Team Ninja's New Girl

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword wasn't the only new Ninja Gaiden game shown at Tecmo's press conference in Tokyo today. Following a live demo session of the DS title, producer Tomonobu Itagaki cleared the stage for Yosuke Hayashi, director of Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the PS3.

Seeing as how we managed to score some hands-on time with the PS3 update last week, we weren't expecting too much from the Sigma presentation in terms of new revelations. But Hayashi surprised everyone by cuing up the a new trailer of the game, which he claimed was created using the most recent code.

We've uploaded a copy of the trailer to the media section linked below. You'll notice that the trailer cuts out somewhat abruptly on a shot of Rachael. According to Hayashi, this was due to a technical problem when rendering the clip. The full length of the trailer was supposed to have been one minute and thirty seconds.

Hayashi also brought with him three big announcements, two of which were revealed earlier this week in Famitsu. Ninja Gaiden Sigma will hit the Japanese PS3 on 6/14, just a bit prior to the 6/26 stateside release. Even better, Tecmo will be making a demo of the game available for download via the PlayStation Network towards the end of April. Check out this story for more details.

The final announcement was all new, though. Hayashi announced that Ninja Gaiden Sigma will be getting an image girl. And her name is Leah Dizon.

You're probably wondering, who? We sure were. But the Japanese members of the audience seemed far more familiar with the former American model turned Japanese singer.

Dizon will be taking part in promotional activities for the game. We assume she'll brush up on her Japanese before hand (or maybe not -- the audience seemed to dig it when she mixed English with Japanese phrases).

While her Japanese may not be fully up to speed, at least Dizon has the skills required to be an image girl for Itagaki and Team Ninja. Hayashi invited her to sample Ninja Gaiden Sigma before the crowd. Playing as Rachael, she managed to defeat a tough boss. It took her a few energy bars, but this was apparently her first time.

Following the play session, Dizon posed with Hayashi and Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki for the hundred plus cameramen in attendance, most of whom were probably more interested in seeing her than seeing Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Here at IGN, you can see both by enlarging the above images, then traveling to our media section for the new trailer, a lengthy clip of Hayashi playing the first level, and a bunch of new images.

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