Itagaki snipes VF5 and Tekken, bigs up Ninja Gaiden II

Team Ninja's Tomonobu Itagaki, famed as the pock-skinned driving force behind Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, hasn't minced words regarding Sega's Virtua Fighter 5 and Namco's Tekken series in a new interview with Destructoid.

"As a fighting game - first of all, I think we can all agree that Virtua Fighter 5 didn't end up as good as everyone thought it would be. And Tekken - I really hope Tekken 6 does well for the sake of the genre on the whole, but we can't really expect that much based on what they've done in the past."

Itagaki is notorious for his bluntness regarding the competition, especially leading up to a release of one of his own games. Ninja Gaiden II is currently working its way to launch - it's down as "2008" for Europe - and Itagaki's promising the moon on a stick for those interested in the ultra-hard action-fighter.

"If you played the first Ninja Gaiden, you can tell how different this is just by watching it," he said. "It's called Ninja Gaiden II because it is the next in the series, but we've changed everything all the way from the chassis up to the body, exterior, plating of the game. So there are a lot of differences. And that's the way it should be, you know. There are a lot of action games out there that do things one-two-three-four, just the same thing every time, changing things just a little bit and that's not what I want to do. I want to make a big overhaul with the new game."