If you want the wooden sword, you have to start by playing on the hard difficulty setting. You’ll want to find Muramasa. When you give him twenty scarabs, he’ll fork over the ninja gaiden wood sword, ninja gaiden black wood sword for you. It’s one of those great video game items that might disappoint you at first, but which will quickly become one of your favorite weapons once you upgrade it a bit.

Make the weapon work for you by always giving it top priority for upgrading, even over some of your preferred weapons.

Always upgrade it, level it up regularly, and once you get it it to level seven, you’ll have the Unlabored Flawless, which is, without a doubt, one of the very best swords in the game, so it’s definitely worth the investment to keep boosting the wood sword.

The sword really follows Itagaki’s hardcore design philosophy, in that the Unlabored Flawless is really a reward for hardcore players. Itagaki is just as hardcore and demanding in game design as he is in life, and this sword serves as a great example of how his brain works.

It’s one of those weapons that you’ll never see in the hands of a casual gamer, so it’s really a prize reserved only for the best players to wield. This is why it’s such a great example of Itagaki’s “great rewards for the worthy” approach to game design.

You can say what you like about the validity and usefulness of achievements and trophies, but it’s really too bad that more games don’t include real rewards like this sword anymore. It’s fun to have a little icon on your profile for bragging rights, but nothing beats an in-game item that you can actually use not just to brag, but to slice and dice your enemies with unprecedented efficiency.