Developer Lizardcube talks reinventing SEGA's classic Shinobi series for a new age of players

Daily Mirror

2 days ago

Speaking to the lead game designer and lead background artist for Shinobi: Art of Vengeance to talk breathing new life into one of Sega's most treasured classic franchises.
Having already worked wonders with Streets of Rage 4, we discuss with developer Lizardcube the tall task of trying to make lighting strike twice with a beloved Sega series.
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How do you follow up successfully reviving (and absolutely nailing) a beloved Sega arcade franchise for the modern era using punchy combat mechanics and a beautiful hand-drawn art style? By doing it again, of course. Such was the task developer Lizardcube faced when first starting out development on Shinobi: Art of Vengeance – the new, upcoming entry in the longstanding series of action-platformers set to launch this August 29, 2025.
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After playing roughly an hour of the game already and dubbing it a 'stunning and confident retooling' of the series in my preview, I have every reason to believe that the team is stepping up to the challenge and that Shinobi fans won't be disappointed.
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Sure, Lizardcube had already achieved great adoration for its work on Streets of Rage 4 previously, but sketching out various street-level environments to fight across is one thing, and creating a whole suite off attractive locations set within the Shinobi ninja universe another entirely.
The key, says lead background artist Julian Nguyen-You, was to significantly increase the number of art assets created for each level. The hope being to provide players with much higher degrees of detail and variety, which should make living out their kunai-throwing ninja fantasies all the more enjoyable.
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'Shinobi has more huge backgrounds,' says Nguyen-You. 'In Streets of Rage 4, it was only a straight area with some diagonals, but in Shinobi you can go everywhere in a stage'. This simple change from making a beat-em-up to a layered, vertically led 2D action-platformer was enough to almost triple the workload of the art department. 'All the assets we needed to create was maybe three times, four times bigger than [those] for Streets of Rage. For that game I was alone to do all the backgrounds, and for this one we were three people'.
Purely in terms of scale, then, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance has turned out to be a far more ambitious project than Streets of Rage 4 ever was, even when considering the latter's follow-up DLC. However, for as iconic as Lizardcube's unique hand-drawn art style has quickly become, the goal wasn't simply to include more for more's sake. As Nguyen-You continues, 'We tried to put many memorable things in the background like a golden dragon, or something like this, and it was many, many hours of work drawing'.
For as important as Shinobi: Art of Vengeance's art is to the overall game – it's right there in the title – such glorious visuals would mean nothing were it not backed up with tight, satisfying gameplay.
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A playable demo of the game's first level, Oboro Village, is available to download now for players curious to check out Lizardcube's combat bona fides, but it's been clear since playing through that first stage, plus the Lantern Festival level, months ago for preview, that this isn't your grandma's Shinobi game. No, instead, the team has been careful to sprinkle in all kinds of super abilities and special attacks to make Joe Musashi's moveset more fulfilling than ever.
Master of the craft
'We really tried to pay homage to the first game,' explains Frederic Vincent, lead game designer on Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. 'And it's really not easy to find the right balance between what you're going to keep from the ancient games, and what you are going to leave and to keep'. Doing this meant gifting Muasashi with a new suite of moves while being respectful to the ninja idea. 'We wanted to recapture the feeling of playing a ninja using elegant moves, fast combat… that kind of stuff. It was more about what's the meaning of being a shinobi in the modern era'.
My most recent time playing what Lizardcube has cooking up took me through two new levels, Fish Market and Neo City, both of which were a great display for Shinobi's combat. Fish Market is a stage just as slimy and grubby as it sounds, but still rendered beautifully using hand-drawn sketches. Using the Shinobi Execution to dart around the stage finishing off foes, unleashing the Fire Ninpo blast attack, and of course using Musashi's iconic kunai to attack enemies from a distance, it all felt great to do while hopping and dancing around the Fish Market's ever-moving containers and slippery streets.
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Neo City, meanwhile, is just as glamourous as it sounds, presenting totally different enemy types and enemies to tackle using super-responsive ninja attacks.
Another way Art of Vengeance aims to set itself apart is by peppering in reasons to comb around levels, with plenty of hidden areas and collectibles to discover. Such inclusions help give this iteration of Shinobi a more, Metroidvania like flavour, as opposed to the simple linear arcade stages seen in previous games.
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'For each stage you will have unique challenges you have to overcome,' Vincent continues. 'It's true that there is a lot of stuff happening in the first stage, but we really manage to keep this balance until the end of the game'. From specific combat challenges to ability-enhancing medallions to track down, Lizardcube has included plenty of excuses to let players fight and move through stages their own way.
'We implemented those features because they made a lot of sense for the feeling we wanted to get. The game feel of the combat, the way we ask you to move around the battlefield, manage some resources. Basically, we wanted the player to make some choices during combat, to really pitch what they want to do'.
It's now less than a month until Shinobi: Art of Vengeance launches simultaneously on PC and consoles. And although the demo currently available offers players a small glimpse of what this incredibly stylised franchise return has to offer, Vincent and Nguyen-You both hint that there are plenty of surprises left in store.
Shinobi does have the unfortunate challenge of releasing shortly after the unbelievably excellent Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but the truth is that both ninja games are pitching a slightly different twist on the 2D action-platforming template – and there's room for Art of Vengeance to carve out its own identity within that.