SmackDown! The inside story

Are there any legends you wanted to add to the roster that you haven't been able to?
Hiromi Furuta (Senior vice president and SmackDown! producer, Yuke's): We'd love to be able to include Ultimate Warrior, but he owns the rights to his character. It all depends if we can work out the legal issues or not.

How do you come up with ideas for new modes and features?
TC: The first part of the answer is focusing on wrestling gameplay elements but we also look at other games for a comparison.

For instance, Gran Turismo compared to Burnout: from a Japanese game development way of thinking, Gran Turismo makes sense - it's a super-detailed simulation that's always making the cars and the simulation more realistic. And then there are games like Burnout that don't go that far down the 'real' route - they just get in some funny, crazy, fun stuff. So that's something we're constantly thinking about.

It's a wrestling simulation game making the models more real and making the animations look real is good, but you also have to get fun in there. So we look at a lot of western games for ideas - like GTA, God of War and Burnout - as examples of games where it's not just about being more realistic, but about making sure you get fun in there in different ways, too.

Above: Yes, it really will be possible in SmackDown! vs Raw 2007 to moonsault through a table off the top of some scaffolding

Have you given any thought to developing on Wii? And, if so, what kind of possibilities do you think that would open up?
CM: Of course we've thought about that but we have no official plans at the moment.

TC: We went over to the Nintendo booth at E3, saw the controllers, played around with it a bit and went, "Mmmm..." So that's where we're at now.