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The original Ninja Gaiden creators try out The Messenger

When word came out that The Messenger borrowed some elements from Ninja Gaiden, the latter's creators opted to try the new game out for themselves.
Ozzie Mejia
Ozzie Mejia
3

With its side-scrolling action that harkens back to both the 8 and 16-bit generations, The Messenger has drawn comparisons to a lot of those classic games, like Shinobi and The Legend of Kage. Another one of those games is the original Ninja Gaiden. So what happens when publisher Devolver Digital tracks down the Ninja Gaiden creators to play this new game from indie developer Sabotage?

Earlier this week, Ninja Gaiden producer/director Hideo Yoshizawa and sound director Keiji Yamagishi sat down to try out The Messenger for themselves. Their desire to play the game stemmed from The Messenger taking inspiration for many of its mechanics from Ninja Gaiden.

"I read this article on Famitsu online about a game that is full of some Ninja Gaiden love, which was being developed abroad," said Yoshizawa. "The game was to be shown at BitSummit this year and it so happened that we were invited to BitSummit. So I said to [Yamagishi] 'let's go check this game out.'"

Both Yoshizawa and Yamagishi attempted to play The Messenger at BitSummit as normal attendees, but were quickly recognized by the folks at Sabotage. That led to this video, where the two Ninja Gaiden creators can be seen admiring the newer game's mechanics. They also drop in a fun nugget about Nintendo originally requesting an underwater stage for Ninja Gaiden, which presumably didn't end up happening because Ninja Gaiden was already hard enough.

The Messenger is set to release this week, hitting PC and Nintendo Switch on August 30. Shacknews also had some thoughts on the game when we went hands-on back at GDC 2018.

Senior Editor
Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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