In case you thought Team Ninja' s former boss, Tomonobu Itagaki, was leaving game publisher Tecmo as a solo act of attrition, think again. If that act was a single shot across Tecmo' s bow, here comes the fusillade. Word on the street is that key members of Team Ninja -- as many as three dozen or more -- are headed out the door as well, but that' s not all. It seems that each one of the soon to be ex-ninjas will be serving Tecmo with a class-action lawsuit in regards to unpaid bonuses for completed games.

While Tecmo has fired back, stating, " Tecmo would like to assure its loyal fans that Team Ninja, known for its top-selling and critically acclaimed Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises, is intact and, as a matter of fact, has several new projects already underway," one has to wonder just how many people are left that truly constitute the development group known as ' Team Ninja.' Journey was never the same after Steve Perry left, but imagine what it' d be like without the whole band. Yes, Tecmo still owns the IPs and can freely make all the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive games/ports it wants to, with or without Team Ninja (Dimps, we' re looking at you), but what will these games be without the people who made them hits?

Another problem for Tecmo is that in Japan, any lawsuit filed against a publicly-traded company must be immediately reported to its shareholders on the same business day. The fact that Itagaki had actually filed a complaint against Tecmo in Tokyo District Court on May 14, but Tecmo management withheld this information from shareholders, possibly as late as when the notorious developer released his high-profile public statement on June 2, creates even bigger problems for the game publisher.

We' ll have more on this drama as it unfolds, but with this peek into the myriad facets of Japanese law, it looks like Tecmo' s shareholders better brace for even more bad news.