AEW Games hosted its first presentation on Tuesday, confirming that its first three games are currently in development. Those games include a currently untitled console game developed by Yuke’s, AEW Elite General Manager and AEW Casino: Double or Nothing (both on mobile). The presentation gave off an early first look at the console game, featuring gameplay footage of Omega, Chris Jericho and Hikaru Shida. But at the end of the presentation, Omega had a special announcement, confirming Hideyuki Iwashita (aka Geta) has signed on to help develop the game.
Iwashita was the director for the classic WWF No Mercy game on the Nintendo 64 back in 2000, which many wrestling fans consider to be the greatest wrestling game of all time.
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“The birth of AEW GAMES was ushered in with a star-studded keynote special event hosted on YouTube, featuring Kenny Omega, who has been at the forefront of AEW’s console game, along with Cody Rhodes, Dr. Britt Baker and Ref Aubrey Edwards,” AEW’s press release on the event read. “The event also featured the introduction of wrestling gaming mastermind and the newest AEW GAMES team member, Hideyuki ‘Geta’ Iwashita, best known for his work on the critically-acclaimed No Mercy for fifth-generation consoles.
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary company comes along and changes everything. AEW is doing that today,” Omega said in the release. “When I first signed with AEW, I asked Tony Khan to let me help assemble the best gaming team on the planet, to make the best wrestling games ever. With masterminds like Geta and the incredible team at YUKE’S, we are well on the path to deliver a fresh, vastly superior gaming experience that our fans deserve.”
In an interview with ComicBook earlier this year, Omega explained what modern pro wrestling titles are missing compared to classic games from the early 2000s.
“For me it’s a feeling of actually performing a match,” he said. “It’s a feeling of impact with each maneuver. I also feel that, a big thing with No Mercy was that when you did a maneuver by a particular wrestler, the way it was performed and the way it the opponent received the move looked perfect in every single animation. That’s because the artists back then, they weren’t using green screens, they weren’t using MoCap they were actually manipulating joints frame by frame by frame by frame while watching tape of said performer doing that maneuver to an actual opponent.
“There’s a big difference,” he added. “I know there’s a lot of good athletes out there and I’m sure that there are a lot of people that do and can do a V-Trigger, but if it doesn’t quite look like the way I do mine the way that I did the Kotaro Crusher, when I do the One Winged Angel it shows. Even if it’s similar, it still doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel right. I think that is what’s missing in games, you just don’t actually feel like you are the superstar, that you’ve chosen to control.”
