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Koei Tecmo Lost The Data For Ninja Gaiden Black And Ninja Gaiden II

Koei Tecmo has responded to fan backlash about a Ninja Gaiden trilogy release on the Nintendo Switch.
by Luke Luby on March 28, 2021   

When a Ninja Gaiden trilogy release was announced for the Nintendo Switch, publisher Koei Tecmo initially expected a positive response. While it did receive some fanfare, it also got a lot of backlash. That's primarily because it includes Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1 and Sigma 2 but doesn't have Black and Gaiden II. The latter two titles were some of the better received, with Black being a reworked version of a title that came out a year previous.

Ninja Gaiden II, on the other hand, was released exclusively on the Xbox 360 and hasn't been released on any consoles since. Sigma 1 and Sigma 2, though, were both PlayStation titles, with many Xbox gamers finding this irksome. Instead, they'd prefer a Master Collection that includes only the Xbox releases. Now, Team Ninja - the developer behind the Nintendo Switch release - has responded to the backlash.

Speaking to Weekly Famitsu, brand manager Fumihiko Yasuda said that the studio couldn't salvage the data from the original games. As a result, they weren't able to remaster the games for the release. They also didn't have the time to recreate the game using the data that they did have. As such, they weren't able to include Ninja Gaiden Black or Ninja Gaiden II in the Nintendo Switch collection.

As Mr. Yasuda said to Weekly Famitsu:

I am aware there are pros and cons. For me personally, Ninja Gaiden II was my debut, and so I have a deep feeling for it. But there’s another reason for this choice. To be honest, there are only fragments of the data that remain. We couldn’t salvage them. However, when developing Sigma Plus and Sigma Plus 2 [for the PlayStation Vita], we got as much of this kind of data together as we could and organized it. Because we use utilize that is the reason why we selected Sigma.”

Whether or not Black or II ever see another release remains to be seen.

 

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