After 16 years hiding away, it looks like Izuna is back on the scene. Success Corporation announced that it’s currently working on a revival of the Nintendo DS-era RPG series Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja.
The news arrives as part of Tokyo Game Show 2023, though details are a bit scarce. The Izuna title is headed to Nintendo Switch and PC, and no window’s been set yet.
The trailer description says, per Gematsu, that the tentatively titled Izuna has begun development on Switch and PC with “a new look.”
No more info to go on now, besides the updated art of titular kunoichi Izuna. It’s a rad design, at least.
It’s all a mystery (dungeon)
Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja was a duology of Nintendo DS games, developed by Ninja Studio and published by Success in Japan, that’s been dormant for the better part of 16 years. Atlus handled the North American publishing for both Izuna games.
The Izuna series is a dungeon crawler, similar to the Mystery Dungeon style. You guide the ninja through dungeons, picking up items that could drop on death if you’re not careful. Dungeons were randomly generated, and it seemed like a decent mix of exploration, planning, and battling.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a revival of a series like Izuna out of Tokyo Game Show 2023, but I definitely welcome it. There’s a plethora of long-lost series from this era of games, and seeing any of them get a second shot at video game shelf life rules.
No word on when Izuna will arrive, but the kunoichi will get to adventure again on PC and Switch sometime in the future.
