For those of you who don’t play video games, Ninja Gaiden is a series of games by Koei Tecmo in which you play as a ninja named Ryu Hayabusa. The series started as a 2D side scroller on the NES. These games became well known due to their difficulty, and the use of cutscenes in order to tell the story (which was special for the time). Later, the series would be revived on the Xbox as part of the hack and slash genre, though still retaining the difficulty the series is known for. Hayabusa himself has appeared in games outside the franchise; including armor in Halo 3 based on him. So why would he get in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch system?
Arguments Against Hayabusa
Before we get into that, I will go over some points people may have against the ninja.
“He hasn’t had a game in a while!”
Now, this statement by itself is true. The last Ninja Gaiden game was Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, released in 2014. This game was not well received at all, and Hayabusa was not even the main protagonist.
This argument falls apart however when you see that Banjo & Kazooie was in a similar position. Their last game was in 2008, and no one liked the game. Of course, they still got in. Even then, Hayabusa still appears in the Dead or Alive franchise as a playable character, with the most recent entry being this year. He also essentially acts as Koei Tecmo’s mascot.
“He wasn’t requested that much! People are only talking about him because of leaks!”
Another history lesson: back in January a post on 5ch (which is basically Japanese 4Chan) was discovered, detailing the final 4 fighters as Erdrick, Steve from Minecraft, Doomguy and Hayabusa. While how it got so much traction is a mystery to me, it did bring Hayabusa into the spotlight. Though you have to keep in mind that stuff like this also brought Erdrick into speculation as well. Besides, Joker and Terry weren’t major requests in the community, and Hero’s requests mostly came from Japan, but all of them still got in.
“We already have Sheik and Greninja! What could Hayabusa possibly bring to the table?”
Remember when Hero was just a generic swordfighter, or how Banjo was a Duck Hunt echo, or how Terry is just Hat Ken? Yeah, this argument is just all of that worded differently. Hayabusa has many tools to separate him from the other ninjas, such as use of a katana, Windmill Shurikens, Flame Shield, and some techniques such as the Izuna Drop. If you still don’t think that would be unique enough then uh I can’t help your imagination.
“That one guy who works at Koei Tecmo said he wanted Kasumi so it would be her who gets in instead!”
A while back there was an interview in which Yohei Shimbori stated if they had to pick someone for smash, it would be Kasumi from Dead or Alive.
“-Speaking of Smash Bros, if you could take a DOA character to implement it in the Smash cast, who would you choose?
Shimbori: “I never spoke with Mr. Sakurai (Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Super Smash Bros series), but if I had the chance to do so I would ask him with pleasure, and I would probably choose Kasumi.””
Some people decided this meant that Hayabusa wouldn’t be the one chosen but there are 2 main issues with this. The first issue is that the one who decides the characters for DLC is Nintendo, as stated by Sakurai on Twitter dot com and in a Famitsu column. It wouldn’t really be up to Shimbori on who gets in. The other issue is that Shimbori is only the producer for Dead or Alive, and was talking about Dead or Alive characters. He wouldn’t have input on if Hayabusa could join or not. While Hayabusa does appear in the games, he is still a Ninja Gaiden character first.
While we are on the topic of this interview, back when the 5ch leak I mentioned was heavily speculated, insider Imran Khan stated he had interviewed Shimbori in December. Here, Shimbori seems to have given a different answer than the other interview. He says that he wants Christie instead of Kasumi. A bit suspicious, but probably doesn’t mean much.
“Koei Tecmo hates Capcom!”
You may be wondering where this comes from. What happened is that KT got into a lawsuit with Capcom, due to using features that Capcom had patented. It isn’t too much of a stretch to say there is bad blood between them due to this. You may wonder why this may be an issue. As you probably know, Capcom already has 3 playable characters, and many other kinds of content in the game. Koei Tecmo may not want to have their stuff in the same game as Capcom (I heard about it being a company policy to not do so, but I haven’t seen proof of it.) All of this may sound somewhat convincing, but there is one major flaw with it. This flaw I will cover in the next section.
Arguments for Hayabusa
Now I have some valid arguments in his favor. First up I will now own the previous argument forever.
Koei Tecmo already has content in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Yep, they are already in Smash in a way, with none other than Fatal Frame. Fatal Frame not only has some spirits, it also has an assist trophy in the form of Yuri Kozukata. Now you may say “But Nintendo co-owns Fatal Frame so they should be able to use it just fine.” However, Koei Tecmo is listed in the credits, among the companies that have non playable characters in the game.
Fun fact: ATLUS also had spirits in the base game in the form of Tokyo Mirage Session spirits, the same company that makes the Persona franchise and owns Joker. ATLUS was also among these names before Joker was added.
So despite supposedly hating Capcom, they were still willing to have their stuff in Ultimate.
Koei Tecmo’s Relationship with Nintendo
Now for my main argument. Koei Tecmo has supported Nintendo for a very, very long time, starting with the first Ninja Gaiden and the other 3 games, which were all on the Nintendo Entertainment System. These games would later be released on the Virtual Console for the 3DS and Wii U, along with the first game being on the Nintendo Switch Online service. In the modern games, we didn’t see much released on Nintendo consoles, but we did get one for the DS and the third game on the Wii U. Beyond releases on Nintendo consoles, KT has worked with Nintendo’s own IPs before. For example, Takamaru from The Mysterious Murasame Castle appears in Samurai Warriors 3 for the Wii. Dead or Alive Dimensions for the 3DS (which I will mention was published by Nintendo in some regions) featured Samus and Ridley as part of the Geothermal Power Plant stage, which is also from Metroid (though it is Other M, which is not well liked. By the way, I will also mention that Other M was developed by Team Ninja, who worked on the modern Ninja Gaiden games).
We also have games like Pokemon Conquest, which is a crossover between Pokemon and Nobunaga’s Ambition, a franchise owned by Koei Tecmo (which, by the way, is one of the few times that Pokemon has crossed over with a franchise, other examples being Smash and Mario Maker), Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors which has characters from Zelda and FE respectively in a Warriors type game, and most recently we have Fire Emblem: Three Houses having Koei Tecmo’s help in development.
Now you may be wondering “why does any of this matter?” One thing that seems to be prevalent in the Fighter Pass is that all companies in the pass have supported Nintendo in some way. ATLUS has developed games for them and had a crossover between their own IP (Shin Megami Tensei) and Fire Emblem (though said game turned out to be less of a crossover than anticipated), Dragon Quest XIS is being published by Nintendo, Microsoft has ported their games to the Switch (games such as Minecraft, Cuphead and Ori) along with being willing to put Banjo in smash for a while, and SNK has a huge amount of games on the eShop. A good relationship with the company who owns Smash and is picking the characters definitely can go a long way, and I believe Koei Tecmo’s relationship is more than enough for them to be included.
Now I will end this article with one more thing.
Shifty
As some of you may know, someone by the name of Shifty has claimed that Ryu Hayabusa will be one of the DLC fighters for Super Smash Bros Ultimate. While they originally claimed he would be the 4th character, this changed when SNK’s copyright was found on the website.
Now, first I will say what exactly has he said. Shifty has gotten the following right: Isabelle being the next character after K. Rool, Ken and Incineroar being in the game, Marx being a boss in for Spirits (back when we didn’t know its name), Piranha Plant, and Joker. While there isn’t proof of him claiming Joker, some mods at Sabi Squad have backed him leaking Joker.
So what does this mean? My opinion is that we should keep it in consideration, but not take it as confirmation. Despite his good track record, he still got Hayabusa being DLC 4 wrong, and people with good inside information have gotten things wrong in the past. I do not think we should discard it entirely, as Vergeben also got the Square Enix’s character timing wrong, but we still got a character from that company (which also ended up being the ones he said was most likely to be it, that being Luminary and Erdrick).
One more thing I will mention is that people have assumed his sources mistook Hayabusa being in Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate as him being in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Not only is this what people said about Erdrick (that insiders mistook Dai in Jump Force for Erdrick in Ultimate somehow?), but from what I heard, his sources wouldn’t know anything about that game. While it is technically possible something happened, I find that to be the least likely scenario.
Conclusion
I am not sure how much this affected your thoughts on Hayabusa, but I do hope I achieved something. For my personal opinion on the character, Hayabusa isn’t someone I want but I do think he would be a cool character despite that. We also get some good tracks such as this one.
Smash Labs 
