Underrated Games: Def Jam: Fight For NY

Hey you! Yeah YOU, random guy reading this! Are you a fan of hip-hop? Do you like fighting or wrestling games? Well I have a game that only a handful of people (in MY opinion) have ever owned and liked, and happened to be one of my favorite fighting game. That game is Def Jam: Fight For NY.

To start off, imma tell ya a story about how I came up with this segment.

You see this? You see this unHOLY despicableness? THIS is what is in my game box. Not seeing the game you THOUGHT was gonna be in there, huh? I cannot find the actual disc to same my life. I don't even remember if I let some one borrow it. What's worse, I can't find a SINGLE person who has this damn game. Que sadness...but ANYWAY...

Though this isn't ANYTHING close to other fighters like the Tekken's and Street Fighter's before it, this was a very inventive and genuinely fun fighter that didn't demand you to do SOOO many commands and button presses just to do one simple move. Simple yet sweet!

This was the second game in the Def Jam video game series which started with the all wrestling game Def Jam Vendetta. Yeah I know what you're thinking, Def Jam is a music label (and some of you just don't know at all), but why is there a video game with their moniker? Well, I will try to answer that very complicated question. In one word, MONEY! I can't really think of a reason why they started this series but for whatever reason, it was the best deal they made and EA's best fighting franchise...until they F*CKED up the third one.

Anyway, there were over 70 (count em) fighters with nearly 50 of them being modeled and voiced by REAL-LIFE rappers, models (suprise by Carmen Electra), and even Russell Simmons ex-wife (the game came out in '04, when they were married) and a celebrity jeweler. Electronic Arts set the bar for high production values when this puppy came out and everything looked great with full lip-syncing, authentic New York venues, and even licensed clothing.

To top it all off, you could even create your own person (hence the clothing part) and take him through the well-developed story mode. Many have said that it has the best story mode in a fighting game, and I might have to agree with them. I mean really, you can really say Street Fighter 4 was good cause of its story. If you play this, you'll think that SF4 was a tiny instruction manual.

Now, with the nitty-gritty out of the way, this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't talk about its gameplay...which will be detailed in PART TWO!