New Ninja Gaiden details revealed

We recently met with Tomonobu Itagaki of Team Ninja at Microsoft's X03 event in France. Itagaki was showing off the same Ninja Fortress tutorial level that we played at E3 earlier this year, but he also took the time to show us a previously unannounced feature in the game--a version of the original 1985 Ninja Gaiden that can be found and played during one of the levels.

After playing through the Ninja Fortress level and defeating the nunchaku-wielding boss at the end of it, Itagaki proceeded to a new area where a number of enemies armed with firearms as well as swords were doing their best to prevent him from negotiating the confined corridors that appeared to make up much of the level. One of the rooms on the level contained an old arcade cabinet, but, when Itagaki attempted to play it, a message came up on the screen explaining that it couldn't be played in its current condition. Moments later though, in a second room, Itagaki opened a chest containing a copy of the 1985 Ninja Gaiden game and then returned to the first room to play it in all of its original 2D side-scrolling glory.

Toward the end of our presentation, Itagaki was asked if he could reveal anything about the game's Xbox Live features, and, although he made it quite clear that official announcements will be made by Microsoft at a later date, he did let slip that the game will support a master ninja tournament. It's not yet clear whether this means that players will be able to go head-to-head or simply that the game will support a rankings board of some description.

For more information on Ninja Gaiden, check out our previous coverage of the game.