NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM Hits Next Week, Only on PS3

Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers, I’m Hiroshi Matsuyama from CyberConnect2, the developer of NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM. I’m very excited to have this opportunity to speak with you all about the game. Since this is my first post, I’ll cover the basics today.

I’m sure some of you that have seen our trailers for the game have thought “I bet this is just a pre-rendered movie” – but it’s not! Everything from all of our trailers is 100% real-time footage from the game running on PLAYSTATION 3 hardware that you will all be able to experience when the game is released next week.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm features two main game modes for players to enjoy – “Free Battle Mode” and “Ultimate Mission Mode.” In Free Battle Mode, you can play as one of 25 characters from the animated series. The battles aren’t strictly one-on-one either – you can bring two support characters into every battle, who will help you out in short bursts. This is the same three person team structure as the TV series, but now you can create your own teams with all sorts of original combinations. We’ve put a lot of effort into our battles to make sure they match the look and feel of the animated series. You can perform all sorts of amazing moves with your favorite characters and even fight on walls and run over bodies of water.

Ultimate Mission Mode lets you take on 101 missions across Naruto’s Hidden Leaf Village, which acts as a hub for the game. Here, you can acquire new Jutsu moves, purchase items, and even chow down on a bowl of noodles at the Ichiraku Ramen shop! The game’s storyline covers episodes 1-135 of the Naruto animated series, so it’s incredibly comprehensive. In addition to the head-to-head battles, you’ll encounter huge boss battles, races through the forest and tree-climbing battles in this mode.

At the strong request of our fans in North America, the game offers full voicing in both English and Japanese with all the original actors from the animated series. We’re also going to be releasing downloadable content for the game well into next year. It will mostly focus on new support characters and missions and best of all, it will all be FREE!

These are just the basics of the game, but if you want to check it out for yourself, we have a playable demo that you can download from PSN right now. In my next post, I’m going to give you an exclusive look at how we made the game, so check back here soon!