{"id":20575,"date":"2025-10-22T22:38:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T20:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/22\/a-force-of-nature-who-took-no-prisoners-a-tribute-to-ninja-gaiden-creator-tomonobu-itagaki\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T22:38:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T20:38:46","slug":"a-force-of-nature-who-took-no-prisoners-a-tribute-to-ninja-gaiden-creator-tomonobu-itagaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/22\/a-force-of-nature-who-took-no-prisoners-a-tribute-to-ninja-gaiden-creator-tomonobu-itagaki\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A force of nature who took no prisoners\u2019: a tribute to Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

The driving force behind Team Ninja was a game development samurai who almost always won his battles<\/p>\n

Game designer and ex-Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki died last week aged 58. He was famous for his sunglasses, long black hair, leather jackets \u2013 and his penchant for using colourful second world war metaphors to describe game development, marketing strategies and just about anything else. A pugnacious talent, he rocked the boat and made waves in almost every aspect of his life.<\/p>\n

Itagaki joined Japanese game developer Tecmo in 1992, as a young programmer, where he led the creation of the fighting game series Dead or Alive, the first instalment of which was released in 1996. He famously picked a long-running fight with Namco\u2019s Tekken series, after that company\u2019s marketing team ran an ad that he found disparaging. The resulting one-sided beef put his fighting franchise on the world stage in the early 2000s. After Dead or Alive 3, he turned his attentions to beach volleyball<\/a> as a palette cleanser, before starting work on the game that would cement his legacy, a 2004 reinvention of Tecmo\u2019s side-scrolling ninja platformer, Ninja Gaiden.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe driving force behind Team Ninja was a game development samurai who almost always won his battles
\nGame designer and ex-Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki died last week aged 58. He was famous for his sunglasses, long black hair, leather jackets \u2013 and his penchant for using colourful second world war metaphors to describe game development, marketing strategies and just about anything else. A pugnacious talent, he rocked the boat and made waves in almost every aspect of his life.
\nItagaki joined Japanese game developer Tecmo in 1992, as a young programmer, where he led the creation of the fighting game series Dead or Alive, the first instalment of which was released in 1996. He famously picked a long-running fight with Namco\u2019s Tekken series, after that company\u2019s marketing team ran an ad that he found disparaging. The resulting one-sided beef put his fighting franchise on the world stage in the early 2000s. After Dead or Alive 3, he turned his attentions to beach volleyball as a palette cleanser, before starting work on the game that would cement his legacy, a 2004 reinvention of Tecmo\u2019s side-scrolling ninja platformer, Ninja Gaiden. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The driving force behind Team Ninja was a game development samurai who almost always won his battles Game designer and ex-Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki died last week aged 58. He was famous for his sunglasses, long black hair, leather jackets \u2013 and his penchant for using colourful second world war metaphors to describe game …<\/p>\n

\u2018A force of nature who took no prisoners\u2019: a tribute to Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20575"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}