Midway Acquires Exclusive Worldwide Videogame Rights to TNA Wrestling

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 7, 2005--Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY), a leading interactive entertainment software publisher and developer, today announced that it has signed an exclusive worldwide, multi-year agreement with TNA Entertainment to publish videogames based on Total Nonstop Action Wrestling™. Under the terms of the agreement, Midway has the rights to develop and publish games for the console, handheld and PC platforms. The first TNA Wrestling™ product is scheduled to ship in 2007 for current generation game systems.

Total Nonstop Action Wrestling is the future of sports entertainment. TNA iMPACT!™ airs exclusively on SpikeTV on Saturdays from 11 PM-midnight ET/PT with an encore on Mondays at midnight ET/PT. In addition to the weekly show, TNA Wrestling also produces a monthly pay-per-view special where its top stars such as Jeff Jarrett, AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, Kevin Nash and Rhino compete in, above and beyond the signature six-sided ring.

"TNA Wrestling is one of the fastest growing and most exciting forms of sports entertainment available today," said David F. Zucker, president and CEO, Midway. "It's fast, powerful and cutting-edge in both presentation and style. We are very pleased to be working with TNA and look forward to leveraging our expertise in the fighting game genre to create the most compelling wrestling experience yet."

"Our brand of wrestling is perfectly suited to videogames and Midway is the perfect company to create them," said Dixie Carter, president, TNA Entertainment. "We are very excited about this collaboration and the opportunity to expand TNA Wrestling to a new medium."

About TNA iMPACT! (working title)

TNA iMPACT! is set to be the most complete wrestling videogame to date. Featuring top talent such as Raven, Jeff Jarrett, Monty Brown, Rhino, Christopher Daniels, Jeff Hardy, AJ Styles and more, TNA iMPACT! will deliver all of the excitement and action of the top-rated weekly television show.

I'm a little leery of this being in Midway's court. They have a history of sucking, though I will admit they have come out with good stuff in the past. Either way, this is probably a good thing for TNA.

Any publicity is good publicity when it comes to video games. The majority of wrestling video games have sucked or have been too annoying to learn (damn MK controls), but they keep coming out.

I fear the game's quality. Well, at least they'll have a game.

The problem is, though, that a bad game could actually hurt TNA. Most people don't know about them, and a sucky game could make them seem crappy to those people.

I think the best thing for them would be to make it the first wrestling game for XBox 360 and PS3. That would be BRILLIANT

Pfft... Almost every WCW game not named World Tour (N64) and Revenge sucked ass, and they were arguably the #1 Promotion from 1996-1998. Quality of a video game doesn't translate to what it's based on. For example, 90% of video games based off of movies sucked, and it's usually movies that were really good.

OK, let's see....

All four of the major WCW Games: Nitro, Thunder, World Tour & Revenge. They all came out while WCW was on top. Mayhem, Backstage Assault, and all the other crappy ones came out when WCW was going down. And the games could have a part to do with that.

You make an interesting case... I guess you could say during WWF's down period, they released stinkers like the Wrestlemania Arcade Game, In Your House, and arguably War Zone*, and when on top again, games like WM 2000, Smackdown, No Mercy, etc. came out.

*-I don't know when it was released, but when the roster includes Bret Hart, Davey Boy Smith, and TAFKA Goldust, it must've finished production in late 1997, when WWF was still struggling a bit to recover.

WCW was a big name by then, so a crappy game didn't hurt them as much. TNA is just beginning to make a name for itself, but haven't gotten too far just yet.

The big difference maker was THQ. I think Midway could do a great job if they keep it 3-D and use an engine that is similar in feel to the AKI engine. Maybe it will be like the Wrestlemania 21 engine, since Tobias worked on that

I pray it's not another version of the Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter controls where you have to do something like press Triangle-Triangle-Circle-Square-Square-Circle-Triangle to perform a dropkick.

If it is..................I'll kill someone. You can hold me to that too.

As long as when I go to hit someone with the Pounce, Monty Brown doesn't morph into a tiger, or when I do a move with Jarrett, he doesn't pull out a record and break it on their head.

Man they did some gay shit.

I make one request for the game... whenever Jarrett smashes a guitar over someones head, a graphic reading "KABONG!" comes up on the screen.

There's only one problem with this game. That TNA will make the request that players not be able to use Jarrett in the game, but you can fight him.........and he NEVER looses.

Like Goro on the hardest difficulty, but ten times worse.

Goro was beatable. Kintaro was a fucking bitch.

Besides, I have no interest in ever playing as Jarrett in any game, so if he's not selectable, Midway did me a favor.