Tomonobu Itagaki, Director of Ninja Gaiden, Has Died

Tomonobu Itagaki, founder of Team Ninja and director on the Dead Or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series, has passed away at the age of 58, as announced on Facebook. Accolades have begun to come out from his friends and colleagues from across the industry.

Starting at Tecmo as the Graphic Engineer of Tecmo Super Bowl for the SNES in 1993, Itagaki founded Team Ninja (then Tecmo Creative #3) to produce and direct the Dead Or Alive fighting game series, often remembered outside of the FGC for its spin-off Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. As part of the team, he also produced the highly-praised 3D reboot of Ninja Gaiden for the original Xbox.

With the sexual and violent nature of the games he worked on, Itagaki’s career was no stranger to controversy; Ninja Gaiden II was refused classification in Germany for its depictions of violence and toned down for the PS3 version. Outside of his games, Itagaki was the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit from a former coworker in 2006 that ended with him being found innocent a year later; this led to his demotion within Tecmo for having “mingled personal affairs with their corporate responsibilities.”

Tecmo and Itagaki would later part ways following a lawsuit in 2008 regarding unpaid bonuses for Dead Or Alive 4 before an out-of-court settlement was made in 2010. From here, Itagaki would work on Devil’s Third with Valhalla Studios for the Wii U, his final credit as a director. After Vallhalla’s closing, he founded Itagaki Games in 2021, which was working on an unannounced title.