if you are defeated by either boss, you'll be sent straight back to face Bloody Malth. My deepest apologies... I'm sure many people gave up at this point. The story was reaching its climax at this point, too, so being unable to progress from here must have been especially painful.

Actually, though, the game had been designed so that if you were defeated by the final boss, you'd start over from the entrance to the final hallway in front of the boss' room: there was a power-up in that final hallway, so we wanted for the player to be able to grab it before facing the boss. However, when I checked the latest build, I found that it was booting players much further back than intended... what a brutal bug, I thought.

I immediately brought this bug to programmer Y-kun, but I was surprised by his response:

"No way! This is fine! Restarting them in the final hallway is way too cushy!"

He wouldn't budge. We went back and forth but in the end, he wouldn't fix it, and the game ended up going gold as-is.

Whatever the case, it's my fault for not being able to rein in the programmer's reckless behavior. Allow me to once again apologize to everyone who played the game: I'm sorry.

And so, that's why magazines branded the game "extremely difficult", and why Game Center CX's Arino was ground into the dirt.

Have you ever noticed that Ninja Ryukenden's stages are arranged chronologically and depict the flow of time across an entire day?

In the first chapter, Ryu follows his father's requests and travels alone to America, running through the skyscraper-filled building at night. After defeating the boss at Jay's Bar, he's shot by a mysterious woman, falls unconscious and wakes up in a jail cell early the next morning.

After escaping from the Outpost, he heads out to Death Valley and meets his father's friend, Mr. Smith, around 08:00. He then heads through Crystal Lake and Lizard Mountains in pursuit of the stolen Shadow statue, which occurs around 09:00~10:00. He's dropped off at the Amazon around 16:00, and by the time he reaches the cliff in Chapter 5, it's around 19:00. The sun begins to set while he's climbing the cliff, and by the time he confronts Bloody Malth, it's around 20:00.

The fight with Jaquio takes place around 02:00 the next day, and once the final foes are vanquished, the castle collapses around 05:00, culminating in that ending scene with the rising sun. I explained all of this to the visual staff, and asked that they gradually shift the color of the sky as the game progressed. Next time you play the game, please keep an eye out for this little detail!

Nintendo had formed a consortium called Shoshinkai, which saw wholesalers and retailers coming together for regular business events; at these events, products from various companies were exhibited, with reps from each company working to explain and promote their products to wholesalers and retailers.

When setting up these exhibits, Nintendo would hand-pick several products that they deemed worthy of support, and had them displayed in a cylindrical display in the center of the venue. Naturally, being displayed there garnered a lot of attention and had a significant impact on the number of orders a game would receive, but that placement was entirely decided on Nintendo's whims, so it's not something we had any control over.

Ninja Ryukenden was fortunate to be selected for the main display tower, and was well-received by both retailers and wholesalers, ultimately resulting in orders for 300,000 units. Nintendo's always given favorable treatment to Ninja Ryukenden, as demonstrated by its inclusion on the Famicom Mini, and its featured place on the timeline shown on the Famicom 40th Anniversary website.

Ninja Ryukenden was an OEM product of Nintendo: in other words, the finished software was submitted to Nintendo, who then manufactured the cartridge at their own factory, prepared the finished package and distributed the games to wholesalers. As part of this process, Nintendo would also run their own independent debug on the submitted software—in simple terms, this inspection includes a quality check to ensure the game would properly function on Nintendo's hardware, and if it fails that check, the software would not be put into production, and the release date might have to be pushed back.

These inspections were carried out by Nintendo's in-house debugging studio, known as Mario Club. Naturally, their reports included details on the bugs they logged, their frequency, the circumstances surrounding each one and a prediction for what might have triggered them, but they also included any observations they might've made, or requests they felt like making.

In Ninja Ryukenden's case, they didn't discover any game-stopping bugs, but we did receive one request: "it'd be nice if you could add an underwater stage where the ninja has to swim".

I'm guessing that request came from the fact that Super Mario Bros. had underwater stages, but it would've been impossible to add such a stage at that point in development, and I felt like the sluggish nature of underwater action didn't match the intended tempo of the game, so I declined to take their advice.

Ninja Ryukenden released first in Japan, where it was moderately successful, selling around 300,000 copies. One day, I received a phone call from my former sempai, Ueda-san—he'd created Mr.DO! while at Universal, and was headhunted by Tecmo to head up their development department. He was the producer on Mighty Bomb Jack, which I'd directed, but quit halfway through development, was present at the founding and launch of Atlus and created the Megami Tensei series.

We decided to meet up for the first time in a while and go out for drinks—or rather, a dinner party, as Ueda-san doesn't drink. I think this was around the time Atlus had just released Megami Tensei. He told me that he was pleased to see Ninja Ryukenden selling well, and furthermore, regarding the Cinema DISP. scenes shown in the intro and intermissions, he said:

"I think this kind of stylish direction is why the game's selling so well. That's something only you could have done, Yoshizawa-kun; I don't have that sort of sensibility, so it's something you treasure that gift."

It was immensely reassuring to know that someone had really paid close attention to what I'd been trying to do, and had appreciated it. It was at that point that I truly realized that I wanted to continue honing this sensibility and to find more ways to integrate it within games.

There was also a Ninja Ryukenden game released in arcades. The president ordered us to simultaneously develop and arcade and Famicom game, both titled Ninja Ryukenden: my colleague I-kun was in charge of the arcade version, while I was in charge of the Famicom version. I-kun joined the company at the same time as me, and as an artist he worked on the graphics for Star Force and Mighty Bomb Jack, and Rygar is a showpiece for both his visuals and game design.

I-kun had been working on an action game project, and intended to make it with a ninja as the player-character: it was a game with a peculiar controller, a grip-style stick with a button on top that you pressed with your thumb. Back then, if you sold a game with a unique controller, you could sell the game in tandem with a new control panel, which meant you could charge a high price, and it had the further advantage of being attention-grabbing. The player could use that button to hang from something, or to perform a guillotine throw.

The intermission scenes, which included stuff like the ninja reading an English newspaper at a sushi bar and traveling to America via rowboat, were a little tough to take at face value, but I-kun was completely genuine about thinking it was all super cool.

Given that both arcade and Famicom were about to receive a game with the same title, one would naturally presume the Famicom version to be a port of the arcade game, but I wanted to create a more cinematic game and couldn't gel with the tone of the contents of the arcade game, so when I told him, "I'm gonna make Ryu Hayabusa way cooler on Famicom!," he simply replied with, "fine by me!", and thus we proceeded on the production of our respective games with no intervention whatsoever from the other side. At that time, Tecmo's management had no say in the contents of the games, so that was permitted. In that respect, it was an environment that left us free to make what we wanted to make.

As the release date drew near, promotional events were planned at retailers and department stores nationwide. At Tecmo, these events were not only staffed by salespersons but also members of the development department, so I was also sent here and there. These events gave me opportunities to talk to the staff at retailers, and once they learned I was a game developer, they were very polite to me, and I even became friends with manager of one of the stores.

The best thing about working these events was being able to see the children play the games and hear their stories in-person, which was always very worthwhile. At one such event, I asked one of the children who was trying the game, "Do you like it? Is it fun?" and he said, "It's super fun!", so I told him, "well, you'd better buy it when it comes out, then!" and he replied, "Yeah, I'm gonna tell my brother to get it for me!". I was so happy I shed a tear.

At one event, held at a local department store, a special venue was assembled on the rooftop where games were presented to children and demo sessions were held; it was small, but very much felt like a proper event. Among the staff at this event were aspiring voice actors from an agency called Aoni Productions, who were working as attendees. I ended up working alongside one would-be voice actor there, and we talked about all manner of things. She was still a trainee who'd only just joined the company, and while she was facing a lot of hardships, she said she enjoyed her work because every job was teaching her new things. I'd only been at the company for around five years at that point, so we talked about how we should both keep giving it our all!

Even after the event was over, I continued to think about her, and so I wrote a thank-you letter with words of encouragement and sent it to Aoni Production, but I never received a reply, so I eventually just forgot about it. However, over a year after sending that letter, I received a reply from her—in that reply, she told me that my letter had arrived at the agency, but that her manager felt that, since she was still just a trainee, it was too early for her to start receiving fan mail, so he hadn't given it to her. Apparently, she had just finished her training and was about to start her career as a voice actor when someone finally handed her my letter, so she wrote to apologize for the late reply and to say thankyou, in appreciation of receiving her first ever fan letter.

That person is still an active voice actor and continues to work at the forefront of the industry, and so I'm a little boastful of the fact that I was the first person to ever send them fan mail. I still have their reply safely tucked away.

The production of the international version has begun. To make the Western version, the Japanese text has to be localized into English—nowadays, games are commonly translated into multiple languages for various European countries, for example, but back in those days, when game sizes were very limited, the European version was only available with English text.

The translation was outsourced to an external company, and after a while, the translation was done. The designer Kato-kun and I reviewed the English script together, but there were a few points of concern, so we had a meeting with the foreigner in charge of translation to ensure that the finer details of the original text were being properly conveyed in English.

From there, this foreign guy started speaking to us in the Yamagata dialect—apparently, after he got done with us, he was planning to parade a mikoshi at the Akasuka festival. Though he struck me as a kooky foreigner, he listened intently to our explanations of the game and its story, and the result was a really solid English translation.

Later on, that guy started making TV appearances and became somewhat famous. His name is Daniel Kahl, and he's credited in the staff roll, too.

Let's start by looking at the Japanese TV commercial. It depicts a ninja running through a building-packed city at night, fighting enemies Apparently, this was actually filled in a building-packed city at night—specifically, on a late Sunday night, in the business district of Hibaya. Not a single soul was in sight, and what's more, it had been raining that day, leaving the streets wet and damp.

The entire ad is narrated in English, with the ending catchphrase being, "[something] x [something] x [somethnig] x [something] x Famicom!", with that last "Famicom!" being the only part I understood. "English is cooler!", thought the president, and it really did sound quite cool.

...and now, the American TV commercial. It shows a mansion at night... a child dressed as a ninja appears in the yard, striking a pose. Relaxing in the living room is a couple, watching TV. The ninja child crawls across the floor and sneaks into the living room, quietly taking the NES cartridge that his parents had probably confiscated from him. Engrossed in the TV, his parents don't notice a thing. The child nimbly ascends to their second-floor bedroom via the balcony, and throws the cartridge into the NES like a shuriken, which turns on the game screen. I quite like the vibe of this commercial, and it looks like they must have spent quite a lot on that set.

In March of 1989, Ninja Gaiden was finally released in the US. At the time, I was in Japan, working on my next project, but I was very curious about how the game was being received in America; however, I was starting to get impatient, as there was no information coming in. Finally, early reports started to arrive "People have been lining up at the cash registers since the game's launch"; "Stores are selling out of copies, one after another"; "People are running from store to store, trying to find a copy".

This news warmed my heart and brought tears to my eyes. I was happier to hear that people were frantically trying to find my work than I was to hear that it was selling well. Ah, how I wish I could've been in America on launch day to see it firsthand!

Orders were immediately placed for additional stock, but at that time, the lead time from order to delivery of Famicom software was around three months, so I was a little nervous that the hype might die down in the interim. However, sales continued to steadily grow, and the game ended up selling around 1.5 million copies in America.

The name of the protagonist Ryu Hayabusa's father is Joe Hayabusa in the Japanese version, but Ken Hayabusa in the English version—that name is taken from the nickname of Tecmo of America's president at the time, Hakata-san.

Buoyed by the game's massive success in America, the president came to me, humming happily:

"Yoshizawa, does Ryukenden have a story?"

"Yes sir, it has a solid, fleshed-out story."

"I'm thinking of having Spielberg adapt it into a movie. Whaddya think?"

"...t-that sounds fantastic! Absolutely!"

If that were to happen, I'd love to get to travel to Hollywood to supervise filming. I'd love to meet Spielberg, too, and they might even put my name in the credits... My imagination grew and grew, but ultimately, this was just talk that never went anywhere.

In Europe, televisions use a format called PAL, which runs at five-sixths the refresh rate of Japanese or North American TV, so if you run a program without modifications, it'll run at five-sixths its intended speed. Thus, we had to adjust the speed of the entire game, but we couldn't possibly hope to retune the entire game in the allotted timeframe, so we simply made the movement of the player-character, Ryu, a little faster—at the end of this process, the player-character controlled at the same speed as the Japanese version, but the enemies were slightly slower, moving at five-sixths of their original speed...

...but, when I tried it, the difficulty level felt just right! Ah, I guess the enemies were just a little too fast, I thought... but there were hardcore players out there who probably had no issues with the original speed, and it may very well be that the original level of intensity added a spice that other games were lacking, so who's to say.

Ninja Ryukenden still has a solid fanbase, with people actively discussing and playing the game online in real time, and a European indie band even released a CD featuring renditions of the BGM, so as the creator, it was a truly fulfilling experience.

Finally, please take a look at this amazing superplay—the player beats the game as quickly as possible without using his sword, let alone ninjutsu, outside of the boss battles. Props to him!

Allow me to show you some Ninja Ryukenden merch I have on hand:

This poster was displayed in Japanese stores around the time of the game's release:

These are badges; I don't remember why or how they were distributed. Who drew that manga-style illustration, I wonder?

This is the developer team jacket that was given away at the rooftop event for Ninja Ryukenden 2 in Takashimaya:

This is a handmade calendar, sent to us by a fan. I was delighted and truly grateful to receive something so thoughtful.

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