New Tenchu? Kadokawa Games Grabs Acquire
They may have had a hand in one of the best new JRPG series in years when they helped put together Octopath Traveller, but for older Acquire fans, the first characters they think of when they hear the name is probably Rikimaru and Ayame rather than Olberic and Ophilia. But why are we talking about this? Well besides the indisputable fact that a new Tenchu game would improve happiness around the world, we might actually be seeing one in the not too distant future. That’s because Kadokawa has just purchased Acquire.
They might not be a huge name to most game fans but Kadokawa are actually a very large company, with holdings in all manner of business interests. One of those happens to be FromSoftware, Armored Core and Elden Ring developers, and the company that holds the rights to Ninja stealth ‘em’ up Tenchu. Even though Acquire birthed the series back in 1998 they didn’t own the Tenchu games they developed; Sony published the first game in Japan and Activision published outside of Japan, with Activision picking up the series for several years after that. After the second game Acquire walked away from the series, and in 2004 FromSoftware bought the rights to Tenchu. After several more games in the series (some better than others), Acquire came back to make Tenchu: Shadow Assassins, one of the best games in the series. Now fast forward to today and we’re in a great position to see Kadokawa bring FromSoftware and Acquire together again to revive Rikimaru and Ayame’s adventures. Let’s hope we see just that.
Playing videogames, writing about videogames, considering videogames—that about sums it up. Videogames are the one hobby that I’ve kept since I was only little, zapping ducks on the NES or knocking out MR. X. And when I’m not enjoying classics from the bit generation of games or checking out those earliest of polygons, I’m probably playing something from today’s age of modern gaming: if I’m not complaining about it. Something I’m doing at the moment? Patiently waiting for the Polymega console that was purchased back in 2022.
