June 24^th, 2004 (12:00am) - For those of us who weren’t lucky enough to get to round 2 of the Master Ninja Tournament, but can’t get enough of Team Ninja’s latest masterpiece, Tecmo has good news! Coming soon for Xbox Live subscribers is Ninja Gaiden 1.1, an update that is sure to raise the bar for all downloadable content to follow.

So what’s changing? This is not your typical silly, frilly DLC. Tomonobu Itagaki has gone the distance this time around, and is updating the game from the ground up in an attempt to make the most intense action game on the Xbox that much better. Gamers can expect to find new enemies, new bosses, new weapons, improved enemy A.I. (*gulp*) and a new, faster game engine that will make all of the above even more frantic than before. That’s right, I said faster than before. Additionally, the game’s camera has been re-tooled to allow for a full 360 degrees of rotation, and has been tweaked a bit to ensure that you won’t need to mess with it in the first place.

In order to take advantage of these new features, the player will have to start a new game, with the updates automatically inserted into the existing levels. What? No new levels? Don’t worry; this is only round 2 of the tournament. Who knows what Tecmo has up it’s sleeve for round 3. And if this is any indication, well the sky’s the limit, really.

Sounds great, so when do we get it?! Well, unfortunately we’re going to have to wait until August to get a chance to sink our teeth into the updated game, but looking at the summer release schedule, it might come just in time. And having played through the original Ninja Gaiden personally more than a couple times, I myself can rest assured that it will be worth the wait.