Def Jam Icon - What Happened?

[Music] hello and welcome once again to another absolutely amazing booty shakin red-hot blazin episode of what happens in don't worry I'm not gonna try to rhyme too much and hey if you're here I take it you're nodding wistfully right now cuz you're recalling all those good times you had throwing down and Def Jam vendetta or fight for New York with your buds and right about now you're probably remembering how it was all flushed down the toilet with the release of one of the most disappointing sequels of all time Def Jam icon yeas misguided follow-up to one of their surprise hits of the mid-2000s so that further ado let's all find out [Music] Def Jam in wrestling sure seem like a random mashup at the time didn't it hip-hop stars the aqui engine ei well that's because it was literally a random mashup aqui corporation were working on WCW mayhem 2 for the PlayStation double balling until Vince bought WCW thus ruining everything for everyone so EA lost the license Aki's work up to that point was floating around nebulously and to try to salvage everything they needed another license to fill that void DA's canadian office located in Vancouver British Columbia started brainstorming on what to do next they needed a blueprint if you will an opportunity arose when EA started talking to Def Jam Records to feature various artists contracted to the label to appear in a game along with a number of made-up characters that felt at home in the world of EA this all came about due to the fact that then Def Jam president Kevin Liles was a big gamer and noticed more and more hip-hop is being used in various soundtracks yays josh holmes was a fan of the music genre and wanted to make a title that centered around it but to eventually cross paths and history was born because of the easy to pick up hard to master nature of a keys engine the novelty of playing as big-name rappers and the exploding popularity of EA for Vendetta proved to be a hit spurring EA even further with its sequel fight for New York it featured an expanded story mode more customization options fleshed out fighting system tons of environmental interaction and a massive roster including such names as [Music] [Applause] [Music] anyway fight for New York came out at the tail end of 2004 but several team members including the main producers and designers from EA Vancouver all left the following year to start up propaganda games and thus EA lost la the talent that helped make Def Jam series what it was simultaneously EA Chicago were coming off the success of Fight Night Round three you know one of the reasons that even made you want to buy an HD console I think you can see where this is all going boxing and fighting are the same thing right no people really want good visuals right No right well get Chicago on this thing so long a key hello kudos ánotá it's time to talk about kudo he first cut his teeth on some random games for three do like army men air attack and war jets before finding a job with EA in 2004 just as fight for New York was wrapping up the visual fidelity and innovation scene in round three impressed a lot of people but just because Def Jam and Fight Night shared some similarities like basically they're centered around a combat of sport didn't mean they would mix well together and spoilers they didn't mix well together producer Michael Mannheim in a 2014 interview with complex comm dishes out the deets on what went wrong we had the opportunity to do the next step jam game and this was obviously after the success of Fight Night Round three the reviews were definitely mixed and I think the biggest problem with title was that we didn't stay true to the previous ones we let down some of the fans of Def Jam yay Chicago is a development group that prided itself on innovating they took a boxing game and infused it with innovation we tried to do the same with Def Jam icon here was our problem we tried to innovate too much it was an existing brand with an existing fan base that was in love with the previous games if you look at something like Mortal that they don't really change the mechanics of that game too much they change the story and new technology new moves characters but what'll combat fans know exactly what to expect when they make their purchase most importantly the developers always delivered on that so you know how Vendetta and fight for New York were fast hard-hitting arcade style fighting games with wacky original characters and crazy gravity defying moves well EA Chicago innovated by getting rid of all that it emphasized backgrounds with base stylized almost abstract environments that would change and move to the beat of the song and the fight to make room for this the fighting mechanics were pared back considerably ditching a Keys engine and slowing it down down it also centered around realistic punches attacks dodges and parries you know kind of like boxing the biggest change of all however was at the center of the fighting system a key I built upon the blazing moves you know the over-the-top bone-crunching ah [ __ ] it these things yes they got rid of those yeah that makes it now why exactly did this happen well mr. men time has an answer whose idea was it to ax blaze emus it wasn't so much that we looked at the old title and saw what we could get rid of everything was more about creating this buildings with base and we had a limited time line to get the product out hindsight maybe we should have dropped building as a base to put in all those coal finishing moves I probably would have been the better call but we put all our chips behind that innovation sometimes these bets work really well I can fight Nate and sometimes they don't for Def Jam icon I'm proud of the team and what was accomplished but we didn't deliver the core fighting mechanics and it disappointed a lot of the original fans blazing moves were the only thing that was scaled back considerably for icon as it certainly was one change that you couldn't really mask behind the idea of innovation the roster vendetta clocked in with 40 fighters with a mix of original characters notable rappers and a few members of the fairer sex fight for New York ballooned up to 67 characters again a mix of Aussies Def Jam artists and even a few random celebrities Def Jam icon 27 characters 40 less than the last game what's more is that certain talent like Snoop Dogg ice-t follow his Twitter and Busta Rhymes were all cut the same goes to those celebrities like Danny Trejo and of course Carmen Electra speaking of which there's also no playable female characters at all the concept of girlfriends was in all three games but it's only icon that stopped them from being playable lots of ie although the fan favorite originals are also gone so that's like demob Manny pockets and the rest all of the Warriors instead make way for a big Herc and fast pal two of the like less than ten that were created specifically for this game what did good-old kudo have to say about this how is the reaction when you approach these stars and ask if they wanted to be in the game did you have to turn anyone down the reaction from the hip-hop community has been tremendous people are so happy that a game that accurately represents the hip-hop lifestyle is finally being made since the music in our game affects the gameplay we needed artists from many different areas of the country with different types of beats and their songs so we cannot put everybody in the game that even we wanted to but we are always excited to work with other artists on future dev champ games now I get if he is presented with that question I don't know what else he was supposed to say well yeah despite having 40 less characters than the previous game yeah everyone in the hip-hop community is banging down our door right now now aside from changing everything about the fighting system and having an to Minish roster one other aspect that was considered a massive mistake was the complete lack of a UI making players take note of bruises and blood to ascertain their boxers dare I mean their fighters health why Chicago thought this would translate to a more traditional fighting game is just it's it's it's wack the camera is usually pulled so far back that you don't always get a good view of your fighter so it's incredibly hard to tell how well you're doing unless you've been like counting hits imagine playing in our exes game right but then take away all the UI what the [ __ ] is what's going on it oh what's going on here Fight Night is the only reason EA Chicago got this job and in the short time they had to put this together they were utilizing too many of the same design aspects even if they didn't translate well now while it's admirable they attempted something different with the backgrounds and the fighting system it didn't make up for the lack of depth with said fighting system and especially and most egregiously cutting for player functionality something that the first two games had now despite all these very obvious downgrades Kudo was still toeing the company line because I guess he had to but he also had a habit of throwing digs at other games and even entire genres when he was promoting Def Jam this isn't a game where you end up on the sofa just using some kind of preset waggle commands oh right he always did that why will Def Jam icon become Jays premier fighting title as a completely switch to the next generation of gaming specifically what are the major gameplay tweaks in the sequel instead of just doing some gameplay tweaks you created a product that would truly revolutionize how fighting games are played on the next-gen consoles the fighting genre has been stagnant gameplay-wise for the last 10 years no matter how much the technology evolved the basic button mashing constant mindless attack gameplay in a lifeless environment has not changed at all there have been no innovations what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard we need up we need a palate cleanser after that so let's go back to michael men time about what innovation truly cost them we didn't give fans what they wanted we didn't do that on def jam icon the other problem was that while buildings with base and the art direction were fantastic they didn't lend themselves to the core gameplay mechanics what happened is that the fighting became sluggish when you had these super realistic characters and animations which again worked great for fight night as a boxing sim it doesn't work for a fighting game because it isn't fast enough one of the biggest knocks on the product were the sluggish fighting controls and the fans were correct that was the biggest problem with the game unfortunately if I could do it all over again the fighting mechanics would be number one and the graphics number two I was a producer on it and I'd take full responsibility I apologize to the fans for it but I learned a wealth of things from that game now let's not get this twisted innovation does drive the industry but it has to be for the better it has to improve on a formula to be successful just making a few smart changes like going from Street Fighter one's control system to Street Fighter twos provided smoother controls and more deliberate depth rather than slamming big red buttons ya Street Fighter 2 didn't have bumpin and grindin backgrounds did it it was a similar game to its predecessor it just played so much better when icon release the reviews reflected this divide and were very mixed as you can imagine regardless of the critical reception though it seemed to perform well enough commercially for a sequel to be greenlit the simply mean Def Jam icon 2 was uncovered a few years ago with an early unfinished build being leaked onto the information superhighway icon 2 was still using the same core fighting system but had some smart new additions that fans were clamoring for more stylish combos throws and even being able to launch your opponent into the air allowing for follow-up attacks but you know what happen next do you know even if the name of your studio literally has EA in the title it doesn't mean you are safe from EA like at all in mid 2007 former EA Games president Frank the dreaded behemoth Gebo stated at EA we're willing to take risks make long-term investments and to support teams and individuals between launches it's really but that each team is responsible for staying on a reasonable path to profitability sticking to that strategy is what gives the financial resources and flexibility to take risks on new projects unfortunately it Chicago hasn't been able to meet that standard the location has grown dramatically in the past three years while revenue from the games developed there has not the number of employees has grown from 49 in 2004 to 146 people currently in the new facility in downtown Chicago as it stands Chicago has no expectation of hitting our profitability targets until fiscal year 2011 or later the same time as they were closing down eeeh Chicago and another branch in England EA was also quite busy purchasing both Bioware and pandemic leading some to believe that to soften the blow of that Mass 800 million dollar purchase that ei needed to make cutbacks elsewhere not only did this kill Def Jam icon too was a deathblow to get another fighting game eh ACOG Oh had been working on a marvel fighting game which was more or less a sequel to rise of the imperfects which was named marvel fighting game I finally get to talk about this thing it actually looked awesome featuring tons of environments of destruction a solid if not unspectacular roster of heroes and villains the game was very early when it was first shown and it went dark for almost a year what's EA Chicago had closed down now since Marvel was a fairly big licensed eh tried to salvage it during this time perhaps moving it to another team before finally announcing its full cancellation in 2008 while the game was never shown after this initial footage it never releasing might have been a blessing in disguise because only three years after EA lost the license Capcom presents Marvel comes sorry for getting off track here I I just think that Marvel game is fascinating so where are they now well kudos ánotá you ever wonder what the bottom of an avatar shoe looks like well BAM there it is so yeah he hasn't been a public figure in videogames since that but apparently he still works somewhere within Microsoft Michael Mannheim started his own company Digital dreams entertainment and launched a successful Kickstarter to bring back mutant league football in the guise of mutant football league since he worked on the original games back in the 90s the case of Def Jam icon isn't so much of a interference but rather the sky-high ambitions and desire to innovate by a clearly talented team that simply weren't a good match for the source material they definitely wanted to make something that would stand out but like men Heim stated they strayed too far from what the fans expected which is unfortunate as icon to seem to be making strides to rectify that as for Def Jam itself well if you ever feel like getting frustrated check out these tweets from the official Def Jam Recordings Twitter but they heavily hinted there considering reviving this series in some fashion this sparked interest from lots of people but there's been absolutely no update since then I can only imagine with the various rapper and likenesses the music and the game be originally published by EA it would be a licensing nightmare to bring back like dammit Def Jam you couldn't bring it back that was your moment to own it but you let it go oh you only had one shot do not miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime oh please tweets Def Jam Records at Def Jam to politely ask about the possibility of bringing back the first two games in some capacity and we'll see what happens in the meantime if you know of any other fighting games that might be worthy of the what happened treatment already done marvel infinite MK vs. DC let me know in the comments below or flop your way to the flop house VIP patreon to officially vote on our next top see you next time and thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 656,399

Keywords: Def Jam, Def Jam Vendetta, Def Jam Fight For New York, Def Jam Icon, EA, Electronic Arts, Kudo Tsunoda, Wha Happun, What Happened?, Matt McMuscles, Video Game Documentaries, Video Game Disasters

Id: B0BkTCs6hJQ

Length: 18min 24sec (1104 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2019