Sega looking at Shinobi: Art of Vengeance as a chance to fully revive the Shinobi franchise

Here’s a declaration of confidence in a new game that you don’t hear often from Sega or their partners. Sega and Lizardcube are working right now on Shinobi: Art of Vengeance with the aim for this to be the smoking gun that brings Shinobi back as a top IP at Sega. We think they got a fighting chance so far.

That sentiment was shared by Game Informer (A publication that can relate to dying and then rising from the ashes) as they wrote an article about the hard work being done to not only make a great game out of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, but for it to be so great that it can potentially bring Shinobi as a whole back to its long lost status as a franchise on the level of Sega’s best, like Sonic the Hedgehog. Certainly no easy task, in fact Sega have tried it 14 years ago with Shinobi (3DS), only for the momentum from that game to have quickly fizzled out despite people generally liking that game well enough. If that game couldn’t pull it off, how could Art of Vengeance do it? Sega’s content production department director Kagasei Shimomura and Lizardcube CEO and creative director Ben Fiquet feel they’ve cracked the code.

Wanna hear what got them fired up to get Shinobi back in style? Slip on in past the break and find out for yourself.

First things first, why make an all-new game? You would think just re-releasing all the old Shinobi games would get eyes back on Shinobi and Sega could just let the sales from those games persuade them into investing more time, energy, and money into Shinobi, right? While it might not hurt, Shimomura-san and Mr. Fiquet think they could do one better by making a new, more modern game while still keeping with the classic sensibilities that make Shinobi “Shinobi.”

“We didn’t just want to go and make remasters or remakes of all the titles that are already around,” Shimomura says. “We want people to enjoy and be satisfied by what we put out there, and find ways to create new Sega fans.”

According to Shimomura-san, Shinobi felt like the perfect IP to start with as, in his eyes, the underlying DNA of all the greatest Sega action games began with the Shinobi arcade game. As luck would have it, a new Shinobi title was the first thing that developer Lizardcube pitched to Sega following the release of their previous two classic Sega revivals Streets of Rage 4 and Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, and like with those two games, Sega loved their pitch.

“Getting the tone right in terms of art, in terms of vibe, in terms of different setup, but the gameplay, sometimes people don’t remember the gameplay exactly; they just remember playing a ninja and being a fast action game for the time,” Fiquet says. “So, they want a fast action game, but it’s not the same thing as in the ‘90s on the Genesis. A fast action-platformer game has a lot of competition now. It needs to appeal to modern gamers, which, in my opinion, is fair because nostalgia can only get us so far, and we want the new people to care, and some people are young and they don’t know about the license.”

“Lizardcube is a studio that has extreme attention to detail and quality,” Shimomura says. “When they were working on Streets of Rage 4, this was also something that we could tell. Back then, when Streets of Rage 4 came out, it wasn’t that major to have revivals of older IPs on the market at that point, but we realized by the way people responded that working with a studio like Lizardcube that really has love and passion for Sega IPs is definitely something that users also appreciated.”

EDIT: Sega have put out a video showing more detail about Lizardcube’s pitch. Check out our article about it here.

That’s all well and good, but Shinobi 3D, the 2011 Shinobi revival mentioned before the break, was also a fresh, new modern take on Shinobi for its time, and that didn’t lead to a revival. That brings us to the very topic you clicked this article for. Unlike back then, Shimomura-san is aiming higher with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. He’s going into this to raise Shinobi back up to the lofty status it enjoyed in the 16-bit years, where Sega can justify regularly developed sequels instead of one new game every decade or so when someone at Sega feels like it.

“When people hear ‘Sega’ nowadays, they usually have the impression of Sonic or Like a Dragon, which we are very grateful for,” Shimomura says. “These are IPs that we are very proud of, of course, but we do think that if you had asked people maybe 20 years ago or 30 years ago, there would have been fans thinking of many more IPs than Sonic or Like a Dragon. Those fans’ excitement is very important.”

“Most important for us is to create games, of course. That being said, we do feel strongly about growing IPs and nurturing our IPs. So, the game release comes first, but we have also put out a release before about certain video content, but there are so many things that could happen in the future. Nothing is set in stone, of course, but there could be maybe comics or goods.”

“We do think that IPs are supposed to evolve and expand, and we really do feel very strongly about our Shinobi IP and want to take care of it and nurture it. Maybe there might be a Vengeance 2 somewhere along the road. This is obviously nothing that’s planned right now, but it really depends on how we can nurture the IP in the future and how the IP is going to grow, but we definitely do want to grow it.”

There you have it. Shimomura-san wants to see legacy IPs like Shinobi nurtured well enough to not only see sequels made more frequently, but even for merchandising and media expansions to be possible. The only way to do that, according to him, is to go hard or go home, and the fact that Sega is working much more closely with Lizardcube and publishing Art of Vengeance, unlike with Streets of Rage 4 or Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap, should speak volumes of that newfound vigor. Needless to say, if Shinobi: Art of Vengeance can do well critically and commercially, then Shimomura’s vision of a brighter future for Shinobi could be realized. It’s working so far for Virtua Fighter, and Sega’s still aiming to make that same magic happen, not just for Shinobi, but a few of their other beloved inactive IP as well.

If you’d like to hear more about Shimomura-san’s ambitions and how development of Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is going, check out the rest of Game Informer’s interview with him and Ben Fiquet of Lizardcube.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC on August 29th, 2025. Limited Run Games will open pre-orders for physical copies of the game on May 30th, this Friday.

Are you excited for Shinobi: Art of Vengeance? Did Shimomura-san’s drive to nurture the Shinobi IP enhance your excitement? Were you a fan of Lizardcube’s past games? Give us a shout in the comments below.

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