New Japan Pro-Wrestling will be announcing a new NJPW video game come January 3rd, 2018. It will take place during the Fan Festa 2018 event leading up to Wrestle Kingdom 12.
The news was first spotted on December 25th, 2017 from Chris Charlton when he was going over the WK12 schedule.
Buried in the #njwk12 fan fest schedule ‘Announcement about New Japan Game’ pic.twitter.com/ea6dpaWuN8
— chris charlton (@reasonjp) December 25, 2017
Later on a tweet was sent out by the official NJPW Twitter account, indicating that a video game announcement was scheduled for the event.
Schedule announced for Wrestle Kingdom Fan Festa 2018! Signing sessions, game announcements, final wrestler comments on WK12 and more!https://t.co/d7MSLwZ79g
— njpw_global (@njpwglobal) December 26, 2017
Over on the official NJPW1972 website there’s a schedule, which indicates that at 12:15pm they will announce the new NJPW video game.
Fans were sent into a tizzy about the news because this is literally the perfect time for New Japan Pro Wrestling to get back into the video game wrestling business.
WWE’s annual WWE 2K games from 2K Games, Yukes and Visual Concepts have become graphically enriched each year out, but the gameplay and physics are horrid. The wrestlers have outdated rigging and animations, and there’s practically zero ring psychology required to win a match. Even EA Sports’ have tried evolving the EA Sports UFC games with body-mass physics effects and dynamic fights designed to mimic the real-life MMA sport. The WWE 2K games have just kind of stalled.
With the success of Spike Chunsoft’s Fire Pro Wrestling World, it’s obvious gamers are craving more than just incremental graphical upgrades each year. They want a meaty wrestling game with dynamic wrestling simulation. If New Japan announces a mid-budget wrestling game for the PS4, Xbox One and PC, they could easily dethrone the WWE 2K games.
Alternatively, there is a potential downside and it’s that the last NJPW-based game was for mobile devices. Some fans worry that there could be a mobile sequel in the works, which could severely dampen the news. Of course, we won’t know for sure until January 3rd. Even if the game isn’t graphically impressive, a new NJPW game that mimics the old Aki Corp., titles would be every wrestling fan’s dreams come true.
You can learn more about New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom 12 event, where Kenny “The Cleaner” Omega will take on Chris Jericho by visiting the official NJPW website.
