Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection contains Sigma versions with non-removable censorship due to source loss

Team Ninja has explained why Ninja Gaiden (2004) and Ninja Gaiden (2008) in Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection are based on the censored Sigma versions. As it turned out, the source code of the original versions was lost.

In an interview with the Japanese magazine Famitsu, Team Ninja head and lead developer of Nioh 2, Fumihiko Yasuda, the creators decided to take the Sigma version as a basis only because the moment, these are the latest re-releases of games. The studio could not recover the source code of Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black for the original Xbox and base Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360.

In response to a question from a Twitter user, the developers confirmed that Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 would not turn on blood display, as in the Plus version released on the PlayStation Vita. Probably, similar restrictions apply to the first Ninja Gaiden.

Fumihiko also clarified that the developers had changed the difficulty in Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 so that Tag Missions can be played without a second player. They decided to remove the multiplayer from the games due to the lack of budget and development time.

Fans are unhappy with the studio’s decision and believe that the authors could return the re-releases’ missing features. Despite additional content, redesigned controls, and other innovations, not everyone liked the Sigma versions. In Ninja Gaiden Sigma, you cannot chop off the heads of human opponents. In Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, the number of enemies is reduced, their health is increased, and violence is veiled (blood is replaced with purple fog, severed limbs do not remain on the ground dismemberment, and blood are absent in the cutscenes). In the Japanese version of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, only monsters can be decapitated, and the color of the menu screens and Game Over has been changed from red to blue.

Each game has a different concept, and Ninja Gaiden 2 has a focus on brutality and violence, ” said Team Ninja President Yosuke Hayashi in 2009 to GamesRadar. “ When we started working on Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, we wondered about the need for emphasized violence, and in the end, we decided to move away from this trend.”

Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection will also include 2012 Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. The collection will be released on June 10, 2021, on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. On PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and S, games will run with backward compatibility. The physical edition is being prepared only for Asia and exclusively for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.