WWE Hall of Famer, current All Elite Wrestling star, and overall professional wrestling legend Jeff Jarrett comments on the creation of the TNA Wrestling video game and why no sequel was made.
Jeff Jarrett has done all there is to do in professional wrestling. While he’s probably best known for his time in WWE and WCW, founding TNA Wrestling in 2002 was also a major part of his legacy. TNA was the challenger brand to WWE in the early 2000s, and in 2008, the promotion’s one and only console video game was released.
Jeff Jarrett Explains How Suicide from the TNA Game Became a Real Wrestler
TNA iMPACT! was best known for bringing TNA’s unique wrestling style to video games. However, that game also featured a unique story mode centered around the fictional character of Suicide. In a rare move, the character actually transitioned from the video game world to the televised TNA Wrestling product, with multiple wrestlers portraying it over the years.
During a recent Q&A session. Jarrett explained that the producers at Midway Games were shocked to learn that “The King of the Mountain” believed the character had legs to survive on actual wrestling television.
“I could talk forever on this because the character Suicide that was born in that game, I’ll never forget the look on their faces, and I said, ‘Hey man, I love this character. I want to make him into a real wrestler,’ and they were like, what the? That blew their minds,” he said (h/t: Fightful)
Why a Second TNA Wrestling Video Game Never Released
Continuing on, Jeff Jarrett would say that a sequel was always on the books, but due to Midway overextending itself and eventually shutting down, it never materialized. He puts the blame on Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff’s arrival in TNA in 2010 and all of the turmoil that resulted from their entry into the company.
“That whole video game process, I loved it. I was immersed in it. They really dug in, got off, got successful, and if you know anything about it, Midway, not because of us. We were a success. They overextended. They went bankrupt, and so TNA (the game) 2 was on the books for years, and then the Hogan years happened, and it all went to shit.”
Today, Jeff Jarett is on the Advisory Board for the present-day iteration of Acclaim. In their heyday, Acclaim produced many of the WWE video games until 1999.
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