Kotaku
Pro wrestling. To some it is the subject of jokes and ridicule, thought of as a sport enjoyed by hicks and dimwits. To others it is a source of endless entertainment...those who appreciate the sport for the sheer entertainment value. Yes, there are even those today who fully buy into the fantasy, hanging on the edge of their seats at every opportunity, idolizing their heroes and despising their villains with fanatical devotion. No matter how you feel about pro wrestling, you have to agree that it's popular all over the world, and wherever you find a huge, dedicated fan base, you're likely to find a video game attached to it. This past weekend, Midway and TNA Wrestling held a press event to unveil the first video game based on the fledgling but increasingly popular wrestling organization, TNA Impact!. Video game and wrestling press flew in from all over the world for a chance to play the new title...except for me.
Hometown Advantage
Since I started with Kotaku, I've been all over the country covering game launches, press events, and industry conventions. While Atlanta hosts an increasing number of development companies thanks to tax cuts aimed at creating a welcome atmosphere for game creators, I've haven't had the opportunity to attend an event in my own hometown since E3 98, before they moved the trade show back to Los Angeles due to Georgia being too damn far away. The worst part of traveling to out of state events is the long journey home, and with the TNA event being held here in Atlanta, my journey home would only be about a half hour tops. Of course, being local does have a couple of drawbacks, the first of which being waking up at 6:30AM to get ready to take the train into town while the rest of the press rolled out of bed around 8:30 and headed down to the hotel lobby...where incidentally I had been loitering for an hour, having overestimated my travel time severely. By the time Midway piled us into the bus for the first event of the day, I was ready for a nap.
The People on the Bus
Of course, getting press people together in close quarters isn't very conducive to sleeping. As the bus headed north towards the Gwinnett Technical College for a TNA fan meet and greet, we discussed everything from Japanese strategy RPGs to where the German journalist on his first trip to America could buy DVDs. As I only had a passing familiarity with wrestling as a whole and nearly no exposure to TNA, I was extremely fortunate to sit next to the fine fellows from WrestlingGamers.com, who were an absolute wealth of information on the subject. Seeing as many of you displayed a similar lack of information on the league in the trailer post yesterday, perhaps a brief primer is in order.
Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
TNA was founded in 2002 by the father and son duo of Jeff and Jerry Jarrett in response to the buyout of World Championship Wrestling by World Wrestling Entertainment. At the beginning the company was a part of the National Wrestling Alliance, promoted as NWA Total Nonstop Action. In 2004 TNA withdrew from the NWA. A weekly television show, TNA Impact! Was launched in June of 2004 on Fox Sports Net, but due to low ratings it was dropped, with the company continuing to broadcast via their website until Spike TV picked up the show in October of 2005. Along with the two-hour show that now broadcasts Thursday nights on Spike, TNA also runs monthly pay-per-view events. It is on the eve of the largest of such events, Bound For Glory 2007, that our bus pulled up to the Gwinnett Technical College in Duluth Georgia for a fan meet and greet session and the debut of Midway's TNA Impact! video game.
Fan Service
Wrestling fans are certainly a diverse bunch. As I entered the main hall of the George Busbee International Center for Workforce Development I was struck by the sheer variety of fans milling about, buying action figures, videos and t-shirts from the merchandise table, and waiting for a chance to meet their favorite heroes and villains in the flesh. While there were a fair amount of your stereotypical, flannel wearing, scary-looking fans in the crowds - enough to make the gathered press initially huddle together for fear of their own safety, once we began making our way through the auditorium we discovered that men and women from every race and class were represented to some extent. No matter what their background, once TNA ring announcer Jeremy Borash took to the small stage set up in the back of the room they were united as one.
The Main Event
Borash came up on stage to do what he does best - get the crowd worked up into a frenzy. After a brief introduction to the event, touching on the debut of the game and the next day's Bound for Glory event, he passes the mic off to TNA president Dixie Carter, whose name is almost as stirring to young, Southern men as her body is.
As Dixie thanks everyone for coming out to support TNA wrestling, a voice from the back of the crowd shouts out.
"It's the best wrestling in the world!"
The crowd goes wild.
She continues after the masses calm, saying she's proud to be able to introduce the first TNA wrestling video game.
"It's the best wrestling video game in the world!"
Again with the cheering. I'm convinced that Carter could have ordered the crowd to storm the mall down the street and bring her back furs and the finest jewelry Zales has to offer and they would have obeyed her every word. Thankfully she gave up the stage to Midway before the mob was mobilized.
The Game Revealed
Scot Lane, the head of Midway's LA Studio might not have received the same level of cheering the wrestling personalities did, but what he had to show the crowd of rabid fans certainly did. I know I've posted the trailer earlier, but here it is once more for your viewing pleasure.
While fans applauded their favorites finally appearing in a game for them to control, the gathered press applauded what looked like the most fluid animation we've seen in a game since Wrestlemania 2000 on the Nintendo 64. As I discovered during the bus trip earlier, most of us agreed that the number one fault with current generation wrestling titles was jerky animations, with development houses focusing too much on realistic graphics and not enough on realistic movements. From what we had just seen, it looked like that wasn't going to be a problem with TNA Impact!.
After showing a brief featurette on the motion capture involved in the creation of the game, the presentation ended with two of TNA's best talents taking the stage to provided commentary for a pre-recorded match between their in-game counterparts. Samoa Joe and Christian Cage are two of the most charismatic guys you're likely to meet, and their segment was one of the highlights of the whole event.
From The Creator of Smash TV
As the wrestlers were introduced and the crowd broke itself off into orderly lines to get their merchandise signed, I took a a few moments to speak with one of the game developers on hand, Mark Turmell. While Turmell has worked on NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and Mortal Kombat 4, he is probably best known as one of the co-creators of Smash TV, one of my favorite games of all time. We talked a bit about how the team is using tools already in place from classic Midway sports titles like Blitz and Jam in conjunction with the Unreal Engine 3 to create a wrestling game that focuses on realistic, fluid motion, the lack of which being what has been putting me off such titles for years now. Mission accomplished, I'd say.
The People on the Bus Revisited
The ride back to the downtown Atlanta hotel hosting the event is even more informative than the first, as the wise men of WrestlingGamers.com school some of us on the finer points of the wrestling business. It seems the success of the TNA Impact! video game is quite important for the TNA folks. With their television show on a somewhat obscure cable network and their videos only on sale in select outlets, a video game appearing on every major gaming retailer's shelves could be very big for the growing league.
They also gave us some insight into the business model of TNA. Unlike the WWE, that pretty much owns their talent, TNA wrestlers function more like independent contractors, free to promote themselves as they please while enjoying a schedule far less grueling that the largest organizations 300 days a year touring timetable. Quite enlightening, and once discussion turned towards viewership numbers and statistics I got in a very lovely nap.
Hometown Disadvantage
After a lovely lunch at the downtown Hooters, which seemed oddly appropriate, I discovered another disadvantage to being local to a gaming event. It was 2PM, and the final event of the day wasn't kicking off until 7, so while the rest of the group adjourned to their rooms to digest information and various forms of fried food, I found myself with five hours to kill. Luckily for me, Gus Mastrapa of The Onion AV Club and I were both working our way through Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSP, so after a quick trip down the street to check out a bookstore we settled in the lobby of the Westin Peachtree hotel, surrounded by men in important suits conducting important business, trying to save chocobos from poachers in co-op mode. It was one of those delightfully geeky moments that seems to define my life, and 7PM seemed to come far too soon.
The Other Main Event
While the fan meet and greet earlier in the day was for fan and press alike, the night time presentation in the conference room of the Westin Peachtree was purely for the press. The room was decorated with TNA Impact! banners with a large screen setup at the front of the room and an open bar in the back, which brings me to the last disadvantage of being local to an event. Having to drive home at the end of the evening meant that the open bar was off limits, save for the occasional Coke. While I am sure I could have found crash space for the evening, I wasn't keen on losing the novelty of sleeping in my own bed that night, so I soldiered on.
Once everyone got settled in, the trailer was shown once again, as well as the motion capture featurette. Wrestlers AJ Stiles and Chris Daniels then took the podium to talk about TNA in general, showing a promotional trailer for the league. I was beginning to get caught up in the whole wrestling thing, to the point where I actually regretted not attending the Bound For Glory event the next day. The wrestlers were really interesting people, and I would have loved to see them in action up close. If you had told me I would write that last sentence five years ago I would have laughed in your face and then asked you what you were doing in my house, but there it is.
Next came Midway LA Studio head Scot Lang, who explained their goal for TNA Impact! "We really want to set the next-gen bar for wrestling games." Considering the next-gen wrestling games released so far I think they're well on their way to achieving said goal. As if we needed more proof of this, Creative Director Sal Divita was up next to give us a live demo of the game.
Mortal Kombat!
As well as being the creative director for TNA, Sal Divita has also appeared in figure and voice in several Midway games, most notably as Nightwolf, Cyrax, Smoke, and Sektor in Mortal Kombat 3. I mainly capture this shaky video of his presentation just in case he got angry and shot missiles out of his chest. Sadly this didn't occur, but the fact that the Xbox 360 demonstration looks this good on my crappy camera on a giant screen speaks volumes about the game's level of polish.
Hands-On
The game stations were set up with flat panel televisions and Xbox 360s. Sadly we weren't able to photograph or video tape our gameplay, but on the bright side it left no proof of Gus Mastrapa beating me two times out of three, other than me saying it just then. You know what? Ignore that. What I meant to say was that I completely destroyed Gus round after round until he left the couch crying. I've gone over my impressions of the game in a separate post, so I won't say too much about my experience other than you don't often hear gaming journalists having as much fun as I was seeing them have playing TNA Impact!. There was definite whooping going on, and we don't whoop easy.
Good Eats
At some point during the hands-on time, the food had arrived, and nothing makes a member of the gaming press hungrier than free food. We will seriously eat anything you put out buffet style - it's gotten to the point where I cut up my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into little cubes and set them on a bookcase when I have lunch, just to get that whole buffet vibe. What Midway brought to the table was thankfully much better than pb & j. 
There was a table of finger food like fruits and cheeses, spring roll wrapped shrimp, and asparagus wrapped in something which hardly matters since asparagus is the devil's veggie. Also on hand was a turkey carving station, complete with cranberry sauce, and a table filled with pecan pie, cheesecake, and various other bastions of sweetness. Nerves bolstered by good eats, it was time to chat with the wrestlers on hand.
Sizing Up The Wrestlers - As Gamers
For some reason I had thought wrestlers would be huge. Somewhere in the back of my mind logic had always told me that men my size do not often do back flips off of wrestling ropes, but I suppose the larger-than-life nature of the sport had simply been messing with my perceptions. The tallest wrestler there that evening barely came up to my nose. Mind you I still wouldn't want to wind up in the ring with them. In fact, not knowing much about wrestling in general, I was a bit nervous about talking to them until I found some common ground: gaming.
Senshi - Socom Player
Senshi, perhaps better known under his previous wrestling name Low-Ki, is pictured here standing on a chair beside yours truly. Having appeared in one of the Japanese King of the Colosseum games (against his will under a different name to avoid licensing), TNA Impact is the first wrestling game he has actively had a hand in creating. Senshi also has a voice so deep that Tay Zonday would be jealous. His game of choice? "My dad got me hooked on Socom." Senshi's father is a military man, and after Senshi gifted his parents with a PS2, dad discovered the Socom series and went on to get his son hooked. Days when Senshi isn't on the road are spent on the exercise bike in front of his PlayStation 2.
Samoa Joe - Gears, Madden, and Halo 3
AJ Styles - We Found The Stuntman Fan
I was told earlier in the night that of all the wrestlers, AJ Styles (top right) was the real gamer, and they weren't kidding. In fact, Georgia boy AJ even suggested a few imports I should pick up during our brief chat, telling me several times that I was missing out on something amazing in Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 for the N64. Styles is no stranger to Japanese wrestling games in more ways than one, actually appearing in the extremely popular Fire Pro Wrestling series. AJ's favorite game is Stuntman, marking the first time I have ever heard the phrase 'favorite game' and Stuntman in the same sentence.
Christopher Daniels - The Black Sheep
You'd think a man who wrestles in Japan under the name Curry Man would be an avid gamer, but alas, Christopher Daniels (top left) is the self-professed black sheep of the TNA family, not having actively played a video game for over 12 years. At one point in the evening he was put in front of the TNA game, and upon winning a round excitedly got up and started jumping around victoriously, nearly bowling over a member of the serving staff. Ah, to know that joy again. While Daniels might not be much of a gamer right now, that could all change. "Now I'm going to have to buy an Xbox to play my own game!"
The Evening Comes To A Close
After a wonderful evening of discussing gaming with professional wrestlers, munching on appetizers Soon the train back to my car would stop running, and with the rest of the press either heading to bed or hitting the bars, I thought it was probably a good time for me to make my exit. On the way home I kicked myself for not purchasing a ticket to the Bound for Glory event the next day. Having seen how down to earth the wrestlers were, it would have been interesting to seem them flying high from the ropes of TNA's trademark six-sided ring. Over the course of the day I had developed a newfound respect for the sport, and who knows - maybe next time they come to town I'll snag a seat to see what I've been missing.
