Atlus bringing next Naruto games to Wii, DS

While the anime and manga series Naruto has seen a consistent stream of gaming adaptations in recent years, the list of companies bringing those games to Western audiences has been growing almost as steadily. One more company has been added to that list, as Atlus today announced that it will be distributing Takara Tomy's Naruto games for Nintendo platforms in the US, Canada, and Latin and South America.

The first two games in the agreement will be Naruto Shippuden: Dragon Blade Chronicles for the Wii and Naruto Shippuden: Naruto vs. Sasuke for the DS, both set for launch on November 16. Atlus has promised a number of preorder bonuses and bundle incentives for customers at stores like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Toys R Us, and EB Games Canada.

Dragon Blade Chronicles is an adventure game that has players take control of both Naruto and Sasuke as they attempt to discover the secret of elemental dragons. Though it will feature the same stars, Naruto vs. Sasuke follows the pair's adversarial storyline, asking players to recruit teams of fighters to control in cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes.

This generation of systems has seen publishers like Namco Bandai, Atari, and Ubisoft play a role in bringing Naruto to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the West. For Nintendo's systems, Takara Tomy originally partnered with D3Publisher of America to release DS and Wii versions of the blond ninja's adventures, but briefly took over publishing and distribution duties itself before allying itself with Atlus.