He formed a new company Valhalla Game Studios with several Team Ninja members and released Devil's Third.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Tomonobu Itagaki graduated from Waseda University Senior High School in March 1985.
[7] Itagaki has in his office a set of katana Japanese swords his father made for him,[8] which he tends to take out to show to his visitors.
The player is to foster good relationship between the girls to create a harmonious winning beach volleyball duo.
In the second iteration of the series, the focus is shifted by expanding the number of activities the player can have the girls take part in.
Capitalizing on the brand name of the earlier NES series, Itagaki developed a critically acclaimed action-adventure game for the Xbox which also had an international online tournament held for it.
He continued the series on the Nintendo DS with Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, partly due to a promise made to his daughter.
Itagaki claims to be one of the very few in the Japanese video game industry to establish communications with the Western world.
[8] On June 2, 2008, just before the release of Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360, Itagaki announced that he was resigning from Tecmo and was suing the company for withholding a bonus promised for his previous works.
He was also suing Tecmo's president Yoshimi Yasuda for damages based on "unreasonable and disingenuous statements" made in front of Itagaki's colleagues.
[22] Likewise, he cited Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Final Fantasy X as games lacking the interactivity appealing to him.
[4] Likewise, he deplores implementing scenarios to show off technology just for the sake of it, sarcastically asking what is the point of cutting down "thousand heads of cabbages on screen.
Even though he admits to there being sexual content in the game, Itagaki refuses to create scenarios which he feels are vulgar for his 'daughters', a term he uses to call the female characters.
[12][27] With Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, he chose to patch an easy-cash exploit rather than leaving it alone and ruminating over the consequences.
[8] It is this role immersion which helps him to develop and exclude guns from the moveset of the Spartan named Nicole in Dead or Alive 4.
The Butt Battle, and Tug-of-War of Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 were heavily panned on the basis of minigame design.
[22] In 2006, various gaming sites reported that an unnamed female former Tecmo employee had filed a sexual harassment suit against Itagaki.
Tecmo's ensuing investigation reached the conclusion that "the allegations in question were a result of the former employee's desire to vent frustration over her own personal affair, and not indicative of sexual harassment.
[36] Itagaki values frank and "to the point" attitudes, believing anything else would allow "quibbles and sectionalists" to come in and derail the train of thought.