Tomonobu Itagaki, the creator of the Dead or Alive series, has died at the age of 58

Tomonobu Itakagi, a famous Japanese game developer and one of the key designers in the formation of modern action and fighting games, died at the age of 58. Itagaki’s death was announced by his family on his Facebook page. Itagaki is best known for creating the fighting games “Dead or Alive”, recreating the action games “Ninja Gaiden” and also founding the action studio “Team Ninja”.

Tomonobu Itagaki started his career as a designer and programmer in the early 1990s at the game company Tecmo. However, it didn’t take long for Tecmo executives to create a brand new fighting game called Dead or Alive to compete with the Virtua Fighter series.

The first issue of Dead or Alive games was released in 1996 for the Sega Model 2 arcade in a newly established studio led by Itagaki himself; The studio that was originally called “Tecmo Team No. 3” and in 1999, as a result of the very high quality of their games, was recognized by Tecmo as their best studio and changed its name to “Team Ninja”.

Itagaki’s list of hated games in 1UP magazine. All games are single.

Itagaki started a great enmity with the “Tekken” game series from the very beginning when he took over the creation of the first live or dead issue; He believed that Tekken is the worst game in the world and once said in an interview that Tekken 1 to Tekken 5 are respectively the worst games ever made.

However, Katsuhira Harada, who has been at the helm of the series since Tekken 3, said a few years ago during a lengthy recounting of his interactions with Itagaki that Itagaki’s behavior had been a show all along.

While the first issue of Dead or Alive laid a great foundation for the series, it was Dead or Alive 2 that changed everything, not just for the series, but for fighting games as a whole. The game Dead or Alive 2, both in terms of mechanics and design, as well as in terms of graphics and technical power, looks great even now. When Dead or Alive 2 was released in 1999, no other game matched its quality.

In the same year that Dead or Alive 2 was released and Team Ninja started working under its new name, Itagaki also decided to revive Tecmo’s old Ninja Gaiden game series. He started making a modern action game for the arcade, then switched its platform to the Sega Dreamcast, but it wasn’t long before Sega went out of the console business and dropped support for the Dreamcast, and Itagaki’s Ninja Gaiden project moved to the PlayStation 2.

Dead or Alive 2 game in 1999.

However, after the introduction of the Xbox console by Microsoft, a console that was more powerful in terms of hardware than all the consoles of the time, Itagaki decided to transfer the development of Ninja Gaiden to the Xbox console.

From now on, all Team Ninja and Itagaki games will become Xbox exclusives. Subsequent issues of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, and even spin-offs such as Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, were all initially exclusive to Xbox until Itagaki’s departure. Itagaki said that he can draw out the maximum power of a console and make the game according to that console’s power.

Ninja Gaiden game 1.

For this reason, Itagaki did not believe in consoles like “PSP” and said that games designed for PSP should be made for home consoles. He demonstrated this belief by designing a Ninja Gaiden game for the Nintendo DS, the action of which was played entirely with a touch screen.

Itakagi was a very strange game maker. He believed that games should have the highest level of interaction and, in terms of control, react to the player’s key presses as quickly as possible. For this reason, he disliked games like “Heavenly Sword” and said that the QTE sections in this game were not well designed, but on the other hand, we have good keying, which in his opinion was implemented correctly in the game Genji: Dawn of the Samurai. He further said that games like “Metal Gear Solid 2” and “Final Fantasy 10” did not have the level of interaction that he had in mind.

Tomonobu Itagaki and Katsuhiro Harada.

As opposed to hating the Tekken series, Itagaki always had a lot of respect for the Virtua Fighter series, but eventually said that his own Dead or Alive series was better than Virtua Fighter. (Which was the only correct opinion of the professor in his life)

It was after directing Ninja Gaiden 2 in 2008 that, as a result of a sexual assault case, Itagaki initially lost his organizational ranks and eventually left the Ninja team.

Itagaki’s latest creation in the new studio he founded called “Valhalla” was released exclusively for the Nintendo Wii U console in 2015. The failure of this action game called Devil’s Third finally led to the closure of Itagaki’s new studio, and until today, when we hear the news of his death, he did not make another game.

An hour after the announcement of Itagaki’s death, Team Ninja paid tribute to its founder in an official message and wrote:

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of the first Team Ninja leader, Tomonobu Itagaki. We will continue the philosophies and creativity that Itagaki-san started and make games that gamers will enjoy. We are deeply saddened by his passing away. From everyone on Team Ninja.”

The picture that the Itagaki family released today. The only official picture of him without smokey glasses.