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And when the gaming industry started putting music inside of games I was wondering, ‘We’re licensing all these songs to the game company - how come we’re not making games?’ We had a lot of Madden wars - we would call them in the office - after work.

I grew up on everything from Atari to PlayStation to Xbox. Slowly, the wheels of fate were set into motion. Meanwhile, then Def Jam president Kevin Liles, an avid gamer himself, began to notice that a lot of the songs and artists he works with were being licensed out to various video games around the world. So we were really into hip-hop and urban culture, and we just sort of threw out - what if we did something that was grounded in the world of hip-hop?” It was the typical brainstorming session where no idea is out of bounds, so everybody’s throwing out crazy ideas. “Then we got called into this brainstorming meeting, a bunch of marketing folks, and Lee. I’m busy working on my title, but I’m happy to try and help a team that’s struggling a bit.’ Can you work with them and help guide them a bit creatively?’ I said, ‘Ok, sure. “About a week later I got another call into Lee’s office and he’s like, ‘Hey, I need you to consult with this team creatively. I spent a weekend with Daryl doing a bunch of research, drafting up a design and 20 page-treatment on how I would build an arcade wrestling title. “So they pulled Daryl and me aside and they asked us to do a treatment over the course of a weekend on what we would do with a wrestling title. He detailed how he worked with fellow developer Daryl Anselmo during the game’s early phases. When speaking to Okayplayer for an article back in 2018 (which is an incredibly interesting insight into the development of Vendetta that you should read), former EA Games producer Josh Holmes revealed that EA were left trying to come up with ideas for a new wrestling game in the wake of WCW’s purchase. While the rivalry between the two companies reached a definitive conclusion, the wake of those actions left the fate of EA and AKI’s project uncertain.

#How to play def jam fight for ny series#

It was still a wrestling game at its heart, sure, but those MMA influences blended in would ultimately come to define the gameplay style of Def Jam in the future.īut how was the Def Jam series conceived? By accident, it seems.īack in 2001, AKI were partnered with EA to develop a new WCW wrestling game, but those plans were kiboshed when WWE purchased the rights to WCW, ending the Monday Night Wars between the two promotions “once and for all”, until WWE ran the WCW Invasion angle throughout that year, and continue to reference the situation even to this day.

#How to play def jam fight for ny pro#

While the usual suspects like New Japan and All Japan Pro Wrestling are included, VPW 2 also included MMA promotions such as Pride FC and Pancrase. While those are straightforward wrestling games, Def Jam seems to borrow a lot more from Virtual Pro Wrestling 2, a Japanese-only release that celebrated the best of Japan’s various combat promotions.

They were the team responsible for WWF No Mercy and WrestleMania 2000, widely regarded as the best wrestling games ever made. Now known as syn Sophia, AKI were the undisputed lords of the wrestling game genre, having worked on licensed wrestling games for both WCW and WWE (then known as WWF).

While we’re not going to go into the history of the actual Def Jam recording label, the background of the game series begins with the AKI Corporation in the mid to late 90s. Today, we’re wondering if we’ll ever see a new Def Jam game, and if it’ll actually be any good. Like the majority of games we feature in these retrospective articles though, Def Jam disappeared not too long after it first broke out, leading to a lot of fans begging for the series to make a comeback in some way.

#How to play def jam fight for ny full#

It’s a weird concept, sure, but one that managed to spawn three full games and a PSP port. Oh, and also Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins and Christopher Judge pre-Kratos playing the gangster D-Mob. Gamers or even just hip hop fans from the early to mid-2000s will no doubt harbour some kind of nostalgia for the Def Jam series, the half fighting game, half wrestling game that featured many of-the-era rap artists beating the snot out of each other.