This Week in Games

Return of the Ninjasaurs

Welcome back, folks! It's been a dumpster fire of a week, but I'm taking joy in what I can. For one thing, the Pyra and Mythra amiibo are finally getting re-released! Make sure to pre-order those in a hurry. Maybe I can beat Xenoblade 3 before they release on March 20... Also, Nintendo brought back all of those Xenoblade-themed avatar components for Nintendo Switch Online and will be drip-feeding them out starting January 30th, leading up to Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition's release this March 20th. I missed out on a few of those; I won't miss a second time. Small things, yeah?

Talking about Microsoft is hard. I've been rough on them before—because it's my opinion that their buying out of Activision-Blizzard was a terrible move for the industry and because I feel like laying off hundreds (if not thousands) of developers and attempting to engineer a monopoly in the gaming industry is probably just as bad (if not worse) than patenting some brand-central component of your game. That's not to say I don't think Microsoft hasn't done well in the industry; XBox Live was the gold standard for online services for game consoles (even if they popularized the abominable characteristic of having to pay for them). I was rough on Hi-Fi Rush, but I ate crow on that one because it turns out Hi-Fi Rush is great. There's a lot I can give Microsoft credit for; I just don't do that as much because here at This Week in Games, I focus on the Japanese side of the industry. Folks who want to see screenshots of the newest Fallout can find them anywhere else.

I'm not going over much of what was discussed at the Xbox Developer Direct from last week. That said, South of Midnight looks beautiful, and I look forward to playing it when it releases. Doom: The Dark Ages is an interesting take on Doom and lets us see an era of the Doomslayer that isn't steeped in the series' typical futuristic setting. Sometimes, all you need is a medieval-flavored shotgun.

The big news that excited most people was the return of Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound already got revealed at the last Game Awards, but I guess you can't just depend on a... a... sidescroller to bring back your franchise. So Microsoft made sure to announce a proper big-budget Ninja Gaiden.

The execution kills with the freeze-frame, kanji, and creepy inhuman bosses... I suddenly feel awful and happy for the longtime Ninja Gaiden fans who must've been huddling around Nioh for anything that brought back the visceral gameplay of this series. Much like Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, the newly-revealed Ninja Gaiden 4 focuses on a new ninja: Yakumo. It'd be neat to see him and Ragebound's Kenji Mozu clash swords, but it seems Yakumo will instead be butting heads against series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa. (By the way, introducing Ryu with his signature Izuna Drop throw? Siiiick.) They've got some Bayonetta/Jeanne angle going where they're both working towards the same goal (even if one of them doesn't know it yet), and it even seems like we'll get to control both ninjas throughout the game. So far, so awesome.

That Bayonetta comparison is extremely apt, because it turns out Team Ninja is collaborating with Platinum Games for Ninja Gaiden 4. Now, there is some consternation over this; while I've never actually played much of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, I did see some people concerned that this would make Ninja Gaiden play too much like a Platinum game. And I did see some rumblings from longtime fans that Ninja Gaiden 4 seems a bit slower than the older Team Ninja titles. Again, I can't bring much to that table... but it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. I don't think this means the games will be any easier, mind; it wouldn't be Ninja Gaiden if it weren't at least bordering upon being unreasonably difficult. Still, do be aware it'll play at a pace that is more of Platinum's than Team Ninja's.

For my money, the Team Ninja/Platinum Games collaboration is hysterical, because nothing would infuriate Tomonobu Itagaki more. Itagaki, creator of the Dead or Alive series and the producer and director of Koei Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden revivals (read: all of the 3D ones from 2004 onwards), was famously outspoken and not above starting beef with other devs. He's famous for making a lot of trash talk towards Hideaki Kamiya, first over the Devil May Cry series and later even taking aim at Bayonetta, claiming that the eponymous witch should get laser eye surgery.

Kamiya, himself a noted hothead, has also fired back (he famously responded to Itagaki by calling him an idiot for thinking that "big breasts on a woman seem erotic"). Katsuhiro Harada, longtime director and producer of the Tekken series (which has also received a lot of Itagaki's public ire), went on record about his relationship with Itagaki, revealing that a lot of Itagaki's bluster towards Tekken was posturing more than anything else.

All this to say, Itagaki has always been one to rock the boat and toss gasoline into campfires, publicly presenting himself as the tip of the mountain of the Japanese gaming industry that the world had to catch up to. He's also been sued for sexual harassment. Itagaki would eventually leave Team Ninja in 2008, parting with a lawsuit that alleged he withheld bonus pay. While Kamiya has similarly left Platinum Games in the name of founding Clovers Inc. (where they're currently working on Okami 2), it's still hilarious to think that Team Ninja ended up working with his greatest rival's old studio. Build bridges, not walls, people! If you're curious as to what Itagaki has been up to since, I could point you towards Devil's Third on the Wii U, best known for the Game Grumps playing through it while making up a hilarious personality for protagonist Ivan—or rather, "Roople Pooples." Itagaki and his studio, Itagaki Games Co. Ltd., are interested in making a new game for Microsoft, but have otherwise been quiet.

In addition to announcing the new Ninja Gaiden, Microsoft has also thrown fans a bone by making Ninja Gaiden 2 Black available on Gamepass as of last week. I can't speak much about Ninja Gaiden II, but it is looked upon fondly by fans. It's an absolute brick to the face of a game, living up to the stereotype that people give to the Dark Souls games. I cannot play a Ninja Gaiden, because my hands lack the dexterity to play something at that level of execution (it already takes me a good hour of practice runs to maybe S-rank a Mega Man Zero mission). But I appreciate the vibe; there's genuine artistry to high-level Ninja Gaiden play; people turn those controllers into freaking piano keys while they're decapitating ninja demons. And Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a remaster done with the Unreal Engine, so it looks excellent (even if all of the ninja women, like Rachel, Momiji, and Ayane, are weirdly shiny). It's a great way to whet people's appetites for a new Ninja Gaiden while its Fall 2025 release window comes and goes. It'll also feature new updates, like toggles for the blood and dismemberments and mouse-and-keyboard support.

I've spoken before about my refusal to cover rumors or leaks. The simple reason is that there's no way to verify them until The Powers That Be™ announces their stuff. "My uncle works at Nintendo" has never been a good excuse for me; changing "my uncle" to "some Twitter user who uses Fe!MC from Persona 3 as an avatar" doesn't change that. But the other reason is because I don't want to get people's hopes up for nothing. The fact of the matter is that the game industry has a lot of news, and a lot of it doesn't mean anything. Not every public business report is a smoking gun, not every trademark renewal is a promise of something coming down the pipes. There's a lot of bureaucracy in the industry. Kamen Rider fans were left waiting in 2012 when Saban filed a trademark for "Power Rider," Square Enix filing a trademark for "Chrono Break" didn't mean anything, and that new, unique art of Mega Man X that I covered a few years back didn't result in anything either.

With that out of the way, SEGA has issued trademarks for Skies of Arcadia and Eternal Arcadia (its Japanese title). So I'm just sitting here, urging SEGA to please... not hurt us again. We couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it.

Skies of Arcadia was a beloved RPG on the Dreamcast, produced by the late games industry legend Rieko Kodama. It told the story of Vyse, Aika, and Fina, a trio of scamps with an airship who set off into the skies as Sky Pirates as they attempt to stop a vaguely-Spanish-themed empire from awakening six elemental titans in an attempt at conquering the world. The game came out a long time before steampunk had become a dead horse, so the imagery of galleons with propellers was a novel approach at the time.

What also set Skies of Arcadia apart were its two battle systems. You had fights on foot, like when monsters or enemy soldiers boarded your ship during your flights around the skies. You also had ship-to-ship combat as turn-based encounters, forcing you to strongly consider your energy reserves or the proximity to your opponent as you planned salvos. It was set in a wondrous, imaginative world, crowned with six elemental Moons that each granted their own set of powers. Being a game about (sky) pirates, the various nations you could explore each echoed locales that medieval explorers would love to visit, like the Mesoamerican-themed Ixa'Taca or the vaguely Japanese Yafutomo region. Along your travels, you could meet all manner of colorful characters you could recruit into your crew, granting your ship new powers.

While Skies of Acadia would later see an improved and updated port on the Gamecube (retitled Skies of Arcadia Legends), there was precious little else for the game in the ensuing years. We'd eventually see Vyse, Aika, and Fina again as recruitable cameos in Valkyria Chronicles years later. Vyse is also playable in Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed, complete with a stage based off the in-game locale, Rogue's Landing. Past that, sadly, Sega has done about as much with Skies of Arcadia as they have with Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Ristar, or Comix Zone (which is to say: a fat lot of "nothing").

A sequel, or at least a port, of Skies of Arcadia has been hotly desired by fans for a very long time. Small wonder: Skies of Arcadia is an incredibly charming game with an amazing cast of characters. The Ahab-esque tale of Captain Drachma is guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings. Only time will tell if these trademarks ever mean anything. Hope costs nothing, but we're also exhausted. It would hurt if this didn't end up amounting to anything.

Weird times are afoot at Sony! This past week, they announced a change in leadership for their interactive entertainment branch. Hiroki Totoki, who was previously President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, will now be President and CEO of Sony Group Corporation. In his place, Hideaki Nishino will serve as CEO and President of SIE. Herman Hulst, formerly the co-CEO of SIE, will stay on board as CEO of the Studio Business Group and report to Nishino. This marks the second corporate shake-up at Sony in less than a year, following the change that put Nishino and Hulst into their former positions last May.

As with all other corporate changes, this isn't good or bad news—it's just news. Sure, this has a dark cloud over it, but the results of the decision will come with time—time that the former status quo didn't get. Eight months is not a long time, especially given the development cycle for a lot of games. That said, belabored development might be behind a lot of this; this past January 16th, Jason Schreier revealed two canceled live-service games from Sony, one of which being a live-service God of War game. This makes for seventeen different live-service titles that Sony had in development at any given time, including some games which did release (Helldivers 2, Gran Turismo 7, MLB: The Show), the ever-infamous Concord, a few games still in development (including a new Marathon title from Bungie and a Horizon: Zero Dawn MMO), and a lot of canceled titles. An incomplete list of those would include a live-service Spider-Man title, a live-service The Last of Us, a live-service Twisted Metal, and a few others. The dearth of first-party titles on the PS5 finally makes sense: everyone else was working on live-service games. Many will never see the light of day.

A lot of people have pointed out the flaws with this plan, chief among them that not a lot of people who play Horizon or God of War are necessarily interested in playing multiplayer versions of those games. The bigger issue is the general crowding of the entire live-service market; the industry is already dominated by Fortnite. Whatever game wants to topple it not only needs impossible levels of quality but also has to fight against the sheer pop culture momentum of a game everybody is playing. Not to mention, releasing seventeen live service games in sequence might also mean diminishing your own audience. If I'm already dedicating all of my time playing Gran Turismo, when the heck am I going to have time to work on my dailies in a Twisted Metal game? In the here and now, people can only really play one game at a time—doubly so live-service titles, given that those make their money by monopolizing your time.

The sad thing is that even if they were released as budget titles, a new Twisted Metal would likely have been pretty sweet. A big-budget AAA Twisted Metal would have been awesome, but longtime Sony fans would go for an actual new Twisted Metal fan over a theoretical perfect Twisted Metal that collapsed under bad management. This smacks of Sony trying to make all of the money with live-service games instead of a good deal of money with a few stand-alone titles instead.

Sadly, the sheer size and momentum of these projects, plus the amount of time it takes to get the ball rolling on new games, means that the current corporate roster likely won't be able to fix anything overnight. Sony is already making rumblings about a PlayStation 6 come this 2027; I think it'll take about as long for Sony to get cracking on any new titles. And if it takes them so long to make a new game that they'll coincide with a new console, they might as well release them for the new console, right? Or at least cross-platform? The PlayStation 5 is a great console, but it's barely offered serious value over a PS4 Pro.

I genuinely hope that the success of Astro Bot taught someone at Sony to look at their older franchises. I don't know how long it would take anyone at Sony to make a new Parappa the Rapper or Ape Escape, but if you need a quick something-something to get people invested in your console, those games are right there...

You guys, I think CAPCOM isn't messing around anymore. For a while now, CAPCOM has been talking about how they're putting in more effort to bring their old franchises back. I've heard that claim for a long time, but following that announcement for an Okami sequel this past December, it seemed there was reason to listen to them. I think we have an even further reason now: this past week, we had this tiny miracle drop into our laps. Put another one on the board!

One of the bigger requests from CAPCOM faithful is the return of Dino Crisis, the dinosaur-themed survival-horror game that sprang up in the shadow of Resident Evil. In a poll from last summer, Dino Crisis ranked as the number one choice in a poll of Capcom series fans wanted a sequel to. (Remember that this is CAPCOM, so that means Dino Crisis beat out series like Mega Man, Okami, Onimusha and Breath of Fire.) We were thrown a bone when the first Dino Crisis was listed on Sony's PlayStation store. I don't think anyone would've blamed me if I thought that was the last of it—a tiny morsel that's better than nothing, letting people enjoy the first game in the series on modern hardware. Well, GOG.com thought otherwise; Marcin Paczyński and Adam "Adim" Ziółkowski (who humbly refer to themselves as "two Polish dudes") were able to strike up a deal with CAPCOM to release Dino Crisis 1 and 2 on PC.

They've made sure this is the best running experience for Dino Crisis on PC; resolution and rendering have been improved, there are anti-aliasing options, and they've included six different language tracks. They also made sure that all six of these versions (plus the "Arranged" mode of the game that scrambles item and monster locations) ran well. And this being GOG.com, you can rest assured that this version of the game is guaranteed to run on any possible future system and that it'll never be taken away: you buy that digital copy, you keep it. Plus, most importantly: no DRM. This is a long way from getting a new Dino Crisis, but given the level of treatment this remake has received I'm calling it a success.

Given the timing of things, I'm willing to assume that the deal for this was likely struck around the time that the CAPCOM poll went public (and CAPCOM made whatever deal it did with Sony for the PlayStation Store listing). The two Polish dudes from GOG being who they are, likely took a bit longer in ensuring this stuff runs up to GOG's standards. Part of me wonders why Dino Crisis 3 wasn't included in this; my gut tells me it might have been a result of its exclusivity deal on Xbox (along the lines of why Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate hasn't been ported anywhere else). Dino Crisis 3 was the death knell for the franchise, but game preservation means preserving bad games too—and Dino Crisis 3 likely has some fans out there.

Is this a new game? No, it's not, but I would give some folks the stink eye for turning their nose up at this. There aren't any downsides to this one, I think? A lot of people are still hurt from CAPCOM's old "CAPCOM Test" for stuff like Darkstalkers, where they'd toss out a collection to see if there was interest in a new game. That's certainly a flawed approach to getting a new game made. Still, bringing back these older titles is important. Especially since it includes Dino Crisis 2. Think of when we got those Marvel Vs CAPCOM arcade machines a few years back; sure, it wasn't the preferred outcome of the #FreeMVC2 hashtag, but it was something—and hey, it likely helped pave the way to that phenomenal Marvel vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. Folks who've been waiting for Regina's return can get the two Dino Crisis games on GOG for $16.99. This is a good time to highlight GOG's Dino Crisis games Dreamlist feature, wherein community members can list games they'd like to see brought to the service. GOG can use a lot of that fan interest to bring to the attention of rights holders (current big-hitters in their surveys include Resident Evil: Code Veronica and No One Lives Forever). You can also help bring future tiny miracles to fruition!

Tetsuhisa Seto, president of Nippon Ichi Software, passed away this past weekend at the age of 54. He had been the president of NIS since 2023.

Hey buddy, I think you got the wrong door. Cho Aniki Collection comes to the American eShop this January 29th. Time to show 'em who's boss of this gym.

Bloober Team shared some good news this past week: the Silent Hill 2 remake reached 2 million units sold!

Beloved early-2000s visual novel Shuffle! celebrated its 21st birthday this past week! In commemoration of the event, Project Navel announced a recast for the character Nerine; her role has been passed on from Yuki Matsunaga to Fukei Hanatsuka. The casting will be reflected in the new Shuffle! works going forward.

In case the words "Variable Geo" mean anything to you: the infamous all-waitress fighting game (rather, the Sega Saturn version) is getting an updated port on Nintendo Switch, Steam and PS5 on May 29! The updates include move lists for each character and simplified inputs. It'll be bundled in a collection with fellow '90s cheesecake Sega Saturn shoot-'em-up Steam Hearts. No word on an American release...

If you need more witches in your life, look out for Cotton Reboot! High Tension releasing on July 24 on Switch, PS4 and PS5. A US release surely will come along soon after...

That'll do it for this week, I think. I'm not gonna lie, it's been a rough week, but I once again remind my readers that I always look forward to you guys reading my columns every Friday. It means a lot to know that a lot of you also look forward to them. We don't always cover good news in This Week in Games, but it's important to be around for when the good news does come. 2025 has only started, and there is a lot more good news that could come around the corner. I need to be here when Izuna 3 launches, and you guys need to be here to see when your game comes around. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.

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This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing JRPGs, eating popcorn, watching v-tubers, and tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

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