From bowling with Roman Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV or playing tennis as Michael in Grand Theft Auto V, to the surprisingly excellent Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, Rockstar is no stranger to sports.
Now, thanks to VGC, it has surfaced that the legendary developer almost made a wrestling game back at the turn of the century.
The YouTube channel Hard4Games recently interviewed the wrestler Tommy Dreamer regarding newly released alpha footage from the 2000 game ECW Hardcore Revolution. And Dreamer, who was part of the wrestling company ECW back then and thus included in the game, had an interesting anecdote to share:
"There was a fan, who worked for this company, and they were like 'man, we want this ECW game to be our number two behind this other game, and it's revolutionary, it's a perfect fit for ECW. They all came to an ECW Arena show and this one guy was such a big fan, and all this stuff was supposed to happen. They [said], 'we just need our one game to hit, and if that game hits you will be our next game.'"
"And we couldn't wait due to financial reasons, because Acclaim had lost its license for WWE, so now they offered us money on the back end as opposed to the front end. But that other game, that if it hit we were going to take off - that game and that franchise was Grand Theft Auto. And you think about how ECW would have fit that whole genre, and that guy was Kevin Gill, who worked there, he was a big ECW fan."
In an earlier interview with the channel TruHeelHeatWrestling, which has also been dug out by VGC, the very same Kevin Gill, who was at the time af member of the Rockstar production team, told a similar story:
"I actually put together a deal for Rockstar Games to do the ECW video game. I had put together a deal with [ECW owner] Paul Heyman, we had a series of meetings, and one weekend I rented a van and brought the whole Rockstar Games team, like a 15-passenger van, and brought everyone down to the ECW Arena in Philly to see it in person."
According to Gill, the deal ultimately fell through, not because Rockstar was waiting for the release of Grand Theft Auto, but because they were unsure whether the ECW had enough longevity.
"[ECW]'s financial situation was getting very shaky and at that time, this is 1998, could have been 1999, all the talent was leaving. There were a lot of questions in the [wrestling press] about talent being owed money and those types of things. And video games take so many years to develop, and cost so much to develop. It was put to me like, 'do you think ECW will be around in two and a half or three years when we put out this game?.'"
The ECW eventually went bankrupt in 2001, the same year that Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto III and changed the gaming landscape forever.