Ninja Gaiden is an action adventure hack and slash video game developed by Team Ninja and published by Tecmo for the Xbox. It was released in March 2004. Set in the futuristic version of the 21st century, players control Ryu Hayabusa, a master ninja, in his quest to recover a stolen sword and avenge the slaughter of his clan. It was inspired by Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden series, and is set in the same continuity as Team Ninja's Dead or Alive fighting games. Tecmo developed Ninja Gaiden for five years, targeting a western audience. The game's violence created difficulties obtaining content ratings, and it was censored in some regions. Making use of the Xbox's internet connectivity, Tecmo promoted Ninja Gaiden with a series of international online contests; record-breaking numbers of players competed for places in the live final held at the 2004 Tokyo Game Show. Ninja Gaiden was critically acclaimed and sold 362,441 copies in North America in the first month of release; however, Japanese sales were poor. Team Ninja released two packs of downloadable content, which were also incorporated into a reworked version, Ninja Gaiden Black (2005). In 2007, Ninja Gaiden was ported to PlayStation 3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma, with extra content and graphical improvements; this was released on the portable PlayStation Vita as Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus. Ninja Gaiden was followed by Ninja Gaiden II (2008) and Ninja Gaiden 3 (2012). Ninja Gaiden Sigma was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One as part of the Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection on June 10, 2021.