The Ninja Gaiden: Master collection scheduled for June includes Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2007, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 2009 and Ninja Gaiden 3 2012: Razor’s Edge – but does not include Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Why?
According to Team Ninja, some of the code in these games was unrecoverable.
In an interview with Famitsu (thank you, Siliconera), Team Ninja brand manager Fumihiko Yasuda explained:
“As for the Ninja Gaiden Black and the original Ninja Gaiden 2, only bits of their original data were still intact and we couldn’t save them either. That’s also the reason why we chose Sigma.”
Ninja Gaiden Black is a revamped version of Ninja Gaiden that came out in 2005. It is famous for being even more difficult than the original. Black was released via the Xbox Game Pass for Xbox One S and X (with improvements for X), but was removed from the subscription service in September 2019.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is an Xbox 360 exclusive released in 2008. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is a version of this game first released for the PlayStation 3 in 2009. It was later released on Vita. Digital Foundry reviews Ninja Gaiden 2 in the video below:
In the same interview for Famitsu, Yasuda said that Team Ninja considers Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 to be “the final versions”.