Recently, THQ flew me and a gaggle of other journalists out to their headquarters in Los Angeles for some hands-on time with WWE Legends of Wrestlemania. While I was there, I had the opportunity to speak with Paul Edwards, Senior Game Designer for the game. Here's what he had to say.

Kombo: I'm here at THQ headquarters talking to Paul Edwards, Senior Game Designer for WWE Legends of Wrestlemania. So, Paul, why don't you tell us a little bit about the game.

Paul Edwards: Well, we've had this idea of doing a Legends of WrestleMania title for a while. We've just been kicking it around the office. Our marketing group actually went out and found that a lot of the fans had been sharing that same sort of want. It seemed like a pretty easy thing. We wanted it, and the fans wanted it.

In what could could be considered the "story mode," you have three different gameplay options available to the user. There are the Relive, Rewrite, and Redefine mechanics. Could you explain that in some more detail?

Yeah, absolutely. That's what we call our WrestleMania Tour Mode. Like you said, we have a Relive, Rewrite and Redefine. In Relive, we highlight an iconic match from a past WrestleMania, specifically one through fifteen. You're tasked with completing a set of gameplay objectives that recreate the outcome of that match. With Rewrite, it's sort of the exact opposite of that. You take on the loser of an iconic match, and you have to rewrite history, so to speak. And for Redefine, it's sort of just a "what if" crazy scenario. We just take one of the matches from a past WrestleMania, and change maybe the match-type format, the match rules, or the participants involved just to spice it up a bit.

In my hands-on time with the game, it was very noticeable that the controls are highly different from the Smackdown vs. RAW series. Could you elaborate more on that?

Sure, absolutely. So, what we also found from our marketing test was that there was a market that the Smackdown series wasn't necessarily targeting. It wasn't really intended to target those people. Smackdown vs. Raw has a pretty devout fan following, but we also found that there was another part of the market that was largely getting ignored. They wanted a more casual, friendly, arcade experience. Along with wanting to fit it into this time period, Legends of WrestleMania seemed like an easy compromise. So, we made a nostalgic type game with nostalgic controls.

And you can import Smackdown vs. RAW content for those devout fans?

Yes. There is an Smackdown vs RAW connectivity feature that we support where if you own a copy of Smackdown vs. RAW 2009, you can import all the characters along with your created Superstars.

There is a Create a Wrestler mode in this game too, correct? Could you give us some details on how in-depth that goes?

Yes, that is a feature we support. We have three modes, we have the Create a Wrestler where you can change the model of the guy and add various items and things to him. We have a Create a Move-set where you can alter your moves for your characters such as finishers. And we also have a Create and Entrance where you can alter your entrance for whether you're a champion at the time or just your normal character. We also support all the items from the Create a Superstar from Smackdown vs. RAW 2009 along with over 100 plus new items that are themed specifically for this time period in Legends.



So, with the characters (including your created one), there are some things you can still do in the ring such as finishers, and now you've added unique taunts for each character. Could you explain a little bit about what those do?

Yeah, so we created a taunt feature within the game. It's based around a series of four taunts the characters have. Each taunt has a power-up associated with it. Each of them costs a portion of your momentum (the progression towards your finisher) which you've built up. So, one of the effects of these taunts makes you attack faster for a short period of time. One of them increases your damage. Another is more defensive and allows you to get up off the ground faster and counter easily.

Okay, and will there be any divas that will be making appearances in the game?

Unfortunately no. It was one of those things that we identified early on that divas weren't as mainstay as they are now-a-days. I mean, there were certainly some great divas of the time period, but they were few and far between. So, we definitely wanted to focus on what people remember the most from the time period.

How many characters are available at launch?

There will be forty actually.

And the demo is out now?

Yes.

And last but certainly not least, when is the release date? When can I get my hands on the final release build?

The release is March 24 for both the PS3 and the 360.

Well, there you go, folks. Paul Edwards, Senior Game Designer at THQ has spoken, and you have read. So, what are you waiting for, download the demo, and give the game a try. Start practicing because sleeper holds and suplexes will be aplenty when the game finally releases.