Dead Rising and Onimusha producer Keiji Inafune has announced his new ninja/zombie mash-up Kaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. Collaborating with Team Ninja on the project, the title was announced at Team Ninja’s pre-TGS event and pleasantly surprised the audience.
This isn’t the first we’ve heard of the game, as last week Inafune announced that he was working on a zombie game called Yaiba. Now we have the full title, and as it suggests, it is a spin-off of Ninja Gaiden.
The game puts you in control of Yaiba, an undead warrior who has sworn revenge on Ryu Hayabusa, main protagist of the Ninja Gaiden franchise. While no specific platforms were announced, we are told that Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is currently in development for “consoles.”
We also have a new announcement trailer online today. It shows Yaiba falling bloodily at the hands Ryu, before coming back from the dead as a half cyborg, with robotic parts now replacing the arm and half of his face that Ryu sliced off. He is then shown taking out hordes of zombies that roam the streets, but it seems is far from being the good guy as he exclaims “I’m coming for you, Ryu!” at the end.
The trailer has a very stylistic and visually distinctive graphical style. The first half of the video shows story elements presented in a comic book style, while the latter half provides brief glimpses into gameplay. Its very short and presented very fast, but you can see that the game seems to have a cel-shaded visual style.
Inafune is famous in the Japanese game industry for his impressive work and contributions to titles such as Mega Man, Resident Evil, Street Fighter and many more. He states that the collaboration is a ”dream come true” for him to create a game featuring both zombies and ninjas and he is a huge zombie, as evidenced by his past title Dead Rising. While it may be a spin-off, here’s hoping that Yaiba delivers where Ninja Gaiden 3 failed.
[Source: Joystiq]
