Devil's Third, from Ninja Gaiden Designer, Gets a Trailer

Having left Tecmo in 2008, Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive designer Tomonobu Itagaki formed his own studio, Valhalla Game Studios, one year later. His first game under that banner is Devil's Third, a violent action game with clear links to the delirious mayhem of the Ninja Gaiden games. In a coup for Nintendo, it's being developed exclusively for the Wii U.

The twist is that Devil's Thirdshifts between third-person hack-and-slash action to a first-person view while shooting. Throw in a bit of cover shooting and a multiplayer mode, and you have a game that sounds as though it's trying to be all things to all people - a slab of action that can appeal to both east and west.

There's no reason why Itagaki can't pull it off, of course - he's surrounded himself with several former members of his old Team Ninja at Tecmo, so the continuity between Devil's Third and the acclaimed Ninja Gaiden is certainly there.

At any rate, Devil's Thirdhas a Japanese release date - Aug. 4. It marks the end of a long road for the game, since it was originally set to be released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 about two years ago. When original publisher, THQ, went belly up in 2013, a deal was struck with Nintendo to port the game to the Wii U.

You can see Itagaki's new promo video below, which shows off some of Devil's Third's solo and multiplayer gameplay. Unfortunately, YouTube's subtitle auto-translate hasn't enabled us to decipher Itagaki's running commentary. According to the garbled translation he says, "I discovered there is online multiplayer. Efficacy of morning around. It's a big issue."

Sounds poetic, but doesn't tell us much about the game. Still, we're sure more will be revealed at E3 this weekend, where every major video game in existence will suddenly rise up all at once and scream at us.

There's no North America release date as of yet, but we'll update this article as soon as there is.

Destructoid