By Brendan Bell
When the 2000s began, hip hop was starting to change. Eminem was on his way to becoming the next big thing, Jay-Z almost went to jail for stabbing someone, and hip hop affiliated clothing brands like Phat Farm and Sean John were starting to take over the fashion industry. At this time, hip hop was starting to become more than music. Audiences began to see hip hop and hip hop artists everywhere. DMX and Eminem were starring in movies, Snoop Dogg had his own short-lived MTV show and a reality show, and video games started to use hip hop songs as a part of their soundtracks. Hip Hop was well on its way to becoming a pop culture phenomenon thanks to all of these crossovers and collaborations. Arguably the biggest of these collaborations has to be the beloved video game series Def Jam.
Def Jam’s origin is interesting because the game was originally something completely different. In the early 2000s, Electronic Arts (EA) had been working on a sequel to their critically panned wrestling game WCW Mayhem. This sequel was then canceled once the WWE purchased WCW in March 2001. Video game producer Josh Holmes helped the team behind the canceled game come up with a new pitch that involved hip hop. This idea eventually snowballed into what we now know as Def Jam.
The first game in the series, Def Jam Vendetta, stayed very close to its wrestling roots. Characters, or in this case rappers, performed all the basic wrestling moves you would see in wrestling games such as Irish whips, suplexes, and clotheslines. Every fight also takes place inside a wrestling ring. The team behind Vendetta’s gameplay was AKI Corporation, creators of the beloved Nintendo 64 games WWF No Mercy and WCW/NWO Revenge. This made the game popular not just with hip hop fans but wrestling fans as well.
I don’t think the Vendetta would have been as popular as it was if it weren’t for the rappers starring in the game. Obviously, they made the game popular just by being in the game but their input and advice to the developers helped shape the game. There’s a behind-the-scenes video that shows DMX telling the game’s developers what he would want his character’s finishing move to be. If you’ve played the game, then you’ll know that it is exactly as DMX described in the video. Here’s a quote from DMX about the game: “They used my music throughout the whole fucking game, and I’m the hardest character to get to. It’s pretty much my shit.”
Ludacris also gave his input to developers: “I had input as far as what I wanted to wear and my moves and what I wanted to call them. So, with that being said, I was very happy about that, ’cause you know having creative input on something being animated is definitely [cool]. I mean it’s like how many people can say that they’ve been turned into a video game character? That’s great all within itself.”
This reliance on rapper input continued as a sequel to Def Jam Vendetta was released in 2004 titled Def Jam: Fight For NY. This time around the game’s story mode received a huge upgrade. In Vendetta, players would select a character and fight various fighters and rappers until they got to the final boss D-Mob, a criminal kingpin. In Fight For NY, players create their own character and join D-Mob’s crew. Customization was a new addition to the series as players could dress their character in real clothing brands such as Phat Farm, State Property, and Sean John. There’s even clothing and shoes from the Nike Jordan brand. There are also tons of celebrity cameos that are pretty random. Rockstar, comedian, and actor Henry Rollins acts as the player’s trainer as they learn and purchase new moves. Danny Trejo and Ice-T are boss characters similar to DMX in Vendetta and they are almost impossible to defeat. The game’s final boss is Crow played by Snoop Dogg. He and every other rapper who did voice acting for the game did a great job. There’s just something incredibly endearing about hearing Redman aka Doc tell you “Imma take ya tongue out and like my ass wit it!”
The gameplay in Fight For NY changed slightly as the wrestling ring was removed and there was an emphasis placed on crowd interaction. You could throw Ice-T into someone holding a bottle and they’ll smash him over the head with it. The crowd could also push opponents towards you if they got too close. This game is the embodiment of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It took what the first game did well and built upon that foundation. I wish I could say the same about its sequel.
By 2007, the EA BIG brand which previously published Def Jam, NBA Street, and NFL Street, was dead. Fight For NY’s sequel, Def Jam: Icon ended up being published by EA itself and was developed by EA Chicago rather than EA Canada. Honestly, the less said about the game, the better. It was a terrible follow-up to a beloved game that undid pretty much everything that other games created. No more wrestling moves or unique art style. This game looked like a really bad knock-off which is sad since an actual Def Jam knock-off like Urban Reign is way better. Remember all the rappers that were consulted for the other games? Guess how many were consulted for this one? None. The game lacked the feeling of care and passion that you could feel in Vendetta and Fight For NY. They gave Method Man a check just for suggesting they add a tutorial to Vendetta. He’s in Icon but that’s it. He was just there. It doesn’t feel like he or any other rapper had an influence on this game. Then there’s the really awkward mechanic that lets players manipulate the background music to damage their opponent. No one asked for this feature and everyone who played the game hated it. It is also worth pointing out that this game came out in March 2007 and EA Chicago closed in November of that same year. If you wanted proof that this game was a colossal failure there it is.
This was the last Def Jam game and there hasn’t been any concrete news of a sequel since. Every year it seems the Def Jam Twitter account tweets about making a new game but nothing ever comes of it. I think I speak for everyone when I say I’d pay top dollar just to play a brand-new game or even a remaster. The games were the perfect way to bring two audiences together and make one into hip hop fans and the other into gamers. We probably won’t get a new one unless EA figures out how to pay for all that music and those likeness rights. With hip hop being compared to WWE more frequently, now is the perfect time for a hip hop wrestling game.