‘Bayonetta’ & ‘Bayonetta 2’ Pounce Onto Nintendo Switch, Director Hideki Kamiya Discusses Series

Bayonetta, gaming’s most beloved witch, is garnering a lot of attention lately, as she should — her two adventures are getting re-released for the Nintendo Switch this week, and the director behind the original game, Hideki Kamiya, issued a series of tweets discussing her trilogy. 

BAYONETTA – GONNA SPARKLE, GONNA SHINE

Bayonetta initially launched for the Xbox 360 back in 2009, although SEGA commissioned an underwhelming PlayStaton 3 port to join it at retail. PlatinumGames was the studio behind the action title, with prolific Twitter personality Kamiya serving as its director. Kamiya previously directed the original Devil May Cry, the pioneering stylish action game, under Capcom, and his experience on that game helped Bayonetta become the modern classic that it is.

Since then, Nintendo funded Bayonetta 2 for the Wii U, which was announced in 2012 and launched in 2014. Yusuke Hashimoto served as the director on this entry, though Kamiya was still involved. A direct sequel, Bayonetta 2 picks the story up shortly after the original title, with Bayonetta once again forced to roam the world and fight antagonistic angels. Given how Nintendo paid for the game’s development, Bayonetta 2 will never be released for a non-Nintendo platform. A PC version of the original title did launch for Steam last year, however, and Bayonetta appeared as one of the final DLC fighters in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, having won the coveted Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot.

At last year’s Video Game Awards presentation, Nintendo pleasantly surprised gamers by announcing ports of both Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 would grace the Nintendo Switch library this month, on February 16. It’s currently unknown how well the performance of these iterations will stack in comparison to the previous releases, but I expect they’ll hold up fine.

Nintendo confirmed the series would continue in Bayonetta 3, also for the Switch. Previously, PlatinumGames’ Atsushi Inaba addressed the prospect of a third installment to my colleague at Source Gaming at BitSummit, but little is known about Bayonetta’s third adventure at the moment. However, Kamiya tweeted out 15 tweets discussing the Bayonetta series, the legality of Nintendo’s and SEGA’s stakes in it, and he promised his team is dedicated to making the third title worth the wait:

I cannot express how happy I am that we get to make Bayonetta 3, and we intend to do everything within our power to make it as good as it can be. That's all we can do, and we consider it our greatest mission. (14/15)

— 無職 神谷英樹 Unemployed Hideki Kamiya (@HidekiKamiya_X) February 13, 2018

You can probably gleam from this article that I’m a fan of the Bayonetta series, and I’m thrilled it will continue.