As we mentioned last week, All Elite Wrestling – or AEW for short – announced its plans for video games during a lively press conference yesterday, hosted by none other than Kenny Omega, one of the brand’s biggest stars.
And as expected, there’s several in the works. But the big game that fans will want to look out for is a yet-unnamed wrestling sim from the team at Yuke’s.
As you might recall, Yuke’s is behind some of the best wrestling sims out there, including legendary favorites like WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64. Well, now they’re taking care o AEW’s game debut, aiming for more of an arcade-style approach rather than a straight up sim like it used to do with the WWE 2K games.
The teaser trailer with the footage is below. And as you can see, it shows glimpses of Omega going at it with Chris Jericho before getting pummeled by female superstar Hikaru Shida. Hideyuki “Geta” Iwashita, director of No Mercy, is on deck to work on the game alongside the studio, and talked about how important it is for the game to have its arcade-style feel, since we haven’t seen anything like that in a little bit. (To be fair, Saber Interactive did kind of adapt to that style with this year’s WWE Battlegrounds – a wise decision.) The game doesn’t currently have a release date, but it’s being planned for consoles and PC.
“Every once in a while, a revolutionary company comes along and changes everything,” Omega noted in a recent press release. “AEW is doing that today. When I first signed with AEW, I asked (company president) 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.”
On top of that, AEW is also working on two mobile games. The first is a simulator called AEW Elite GM, which lets players operate the AEW company however they see fit, “designing a
roster of wrestlers, setting up matches, and running the show to generate revenue, new fans and effects on wrestlers’ stamina and morale.” It’s due to arrive sometime in 2021.
Arriving sooner than that is another mobile game, which will focus on a casino experience featuring AEW superstars. AEW Casino: Double or Nothing should debut around the holiday season.
It’ll be great to see how these games shape up in the new year and beyond. Heck, maybe we’ll even get an AEW Crush Hour at some point. Fingers
crossed…
