When the Official Xbox Magazine reviewed Dead or Alive 3 for its first issue in 2001, it had to fly to Japan to play it, because Tomonobu Itagaki was “famously and rightfully protective of his baby”. He was by then an executive at Tecmo and head of its Team Ninja, the group whose fighting game Dead or Alive had helped pull the company back from financial trouble. Over the next few years he became one of the best-known figures in Japanese games: the man who brought Ninja Gaiden back as one of the hardest action games of its time, who made a beach-volleyball game for his fighters, and who said exactly what he thought of everyone else.
Fast facts
- Born: 1967, in Tokyo.
- Tecmo: 1992 to 2008, for 16 years; head of Team Ninja.
- Games: Dead or Alive (1996) and its sequels to Dead or Alive 4 (2005); Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (2003); Ninja Gaiden (2004), Ninja Gaiden Black (2005), Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword (2008) and Ninja Gaiden II (2008).
- Later: Valhalla Game Studios and Devil’s Third (2015); Itagaki Games from 2021.
- Died: October 2025, aged 58.
Tecmo and Dead or Alive
Itagaki joined Tecmo in 1992. His first game, the Official Xbox Magazine reported, was the final version of the company’s American football series, Tecmo Bowl. He told Edge that he had been “working in the 3D environment from the very beginning”, on a game that was, in his words, “my famous setback”.
By the mid-1990s Tecmo was struggling, and Wireframe’s history of the company credits its recovery to a design group headed by Itagaki, “handed the task of making a rival to Sega’s Virtua Fighter”. The result, Dead or Alive, reached the arcades in 1996 on Sega’s own Model 2 board. Its central idea was the Hold button, which caught an incoming blow and turned it into a counter: Itagaki wanted “to recreate the thrill of a Kung-Fu movie, where you see fighters repeatedly countering hundreds of moves”, Computer and Video Games reported. The Dead or Alive entry follows the series.
Itagaki moved the series to Microsoft’s new console for Dead or Alive 3, a launch game for the Xbox in 2001. The Official Xbox Magazine introduced him as “Executive Officer & General Manager, Creative Division” and found that “Itagaki’s claim that it was both easy and deep holds true.” He defended the choice of hardware: “I admit I love machine power but I don’t want to waste it. You need it to deliver your vision. That is why we went on Xbox while many were criticising it.”
The beach and the fighters
The series’ women fighters drew attention of another kind, and Itagaki leaned into it. In 2003 Team Ninja released Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, in which the fighters spend two weeks on an island playing volleyball, gambling and buying swimsuits. When Edge asked him in 2002 whether he planned any male characters, he answered: “No, female characters only. I mean this is obvious.” Edge’s review judged the game’s “treatment of the female form” “overtly sexualised and, some might say, clichéd, but it’s certainly not derogatory”.
Ninja Gaiden
Team Ninja had begun a new Ninja Gaiden in 1999, at first on Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, and moved it to the Xbox. Itagaki told Edge why he was bringing the series back: “In my view, it was the ‘violence’ of the action that made Ninja Gaiden so good. So you might consider this ‘sequel’ as a very new Ninja Gaiden — a new start.” It was, he said, “made very much for the west… quite hard, with many functions and a higher level of difficulty.”
The 2004 game was hard enough that Edge warned of “an impassable difficulty spike” at the first boss, while giving it nine out of ten. Itagaki, its director, told Electronic Gaming Monthly he did not think it too tough. Ninja Gaiden Black (2005) added harder settings, one of them so difficult that, Hyper reported, Itagaki thought very few players in the US would be able to finish it. When Team Ninja made Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS, Itagaki explained in a keynote speech that the team had picked Ninja Gaiden over Dead or Alive; Edge put the reason as its “excessively masculine hardcore connotations”. Ninja Gaiden II followed on the Xbox 360 in 2008. By then he had a reputation for provocation: Edge recalled that he had “railed against the makers of Tekken” and dismissed weaker players as “ninja dogs”.
Leaving Tecmo
Itagaki left Tecmo in 2008 after 16 years and sued the company for unpaid bonuses. Edge reported that the dispute was over unpaid completion bonuses for Dead or Alive 4 and over what the claim called “unreasonable and disingenuous” statements by Tecmo’s president, Yoshimi Yasuda. Kotaku put the claim at 148 million yen. The two sides settled out of court in 2010, “after just under two years in the legal system”, Edge reported. Wireframe later wrote that his lawsuit “prompted 300 other Tecmo employees to file a similar high-profile case of their own”.
Valhalla and after
By 2010 Itagaki was running development at Valhalla Game Studios, about 50 people, many of them from Team Ninja, with another former Tecmo man, Satoshi Kanematsu, running the company. He talked to Edge that year about its first game, Devil’s Third, and about Japan: “Japan failed to import capitalism, or rather, it failed to understand the lessons of capitalism.” He said he had been offered the chance to stand for political office, and that he would probably stay in games “until I die”. Devil’s Third was first announced with THQ for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and eventually came out on Nintendo’s Wii U in 2015.
Valhalla closed in 2021, and Itagaki founded a new company, Itagaki Games, that year. It had released nothing when he died in October 2025, aged 58. His family announced his death on his Facebook account with a message he had written in advance: “Only one thing weighs on me — I’m deeply sorry to all my fans that I couldn’t bring you a new work.”
Sources
- Computer and Video Games issue 199, June 1998, pp. 30–33: Dead or Alive feature (the Hold button and the Kung-Fu film quote).
- Official Xbox Magazine (US) issue 1, December 2001: Dead or Alive 3 review and interview (the trip to Japan; Itagaki’s first game; his title; “both easy and deep”).
- Edge issue 113, August 2002, pp. 45–48, “Inside… Tecmo”: interview with Itagaki (the volleyball game and its female cast; Ninja Gaiden begun in 1999 on NAOMI; “violence”; “a new start”; “made very much for the west”; working in 3D from the beginning).
- Edge issue 121, March 2003: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball review.
- Edge issue 126, August 2003: Itagaki on machine power and the Xbox.
- Edge issue 135, April 2004: Ninja Gaiden review (nine out of ten; the difficulty spike).
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 179, June 2004: Itagaki, Ninja Gaiden’s director, on its difficulty.
- Hyper issue 142, August 2005: Ninja Gaiden Black and its hardest mode; Dead or Alive 4.
- Edge issue 176, June 2007: Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword and Itagaki’s keynote.
- Edge issue 182, December 2007, p. 27: Ninja Gaiden 2 preview (Xbox 360, Microsoft, 2008; Itagaki and the “ninja dogs”).
- Edge issue 213, April 2010, p. 13: the settlement with Tecmo; the dispute over bonuses for Dead or Alive 4 and Yasuda’s remarks; Valhalla Game Studios and Satoshi Kanematsu.
- Edge issue 217, August 2010: Devil’s Third announced with THQ. Edge issue 218, September 2010, p. 14: interview with Itagaki (Valhalla founded with former Team Ninja staff after 16 years at Tecmo; Japan; politics).
- “Developer Profile: Tecmo”, Wireframe issue 35, March 2020, pp. 50–53: Team Ninja and Dead or Alive; Itagaki’s resignation and lawsuit, and the employees’ case that followed.
- Brian Ashcraft, “Itagaki And Tecmo Settle Legal Brouhaha”, Kotaku, 26 February 2010 (web, secondary): the 148 million yen claim and its settlement. https://kotaku.com/itagaki-and-tecmo-settle-legal-brouhaha-5480807
- Kenneth Shepard, “Dead Or Alive Creator And Longtime Ninja Gaiden Director Tomonobu Itagaki Has Died At 58”, Kotaku, 16 October 2025 (web, secondary): Valhalla’s closure in 2021; Itagaki Games; his death and final message. https://kotaku.com/tomonobu-itagaki-death-dead-or-alive-team-ninja-gaiden-2000636025
- Wikipedia, “Tomonobu Itagaki”, and Wikipedia (Japanese), “板垣伴信” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): joining Tecmo in 1992; Devil’s Third on the Wii U in 2015; Itagaki Games founded in January 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomonobu_Itagaki