Boruto Has Some Catching Up to Do With Naruto in the Game Industry

Naruto is an incredibly popular shounen manga and anime that includes a large cast and versatile and imaginative powers and abilities. Naruto lends itself well to video games, and there have been many successful Naruto video game entries, with the most lucrative being the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. However, Naruto ended eight years ago, with the sequel series, Boruto, taking its place. Despite Boruto‘s eight-year run and two series, Boruto and Two Blue Vortex, the series has barely any video game adaptations.

What video game adaptations Boruto does have are mostly attached to Naruto properties. As an independent series, Boruto has enough characters and a diverse range of powers and character forms to stand on its own as a video game adaptation. Even excluding any big console releases for a Boruto video game adaptation, smaller mobile game adaptations would be a natural fit for the series and characters.

The State of Boruto Games Compared to Naruto

Naruto ran as a manga series for 15 years. In that period, over a dozen Naruto games were released, with even more releases after the manga and anime series concluded their respective runs. Boruto needs to stand on its own merits and have video game adaptations of its own, without relying on Naruto characters or the Naruto name to sell it. With an entire manga series, and a time skip behind it, it has more than enough characters and story content to create a video game like the Ninja Storm series.

Boruto has a large roster of characters, all with different forms, power scaling, and abilities that a video game adaptation could take advantage of. This potential adaptation could follow the manga’s storyline, or it could simply be a PvP fighting game. Another niche that Boruto hasn’t entered is mobile gaming, which is not only a massive industry in Japan, but also lends itself well to simple fighting games that a series like Boruto could excel in.

Boruto‘s anime hasn’t adapted Two Blue Vortex, which may be why it hasn’t received a video game adaptation of its own. But a video game series that begins with part one of the arc, with room to include Two Blue Vortex or adapt it later as a sequel should be an option.

Boruto Needs Original Games

Boruto has been running for a long time, and still has yet to have its own standalone video game. Instead of receiving its own adaptations, it piggybacks on Naruto games, such as Ultimate Ninja Storm series with Naruto x Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections and Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker. Eight years is plenty of time for a fighting shonen series to accumulate enough material to adapt a standalone video game, especially Boruto which has many characters and a different power scaling system to Naruto.

One of the issues that arises with Boruto characters and content piggybacking on Naruto games is that it introduces the problem of balancing, as Boruto characters are far more powerful than even the strongest Naruto characters. This is especially problematic in the new part of the Boruto manga, Two Blue Vortex.

The true abilities and powers of Boruto‘s characters simply cannot be depicted in Naruto games because of the imbalance of power levels. Boruto needs to establish itself as an independent series, apart from Naruto, as it’ll keep drawing comparisons between the two series in terms of story and characters, and creating video games that are independent of Naruto is one way to do so.

Franchise

Naruto

Released

November 17, 2023

Engine

Unreal Engine 4

ESRB

T For Teen Due To Mild Blood, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence

OpenCritic Rating

Fair

Expand