(Below is part of my latest GameFile column. For the full thing, check out MTVNews.com)

SAN FRANCISCO — It wasn’t the first time the creator of “Ninja Gaiden” tripped me up in an interview by mentioning gambling. But when I was interviewing Tomonobu Itagaki a few weeks ago, he did it again. And I wasn’t prepared.

I wasn’t ready because I was asking him and other top game developers I saw at the Game Developers Conference about what advice they would give young developers. What do gaming’s greats want hungry kids to know?

“I think people should gamble more,” Itagaki said from behind opaque sunglasses and decked out in an all-black outfit. “Or [they should] play something like backgammon, a game that’s not a video game but more of an analog traditional game.”

He didn’t mean “gamble” like a figure of speech. He meant it like rolling dice or playing cards. Not that we at MTV News advocate people throwing their money into craps or the slots, but Itagaki clearly does. I know this because, two years ago, when I interviewed him in his office in Tokyo, he stopped the interview to ask me, through his translator, if I was a gambler. I expressed some confusion and he explained that it was because I had the eyes of a gambler.

Check out the rest of this column at MTVNews.com