"Legends of WrestleMania" video game demo to be released this week, Details on legal process involved - Pro Wrestling Torch - 4th March 2009

THQ will release a playable demo of WWE's "Legends of WrestleMania" video game tomorrow ahead of the video game's official release later this month.

The video game's marketing has focused on the Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant match at WrestleMania III. That match and characters involved, including Bobby Heenan, will be playable in the preview demo.

The process of adding the "legend" characters to the video game started with THQ's creative department, then went through the legal department to obtain licenses for each wrestler.

"First off the process starts here with the Creative team (we basically ask for everybody) and then it gets passed of to our awesome legal team," THQ's Paul Edwards said in a recent WWE chat. "They actually take on most of the work."

Edwards says if an obvious legend is not included on the game, it's most-likely because they could not obtain legal rights to the character.

"Once legal has it they have to go out and secure all of the deals for the talent," Edwards said. "Sadly, they can't always get the talent we want, due to various reasons that our out of our control."

The special edition video game took about a year and half to develop. That included creating new entrance music for wrestlers who never had theme music when they were with WWE.

THQ simplified the gameplay to make it easy for anyone to pick up and play. They eliminated referees, used arenas from WrestleManias 1-15, and limited the game's availability on video game system.

"We didn't make a PS2 version of the game because we really wanted to focus all our effort on the next-gen systems to make the game as high quality as we possibly could," Edwards said. "Basically we didn't want to get too distracted trying to over do it." (Credit: Pro Wrestling Torch)

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