The Ninja Gaiden series has seen a resurgence in 2025 with the release of NINJA GAIDEN Black 2 back in January and the recent launch of NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound last month. To top it all off, the next mainline entry, Ninja Gaiden 4 , is set to release in October. NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound sees the classic ninja series return to its 2D roots with sidescrolling action and nostalgic NES-style pixel art. While modern 3D games are all the rage these days, Koei Tecmo isn’t letting Ninja Gaiden ’s history fall by the wayside and worked with developer The Game Kitchen (best known for the excellent 2D side-scrolling action game, Blasphemous ) and publisher Dotemu to honor Ninja Gaiden ’s 2D origins. Crunchyroll sat down with NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound director David Jaumandreu to discuss how the development teams brainstormed the game’s ideas, characters and art style. With NINJA GAIDEN Black 2 being released earlier this year, and Ninja Gaiden 4 projected to come out in October, how does it feel to be part of Koei Tecmo’s self-proclaimed “Year of NINJA GAIDEN " with NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound ? David Jaumandreu: It feels really exciting! When we learned that Ragebound would be part of a full revival of the NINJA GAIDEN series, we felt even more honored to be involved in the project. As a series with so many fans (including ourselves!), both from the 2D and 3D eras, it’s amazing that in the same year we’re getting a remake of one of its most emblematic chapters, a sequel to the 3D series, and a brand-new entry in the 2D lineage. RELATED: Ninja Gaiden 4 Release Date Set for PS5, Xbox Series and PC Instead of controlling previous characters from the franchise like Ryu Hayabusa, we get new characters Kenji and Kumori. What inspired the creation of this duo, and what was it like adding to the NINJA GAIDEN world like this? Jaumandreu: When we first began planning a new 2D NINJA GAIDEN , our goal was to take the series back to its roots and recapture the spirit of the legendary NES titles. For this purpose, we thought the best narrative approach would be to set the game during the events of the very first episode, since those are emblematic and well-known by fans of the series. However, during that game, Ryu Hayabusa is about to embark on his journey to the USA to avenge his father, so we needed to start thinking of a new protagonist. While brainstorming ideas, two really stood out to the team: playing as a disciple of Ryu and taking on the role of a member of the iconic rival Black Spider Clan. The more we explored them, the more we liked the possibilities, until it led to the obvious question: why not both ? Designers were especially excited about the gameplay possibilities a dual-protagonist setup could offer, particularly since the two could complement each other with their respective clan’s strengths. From there, Kenji and Kumori were born. Adding these new characters to such a legendary series was as intimidating as it was exciting. Fortunately, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja supported us throughout the entire project and ensured that everything fit within the lore of the series and its world, which gave us the confidence that these new characters could find their rightful place in the franchise. Kenji (from the Hayabusa village) and Kumori (from the Black Spider Clan) form an unlikely alliance by combining their souls. What inspired you to have these longtime enemies work together in such a way? Jaumandreu: Narratively, presenting two sworn enemies who are forced to cooperate gave us an opportunity to explore both an interesting plot and rich character dynamics. Kenji and Kumori meet on the brink of death after falling into a trap set by the Demon Lord’s forces, and in that life-or-death moment, they have no choice but to set aside their clans’ rivalry. Anyone who’s played Ninja Gaiden II knows it’s not an easy alliance (they’re crossing a lot of red lines for the sake of survival), but their sense of duty and loyalty to their clans outweighs their personal pride. This tension adds layers to the story and creates room for meaningful character growth. From a gameplay perspective, this unlikely fusion opened up a lot of exciting possibilities (not to mention the thrill of controlling a member of the rival clan!). Kenji’s style reflects the disciplined, precise swordplay of the Hayabusa lineage, which he is still learning directly from Ryu, while Kumori brings speed, ranged combat, and the use of modern weapons and forbidden techniques from the Black Spider Clan. Combining these contrasting abilities allowed us to design a combat system that feels fast, fluid, and varied, while also tying directly into the story of two warriors overcoming their differences and learning to fight as one. RELATED: 10 Anime Characters Not Here to Make Friends NINJA GAIDEN games are known for being quite hard. How did you balance the difficulty with Ragebound? Jaumandreu: Since we were conscious that Ninja Gaiden has a reputation for its legendary difficulty, we knew that challenge had to be one of Ragebound ’s core pillars. At the same time, we also wanted that difficulty to feel fair, rewarding, and aligned with present-day standards. This led us to ask ourselves: what does a challenging game mean in the 2020s ? Some of the difficulty in the originals came from systems like limited lives, constant respawns, punishing checkpoints, or sudden enemy ambushes, elements that could feel frustrating for players today. Instead, we focused on building a challenge where skill and reactiveness are key. Our approach emphasizes quick reflexes and good coordination over pure memorization. If you read the situation and act decisively, you can overcome it, and when you make mistakes, we’ve worked to make recovery fast and encouraging, with frequent checkpoints and quick respawns to keep players moving forward. The game also offers equippable talismans that can either aid players in their quest (by adding survivability elements) or make things even harder (by handicapping the heroes in exchange for higher scores). That being said, we also wanted the most hardcore players to feel at home. To achieve this, we added an unlockable Hard Mode. This mode doesn’t just increase the number of enemies. It reworks stages with new layouts, adds more aggressive enemy types, and places additional traps, offering both a fresh experience and a much higher level of challenge. Can you go into the process of creating Ragebound ’s art style? What inspired the pixel art style used, and were there previous iterations of it before finalizing what it was going to be? Jaumandreu: Since the last 2D Ninja Gaiden entry dated back to the early ’90s and we were returning to the series’ roots, we had a clear idea from the very beginning: we wanted the visual style of the game to have a 90s seinen anime aesthetic. In fact, the Japanese version of 1991’s Ninja Gaiden III had already taken a similar approach, launching close to an animated movie and even using the same designs for its cover. Building from that initial concept, we not only created the characters and enemy concept art but also began shaping how the pixel art style should look to achieve this vision. Coming from the baroque, dark fantasy setting of the Blasphemous series, Ragebound ’s pixel art features a much more colorful palette, flatter shadowing to clearly define shapes, and a greater presence of character sprites on-screen. Since the action is also much faster (thanks to Kenji and Kumori’s agility), our artists worked carefully to ensure that stages and interactive elements are clearly readable without sacrificing the visual detail The Game Kitchen is known for. Additionally, special attention was put into recreating the classic “Tecmo Theater” style cutscenes that the original games were famous for, now enhanced with the additional colors, effects, and resolution that modern technology allows. I’ve played the game and I’m curious about something; do you expect either Kenji or Kumori to come back in future NINJA GAIDEN entries? If you got to create more games for NINJA GAIDEN , would you go back to these two or create more new characters? Jaumandreu: That’s a really good question! Since we’re still focused on the game’s launch, we haven’t had the time to really think about this in depth. Judging from the first impressions, it seems that Kenji and Kumori are being well received and that couldn’t make us happier. Seeing something we’ve worked so hard on for almost three years being enjoyed by players is a truly magical feeling for the team. And of course, if the opportunity came up to further explore these characters in the future, we’d be super excited about it. RELATED: Silent Hill f Team Discuss Why Feeling Joy Is a Key Part of the Horror Experience What are the biggest differences between developing your previous game, Blasphemous , and developing Ragebound ? Jaumandreu: The biggest difference in concept was the overall pace and feel of the gameplay systems. Blasphemous is a game where combat is deliberately designed to feel heavy and methodical, with attacks that carry a lot of anticipation and recovery, meaning players are deeply committed to every action. For Ragebound , we needed something quite different: fast, fluid, and immediately responsive combat that matched the high rhythm of both the classic 2D Ninja Gaiden games and their 3D successors, while fitting a much more agile moveset. This shift forced our team, especially animators and programmers, to rethink their entire approach. Animations had to be spectacular, clear and readable as usual, but also cancelable and chainable into other moves, in order to keep the action flowing without losing that “ninja speed and precision.” This meant having to adapt the animation style and going into quite a few iterations until we were satisfied with the result. On the coding side, some aspects of the character controller also had to be rethought in order to integrate all these animations while making them immediately responsive to players' actions. If you could develop a game for any other franchise like you did with NINJA GAIDEN , what franchise would it be and why? Jaumandreu: That’s a tough question! As a team that loves classic gaming, during informal conversations we frequently fantasize with and comment about classics that we would love to see a revival for (even if we weren’t the ones making them). I’m sure that if we were ever in a dream situation where we could choose a franchise to revive, there would be a full-on internal war, with everyone pushing for their favorite IP! While this is just dreaming for now, we would definitely love to dive into other classic franchises if we ever had the opportunity.
