Naruto PS2 this November

By Tom Bramwell Published 26 July, 2006

Courtesy of Atari.

Atari has stepped up to distribute Naruto: Ultimate Ninja on PS2 in Europe this November.

It's Namco Bandai's game, technically, but since the Japanese company doesn't handle its own releases over here it's palmed it off to Atari.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja - previously known as Naruto: Narutimate Ninja, and not to be confused with the Xbox 360 game of the same being produced by Ubisoft - lets you take control of 14 characters from the Naruto anime.

Which, since you might not know, is about a young ninja-in-training called Uzumaki Naruto, who learns ninjitsu with classmates Sakura and Sasuke under the tutelage of a chap called Kakashi.

Inevitably they wind up on adventures, but Ultimate Ninja is more of a beat-'em-up, with four gameplay modes (story, mission, free battle and practice) offering plenty of one-on-one bouts to test your mettle.

See elsewhere on the site for screenshots.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • geek-chic #1 6 years ago

    First! I really like Naruto so far on Jetix, so I might give this a shot....

  • Kon #2 6 years ago

    I take it Naruto (the anime) must have been licensed in the UK or elsewhere in Europe for someone to come out and publish this right?

  • Zuiyo #3 6 years ago

    It's being released in other Euro countries I think. Naruto is getting really big in France and also starting to catch popularity in Spain...

  • Tiger_Walts #4 6 years ago

    Do I watch the anime? All I can say is...

    Yarr!

  • locus2k1 #5 6 years ago

    I've een watching the Japanese series since 2003, it rocks.

    I got to see it while i was in america in english, and tho it is not as heaverly cut as your average Anime, it still has blood and mild swearing taken out etc.

    I recommend to those who want to truely enjoy this should go get the uncut DVD when it is released:

    [link url=http://play.com/DVD/DVD/4 -/1063251/Naruto_Unleashed_Series_1_Vol_1_Box_Set/Product.ht ml
    ]http://pl ay.com/DVD/DVD/4-/1063251/Narut...[/link]

    All i can say is, that it gets better with every episode, and wait till u see the infmous episode 133.

    From the screenshots, some characters may not have appeared on the Jetix showing yet, as people like Gaara and Rock lee dont make an appearance till the end of season 1 onwards, i may be wrong, but i dont know how far Jetix has gotten with it.

  • trav #6 6 years ago

    Jetix have only the first 26 episodes at the moment. While Manga have the license to 50 for the DVDs.

  • Kon #7 6 years ago

    That makes more sense now. I hope some Bleach and FMA games follow suite soon.

    I had to stop watching Naruto after the fillers started. Last thing i remember was some prison break and frankly bad script/plot/animation/annoing naruto VA. Perhaps i'll get to reading the manga one of these days.

  • locus2k1 #8 6 years ago

    "I had to stop watching Naruto after the fillers started. Last thing i remember was some prison break and frankly bad script/plot/animation/annoing naruto VA. Perhaps i'll get to reading the manga one of these days."

    I must admit, theese can be a little annoying, but im glad they did it, otherwise the anime would overtake the Manga (Anime is always catching up with it, The manga is still being produced for those who dont know).

    Last time an Anime overtook the manga, it tried to make its own story... it flopped and got cancled... cant rmember the name of it.

    Oh and that reminds me about editing, even the japanese had to cut certain bits out of the Manga to show. XD

    Lets just say a certain mark on one of the later characters forehead looks like the "X with extended lines" symbol used by the nazis, therefore was changed to a green "X" in the anime.

  • Machetazo #9 6 years ago

    Can a trailer of this be put on EGTV, please? Just watching the US video coverage, made this into a guaranteed buy for me (providing it saw local release.) It's a wonderful looking, varied in gameplay fighter, with really well done stages, cool characters, smooth animation, and a brilliant art style.
    Edited by 1 at 26/07/06 @ 15:33

  • nickthegun #10 6 years ago

    I gave up on the anime for the filler episodes too. Firstly because they were, without exception, lame and secondly the stuff happening in the Manga made the fillers look even lamer.

    The most recent story arc, the new training, is shaping up do be really good.

    Naruto also seems to have a reasonable gaming pedigree too. The 3 games I played on the gamecube were pretty good. Except for the one that made Rock Lee the cheapest character in videogame history.

  • Fyzzu #11 6 years ago

    It's a decent little show, as long as you disregard the filler. The manga's really good at the moment, but the anime's lost it, and there's no knowing when that lot's going to finish.

    From what I can remember, the PS2 games series was crap, assuming this is a port of Narultimate Hero. Never got into it. I much prefer the Gamecube ones (being released in the west as the Clash of Ninja series.) The issue with them is that, well, the early ones in the series are a little bit rubbish. Generally speaking each game in that series isn't a huge improvement over the last, but you usually get a couple of new modes, a bunch of new characters, and some gameplay tweaks. This is why I imported the 3rd and 4th as opposed to waiting years for them to get ported over here. They, of course, contain spoilers - the 4th goes right up to episode 135 or so in terms of characters. That series has rather more value for money with 40-odd characters and loads of game modes than it does when you're stuck with those from the first 20 episodes or so.
    Edited by 1 at 26/07/06 @ 16:18

  • Daryoon #12 6 years ago

    Naruto on Jetix = Edited to Hell.

    Yeah, they went and edited the already edited US version \o/

  • Kon #13 6 years ago

    Fansubs FTW!!

    I just can't pull myself away from Ergo Proxy atm.

  • locus2k1 #14 6 years ago

    Speaking of the manga, can you recomend a good place to get it?

    I have a lot of them downloaded, but nothing better then having an actual copy in ur hand.

  • Kon #15 6 years ago

    With me living in Portugal i can't recommend any real stores, though i imagine it shouldn't be too hard to find a comic book dealer in your homecountry through a small google search and have them mail the books to you. That's what i usually do.

    If you want a sugestion or two for actual manga series i'll be glad to help though ;)

    Nothing beats reading the actual books, so long as they aren't horribly butchered like the US release of Tenjho Tenge.
    Edited by 1 at 26/07/06 @ 20:08

  • locus2k1 #16 6 years ago

    Well if this one is coming out here, lets hope the DS ones come out too ^^b

    now they look awesome.

    the more anime that comes out here, the more i hope Jump! Superstars has a chance too XD

  • septimus #17 6 years ago

    Got this from the US, good game. The biggest downfall is that you can't have the Japanese voice over, which sounds good. You have the cheezy American voices which are just horrible.

    I'm at the point of playing the game in silence.

  • NegativeZero #18 6 years ago

    Namco, stop farting around with this junk and either confirm Tales of the Abyss for us, or pass it off to someone who will.

    I've played this game, it's reasonably good for an anime tie-in, but in general terms unless you're a huge fan of the show it doesn't bring anything to the table. Give us the DS titles!

  • Fyzzu #19 6 years ago

    Almost no hope of Jump! Superstars ever getting a US release. All of the manga/anime in that are owned by different companies, so they'd have to get permission and reach an agreement with loads of different companies to release it here. Besides which, loads of the Jump! mangas are still unknown and unreleased in the West.

    I just imported it, personally. Bit of a pain to understand at times but there are plenty of FAQs and I know most of the mangas anyway, so it's not too bad :p

    Bleach is finally getting a Western release, so we might get a fair few of those games over here. Depends on which consoles are alive when the anime over here catches up to them, though. Most of the games have some, uh, incredibly spoilerish characters, so the games would likely not be released until about the 60th episode.
    Edited by 1 at 29/07/06 @ 14:24