14 DAY TRIAL // Namco Bandai is going very ninja crazy this week. They have recently announced that three Naruto games are being made available for purchase in North America for the PlayStation 2 platform at special retail prices. The main attraction is Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 which is only now available for sale outside of Japan, where it was originally released back in 2005.
First up, it is the first game in the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series of fighting games. Released back in 2006, the game was a hit with gamers. The cell-shaded graphics gave it a look and feel very similar to the look and feel of the comic books on which the game is based. Some 14 playable characters made their way into the game, with favorites like Nine Tail Naruto and Curse Mark Sasuke battling it out on 12 stages inspired by the Naruto universe. Although the game was primarily a player-vs.-player fight game, it also has a story mode that has six different battles linked together by manga style animations detailing the story of the demon within Naruto.
Ultimate Ninja 2 features a similar gameplay experience to Ultimate Ninja, with many of the same gameplay elements and geography and mini games in the story mode as the first game. The main addition to the game is an RPG-like story mode, of which the first half is taken directly from the series, while the second is an added story arc which is not considered canonical. There are 33 playable characters in this second installment in the Naruto fighting game series. It's now classified as a Classic Game for the PlayStation 2.
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 3 takes the franchise to a whole new level. There are 42 playable characters and the story part has been greatly expanded to also include locations that are outside of the original Konoha. The fighting sequences have been greatly expanded and also characters can suffer in-game transformations, which are either temporary or permanent.
After being a Japan-only title for some time, now gamers in North America have the chance to own the entire classic Naruto collection.