Ninja Gaiden Black is day five of our series on 15 Xbox classics you can still play on Xbox Series X|S. Team Ninja’s reworked edition of its 2004 reboot is the version of Ninja Gaiden that made it into Xbox backward compatibility, and it’s still on sale today.
Ninja Gaiden Black at a glance
Developer: Team Ninja
Publisher: Tecmo
Original release: 20 September 2005 (North America), 21 October 2005 (Europe)
Original console: Xbox
Xbox Store price: £9.19 / $9.99
Game Pass: not included
Backward compatible since: 24 October 2017
What is Ninja Gaiden Black?
Ninja Gaiden Black is a third-person action game starring master ninja Ryu Hayabusa, who sets out to recover a stolen sword and avenge the slaughter of his clan. It’s set in the same world as Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive fighting games.
Ryu can run along walls, swing between poles and run across water, and he carries a range of weapons that trade speed for power. Fights are fast, hard and built around blocking, timing and reading enemy attacks rather than memorising levels.
Black is a reworked version of the 2004 Ninja Gaiden. It folds in the content from two free downloadable expansions, called Hurricane Packs, and adds new enemies, such as exploding bats and fiends that copy Ryu, plus more costumes. It also adds two new difficulty settings. Ninja Dog is easier, and Master Ninja is much harder. The other settings were made tougher than in the original, and a counter move called Intercept, added in the first Hurricane Pack, was left out.
A separate Mission Mode has 50 combat missions. One is based on the custom challenge used in the 2004 world championship final, and the last five form a linked series called Eternal Legend.
Ninja Gaiden’s history on Xbox
Team Ninja leader Tomonobu Itagaki was impressed by Xbox development kits and pushed for the game to be made for Xbox. Team Ninja kept that quiet until E3 2002, when it announced Ninja Gaiden as an Xbox exclusive. It was the studio’s first action game, and it took five years to make, aimed at players in the West.
Ninja Gaiden launched on 2 March 2004 in North America, a year later than first planned. It sold more than 1.5 million copies and became one of the ten best-selling Xbox games.
Team Ninja kept working on it after launch. Two Hurricane Packs arrived free over Xbox Live in the second half of 2004. Itagaki said the team didn’t want to charge for them because they came out of the team’s own interest. Microsoft and Tecmo also ran three Master Ninja Tournaments over Xbox Live that year. The first two broke records for online participation in Xbox Live events, and the five regional finalists played live on stage at the Tokyo Game Show on 25 September 2004.
Tecmo announced Ninja Gaiden Black at E3 2005, and it went on sale that September. Itagaki saw it as the final version of Ninja Gaiden. It came to Xbox 360 as an Xbox Original on 11 February 2008, and Team Ninja followed it with Ninja Gaiden II on Xbox 360 in 2008.
Why it matters
Ninja Gaiden was one of the original Xbox’s biggest exclusives from a Japanese studio, and Black is the version Team Ninja considered complete. Its free expansions and online score tournaments were early examples of a developer using Xbox Live to keep a single-player game going after launch.
The series is still active on Xbox today. Ninja Gaiden 4 came out in October 2025, published by Xbox Game Studios.
How to play Ninja Gaiden Black on Xbox Series X|S today
Ninja Gaiden Black was part of the first wave of original Xbox games added to Xbox One backward compatibility on 24 October 2017, so it runs on Xbox Series X|S too. You can buy it from the Xbox Store for £9.19 or $9.99.
Only Black is backward compatible. The original 2004 Ninja Gaiden disc isn’t on the backward compatibility list, so a copy of that won’t work on a current console.
Ninja Gaiden Black was in Game Pass until September 2019, but it isn’t in any tier now. The store lists it as Xbox One X Enhanced, and it doesn’t have FPS Boost.
If you own the original Black disc, an Xbox One or Xbox Series X will recognise it and download the backward-compatible version.
Ninja Gaiden Black has also turned up in some players’ achievement lists with no achievements attached yet, as covered in our story on original Xbox games appearing in achievement lists. Xbox hasn’t confirmed achievements for it.
More on Ninja Gaiden Black
Our Ninja Gaiden Black hub has the essentials and will collect future coverage. Tomorrow, the series reaches the Xbox 360 era with Rare’s Kameo: Elements of Power.
