TMNT: The Last Ronin, as noted above, will be developed by Platinum, a studio with a great pedigree in action games (Bayonetta, Nier Automata, Ninja Gaiden 4) though with some considerable staff turnover of late. Overseeing this one, Kittelsen said, is former Tekken producer Yohei Shimbori who will be joined by Platinum veterans. Last Ronin was originally a comic book mini-series about a lone surviving Ninja Turtle on a revenge quest
- This is a different project than the TMNT: The Last Ronin game revealed in 2023 with Black Forest Games and THQ Nordic. That one is defunct, Kittelsen said
- This is Platinum’s second game in the series, following 2016’s Activision-published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan. That game “did not get the kind of support that I think that the Turtles deserve or that Platinum deserves,” Kittelsen said. “So this was also a chance to do justice by Platinum’s TMNT fans and say, ‘Hey, let’s see what they can really do when we get some of the resources”
- Kittelsen on Platinum’s pitch for the game: “On the face of it, the pairing of Platinum and The Last Ronin made a lot of sense just from a genre fit standpoint. But when we had the first conversation, the first pitch, it was about so much more than what I expected. I expected [them] to go deep into the action and the quality of combat dynamics. And instead we spent a lot more time talking about themes and character and the growth of the turtles and how we all were raised with this much simpler version of the Ninja Turtles in our mind… and now we live in a more complicated time, and we can’t have all the nice things we have when we were kids. There’s a twist on it, but we still want to build a better world for the next generation”
- As for gameplay, per Kittelsen: “You’re a tank of a Ninja Turtle in this game. So it’s gonna play differently than Ninja Gaiden or Bayonetta might”
