WrestleQuest preview: Action-figure heroes pen a love note to rasslin’

Investing in development for four years is not a waste of money. WrestleQuest Mega Cat Studios made the game because they wanted an old-school turn-based RPG, similar to the original. Final FantasyIf you want to know more about. EarthboundDragon Quest or other games.

But that doesn’t mean Mega Cat is simply exploiting pro wrestling’s video game appeal with an easier-to-develop gameplay loop; there’s a lot of childhood love for the 1980s and 1990s superstars inside WrestleQuest, too. And there are 30 of them from real life — like Jake the Snake Roberts, Diamond Dallas Page, and, most essentially, Macho Man Randy Savage.

“We’re a hardcore sports town,” Mega Cat founder James Deighan said of Pittsburgh, where he grew up and where the studio is based. “Friends, family, co-workers would come over to argue about the Steelers game, or the Penguins, or the Pirates, my dad was more a fan of Bruno Sammartino,” the champion of the primordial World Wide Wrestling Federation of the 1960s and 1970s.

“I think he actually watched that industry come to life,” Deighan said of his father. Deighan and the younger of his six brothers were born later in his dad’s life, in his 50s. “Some of my favorite memories of my childhood are all around wrestling. I remember more about my wrestling toys,” than other sports.

This is a new twist on the classic. WrestleQuest’s story. The characters — 12 of them playable, 400 of them NPCs, and about 30 of those real-life, old-school heroes from the past 40 years — are all action-figure representations. Some aren’t even wrestlers. The world in which the main protagonist “Muchacho Man” lives is a fantasy realm of toys, the kind a middle-schooler would spread out on the bedroom floor and mash up in glorious crossover, non-canonical throwdowns.

“Something that’s inspired us, heavily, is a lot of us grew up not having a ton of things,” Deighan told Polygon. “So sometimes, the G.I. Joe and the He-Man characters are in the ring with Hulk Hogan, and that bout plays out, and that ended up inspiring this kind of WrestleQuest universe.”

The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us WrestleQuestThe game, which launches on Aug. 8, is available everywhere except for mobile. It features a fantasy world filled with shrines honoring legendary heroes, gyms, arenas and more. In the usual ring, combat follows the familiar turn-based rhythm. Instead of mana and spells, wrestling moves are used to replace them. Land a particularly devastating move from the top rope, and a guy’s plastic arm might pop off. He just puts it back.

“That’s part of the high fantasy playfulness,” Deighan said. “What inspired the game is that same sense, these two toys are just gonna go hard in that ring. And one of them in the locker room afterward, maybe what he’s doing is twisting his face back around, because he’s a toy.

“This is all part of why we wanted to make games in the first place, and why we started Mega Cat,” he added. “As someone who’s had such a massive reverence for RPGs, we wanted to make sure that we were ready to commit to something that we think fans would want to play, and the time needed to balance and adjust, something that has that much content. It’s a massive design challenge.”

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WrestleQuestDeighan says that the game is the most ambitious project his studio has ever undertaken. Much of Mega Cat’s résumé so far has been work-for-hire projects, some of them using licensed properties (most recently, Renfield – Bring Your Own BloodThe a Vampire SurvivorsThe film Nicolas Cage was used as a basis for the ‘like-like’. Mega Cat had a framework to build on as it approached managers and the estates of wrestling stars. The pitch was still too far-fetched for the wrestling stars to agree to.

“It is not the same experience talking to Jake the Snake as it is talking to Hasbro’s brand team and licensing agent,” Deighan chuckled.

At first, the majority of wrestlers as well as their agents only cared about the terms. “Most of them weren’t particularly excited about the type of game or the detail of the game,” Deighan said. Early on, he and Mega Cat were able to find some common ground with Page and Jeff Jarrett in their quest to attract superstars.

“Almost every wrestler in the game had to have their own indie circuit [wrestling] start,” Deighan said. “In many cases, these folks are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. And they don’t know what indie games are, but they definitely know what indie wrestling is. Some of them probably felt that they were helping us out, as they understood that it was a huge risk and love letter for the entire team. A lot of times, it inspired some unique conversations with them, sharing their own issues they had in their journey, when they were on the come-up, which is pretty relatable.”

You can find the love letter sentiment throughout WrestleQuestThe point of the construction with toys and rattlers is to be creative, not just to make it. What is the point? WrestleQuest, Always, it was always to make a story-driven, turn-based RPG that would be heavy on the party. Deighan, his Mega Cat co-workers and their fans have found many things to be proud of as they worked on their projects over the last four years. The result is they’re making the game they always wanted to make, and using cherished childhood memories to make it.

“The game content was informed more by the love for JRPGs, and wrestling, than it was for the best commercial plan,” Deighan said. “It’s probably a game that could have been 30% of its final size, and viable. It was this goal that motivated so many to work on the game for two years. How we’re measuring the success of WrestleQuest isn’t purely a commercial thing. It’s probably the third or fourth goal.”

WrestleQuestReleased on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 Windows PC and Xbox One Series X.