According to an interview with wrestler Tommy Dreamer, ECW had an agreement in place with Rockstar Games to develop a game with it before Acclaim ended up taking the reigns.
As discovered by Hard4Games on YouTube (via, VGC), the interview with Dreamer, who was one of ECW’s top talents at the turn of the millennium, sees the wrestler discuss how Acclaim came to develop the game.
“Video games were key for your success as a wrestling company, and we had a lot of companies bidding for that game,” he reminisced. “There was a fan, who worked for this company, and they were like ‘Man, we want this ECW game to be our number two behind this other game, and it’s revolutionary, it’s a perfect fit for ECW.”
Dreamer goes on to discuss how the fan attended an ECW arena show and spoke about the “other game”, mentioning that “We just need our one game to hit, and if that game hits you will be our next game”.
According to Dreamer, the company “couldn’t wait due to financial reasons” as Acclaim had lost its license for WWE, leading them to offer money “on the back end as opposed to the front end”. He then goes on to reveal, “That other game, that if it hit we were going to take off – that game and that franchise was Grand Theft Auto – and you think about how ECW would have fit that whole genre, and that guy was Kevin Gill who worked there, he was a big ECW fan”.
Gill is credited on Rockstar titles such as Midnight Club: Street Racing and Smuggler’s Run, and spoke about the deal in an interview with Tru Heel Heat Wrestling earlier in 2022. He mentioned that he “actually put together a deal for Rockstar Games to do the ECW video game” with owner Paul Heyman.
