'I I remember visiting Ghostface Killah. [of the Wu-Tang Clan] “He was mad at us!” recalls Darryl Anselmo, a former EA employee and art director on 2004's groundbreaking hip-hop fusion fighting game Def Jam: Fight for NY. “Ghost Face was holding four pounds of solid gold. eagle bracelet And he claimed that his character's signature move would be for the bird to come to life and peck the other rappers out of their eyes. But the limitations of the PlayStation 2's technology and its violence restrictions meant that it couldn't happen. It wasn't possible.”
“When Ghost Face first asked about the eagle, Lauren… [Wirtzer Seawood, another one of the game’s producers] He told me to just nod and smile, and when I met him again at the studio for the sequel, I apologized. [for misleading him] He quickly moved on to recording extended insults for his character for the new game, one of which I remember: “Go home and cry to your mother. And tell her you're hungry!”
Whether or not Ghostface Killah transforms into a giant killer eagle, the resulting game, Def Jam: Fight for NY, celebrates its 20th anniversary this month and remains one of the fighting game genre's most vibrant spins. It's the rare '00s game that's still dominating social media conversation despite never being remade or re-released. The 67 characters include rap legends like Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Method Man, Ice-T, Scarface, Ludacris, Flavor Flav, Slick Rick, Warren G, and Mobb Deep, and it's an improvement over the slower-paced gameplay of its predecessor, Def Jam: Vendetta, in every respect.
Vendetta was essentially publisher EA's best take on an engine made for a defunct WCW wrestling game that was mired in development hell and causing executives to lose their heads. At one stage, in their desperation, they even suggested that it could be salvaged and remade into an intergalactic wrestling game full of alien characters. But because Holmes and Anselmo had helmed the 2001 success NBA Street (which added a faster, cartoony, hip-hop aesthetic to basketball multiplayer and far outsold that year's bigger-budget (and much more boring) NBA Live 2002), they were deemed the perfect duo to turn what began as a vague boardroom idea (what if rappers wrestled each other?) into a fleshed-out, retail game.
This meant traveling back and forth to Japan to work with development company AKI Corporation, while also touring the US to meet with rappers signed or affiliated with legendary label Def Jam, and ultimately winning their trust. They shaped the character's mannerisms, from moves to taunts. “It's been a dream life, to be honest,” Holmes adds. “I grew up obsessed with hip-hop. As a teenager, I worked in a music store and sold a bass guitar to Flavor Flav when Public Enemy played in Vancouver. Flavor actually remembered me! It was an amazing time. Who would have thought I'd end up recording with my idols and going to Snoop Dogg's family home?”
But he acknowledges that the core concept behind Def Jam: Vendetta and its sequel, Def Jam: Fight for NY, wasn't easily embraced: “Execs had a hard time understanding the concept of a fighting game about rappers. It was a controversial concept,” says the producer, who went on to work on Halo 4 at Microsoft and 343 Industries.
“Once I explained to them that to be the best lyricist in hip-hop, it's all about arguing, dissing, and competing for the throne, they finally got it,” Anselmo reveals. “Hip-hop is full of vibrant, competitive personalities, so the character roster could have a Street Fighter II or Tekken 3 vibe.”
Def Jam: Fight for NY's concept of rappers punching each other was a huge success, and critics loved it, too, with a score of 83 on Metacritic. “We rushed to make Vendetta, but it still sold well,” says Holmes. “That success gave us the opportunity to expand on the gameplay with Fight for NY and take our time to get it right.” AKI Corporation took the ever-changing, momentum-based combat from the legendary WWF: No Mercy game, released on Nintendo 64 in 2000, and sped everything up with hyper-active Blazin' Moves (my personal favorite is Busta's backbreaker, which is more destructive than Batman's spine-crushing Bane).
The art design is somewhere between The Wire and a comic book, with an ambitious range of dynamic fighting styles (kickboxing, street fighting, martial arts, wrestling, submission). There's a storyline, with Snoop Dogg playing the cunning vampire villain The Crow, who'll hit you with a cane and cleverly taunt you with, “Do you have dental insurance?” You can wear Roc-A-Wear or Ecko tracksuits, getting increasingly better dressed as you rise through the ranks of your boss D-Mob's underground fighting syndicate, slowly earning you respect. It's as if Fight Club had been directed by glossy rap music vid…
The key mission was to choose either 128-bit's Lil' Kim or Carmen Electra as his new girlfriend, and the next day Method Man would call and ask if they'd slept together. The latter was one part of the game that Anselmo now regrets: “Lil' Kim could beat any of the male MCs, but… [reduced to that]”In 2004,” he admits, “all of the rap music videos were about objectifying women, which in retrospect is a real shame. The reality is that there was a push to make the game more sex appealing and more culturally relevant.”
As I recalled after recently replaying my dusty GameCube copy, Fight for NY is still exhilaratingly challenging. The boss fight featuring Fat Joe's crack Zangief-esque character had me hurling my WaveBird controller against the wall as a teenager. You can't beat your opponent unless you take the time to figure out how to counter their attacks, and while this process can be brutal at times, it makes it all that much more satisfying when you finally triumph.
“This game is designed in such a way that you have to sweat and really learn something new to win!” Anselmo says with a smile. “AKI's Hiro Abe (programmer) and Hiroya Tamura (artist) were geniuses. To get good at Def Jam: Fight for NY, you had to master the gameplay and get used to losing. In modern games, fighting games are just too easy. I think that's why so many people still play our game over and over.”
And there are still a lot of people playing Fight for NY. Not a week goes by without someone playing. Nostalgic post A gameplay video that went viral on TikTok has gone viral to the point where people can't believe it even exists. Even rappers (Including Ice TThe actor who played the character in the game(?) is still responding to tweets from fans begging for an updated version.
A$AP Rocky has labelled modern rap the “new wrestling” due to the commercialisation of petty infighting and mainstream MCs treating rap personas like WWE bad-mouthing tough guys. Holmes agrees with my theory that Def Jam: Fight for NY, with its constant depictions of MCs embroiled in diss tracks and gang politics, now feels like a documentary, especially considering how much more public conflict there has become in rap. “Rap is becoming more and more dramatic,” he agrees. “You see a lot of social media videos of rappers fighting each other, and it's interesting that the violence of the game doesn't seem so ridiculous today.”
Some will argue that a game that trivializes the conflict in hip-hop is wrong and deserves more criticism, especially with so many rappers losing their lives to violence every year. Anselmo counters: “I get that, and I don't think we could make the game right now because of drill, the environment is too tough. But Def Jam: Fight for NY was just meant to be a fantasy, escapist experience. It was like a gangsta rap version of The Warriors. It was just a little fun. We trusted that the audience would know that in real life, throwing someone through a window is not cool. We were really trying to res…tement is too tough. But Def Jam: Fight for NY was just meant to be a fantasy, escapist experience. It was like a gangsta rap version of The Warriors. It was just a little fun. We trusted that the audience would know that in real life, throwing someone through a window is not cool. We were really trying to respect the culture of hip-hop.”
The original Xbox, PlayStation 2, and GameCube discs of Def Jam: Fight for NY are highly sought-after and command high prices on the second-hand market. But there hasn't been a Def Jam game released since 2007's disappointing Def Jam: Icon, and there hasn't been a remaster of Fight for NY. Why?
Lauren Wurtzer Seawood, former vice president of marketing for the Def Jam label, played a pivotal role in the development of the first two games, serving as the liaison introducing the timid development team to the feisty MCs, and working hard to sort out complex licensing agreements ranging from image rights to music to in-game brand partnerships.
She says this complicated business mechanic is a big reason why it's highly unlikely the franchise will ever be revived. Def Jam: Fight for NY cost about $15 million to make, but with both hip-hop and video games now multi-billion dollar businesses worldwide, licensing fees would be astronomical. “If this game was re-released today, many
Source: www.theguardian.com
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