Home > Video Games > GameCube > Naruto: Clash of Ninja/Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! Series > Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! 3
I ordered this game online in mid-August 2007 from a Web site called Games-Asia.com, which seems to have gone out of business since then. By that point, I was extremely obsessed with Naruto and very much into the Naruto: Clash of Ninja/Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! series of fighter games, so I awaited the arrival of Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! 3 (GNT3) with much anticipation. Like Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! 2 (GNT2), the previous game in the series that I also bought, this was an import that took a seemingly-eternal 2 to 3 weeks to ship from Hong Kong to my house in the United States.
It really was worth the wait, however, because GNT3 includes the genin missing from GNT2—that is, Tenten, Chōji, Shino, and Temari—as well as very powerful characters like Jiraiya, Tsunade, the Third Hokage, and Itachi, bringing the number of playable characters to 29. In addition, there is more depth in the fighting system: guard break is introduced in this game, and nearly all of the characters are given alternative specials, activated usually with Down+X instead of just pressing X. It also introduces mission mode (among a few other new game modes), which is a very interesting way to play. (I remember struggling quite a bit with mission 32, as Sasuke is not a character I use much.)
GNT3 is definitely my most-played game in the entire series; it was the one I happened to be playing right around the time Toonami was airing the final pre-filler episodes of the English dub of Naruto in the United States, when my dedication to the franchise was probably at its most intense. I played it on-and-off for about two years, from around September 2007 to August 2009, when I bought Naruto: Gekitō Ninja Taisen! 4. I played it for so long despite knowing about its sequel because, for me, GNT3 almost felt like the final game in the series; I felt like I had all the playable characters, game modes, and stages I could ever want, so there was no need to spend money on the sequel when GNT3 already seemed pretty much complete. Eventually, though, I did decide to purchase the sequel.