Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki, who died last week at the age of 58, was once famous for trolling his competitors in interviews. He listed Tekken 1-5 as his "most hated" games and had public "feuds" with Tekken's Katsuhiro Harada and Devil May Cry's Hideki Kamiya. While working on 2005's Ninja Gaiden Black, he said that Devil May Cry 3 director Hideaki Itsuno—who went on to make DMC 4, 5, and Dragon's Dogma—"did pretty well for a young guy" and "might make something even better next time."
Behind the blustery facade, Itagaki seemingly respected his action game peers a great deal; roasting them was his way of projecting the image of a true Master Ninja. But as I tried to convey in my Ninja Gaiden 4 review, Itagaki's games were different from the ones his competitors were making. It wasn't just that they tended to be more challenging, but that they took themselves so seriously; the winking tone that Kamiya favored with DMC's Dante and later Bayonetta were nowhere to be found in Itagaki's games. His sense of humor was adding an easier "Ninja Dog" mode to Ninja Gaiden for players who died too many times on the first level.
