Hiruko to get him to resurrect Moritsune, not knowing that the revived Moritsune would become one of Hiruko's henchmen with no memory of his past. Moritsune is actually Aomizuchi, the fourth hellspawn lord. Moritsune kills Ageha, then fights Hotsuma. Hotsuma defeats him again. After the battle, Hotsuma breaks to Hiruko's Golden Palace, where Hiruko reveals that he had all along intended for Hotsuma to kill all of the hellspawn and the undead Oboro so that their souls would fuse inside Akujiki. He could then take the sword and use it to rule the world. Hotsuma vows to kill Hiruko and destroy Akujiki, as he blames the evil sword for everything that happened. Hotsuma fights and kills Hiruko after an intense battle, absorbing the sorcerer's soul into Akujiki. He thinks of his brother as the palace crumbles around him. As the military celebrates the collapse of the Golden Palace, Kagari looks on with sadness in her eyes. Development Overworks, a division of Sega, had been the developer of the Shinobi series throughout its early years. Other projects had prohibited Overworks from developing Shinobi titles for the Sega Saturn or Dreamcast. However, in 2001 Overworks member Noriyoshi Ohba realized that he had time to develop a new Shinobi game, and Sega returned to publish it. Development of Shinobi began around May 2001, with a team of roughly 50 people. Takashi Uriu filled in as producer. The game was originally planned for the Dreamcast until the console was discontinued and Sega began creating games for other companies' consoles. The PlayStation 2 console was chosen over the competing Nintendo GameCube and Xbox because of its familiarity to the team; Uriu had become experienced with the console's software during his past work on the Sakura Wars series. The console's relative popularity was also a decisive factor. Shinobi marked the jump of the series to 3D, attributed to the changing video game market. The 2D gameplay of past Shinobi games had made consistent use of shuriken-based combat. Such combat would have been difficult to master in a 3D game. Thus, an auto-targeting system was born, and the gameplay emphasis shifted to swordplay rather than shurikens. Due to the 3D rendering of Shinobi, Overworks decided to grant Hotsuma the ability to run on walls. His usage of ninja magic was a recurring feature in the series, implemented as part of a desire to mix older and newer