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WWE Superstars slam onto Ultimate Rivals: The Court

Ultimate Rivals: The Court has been assembling top names from across the sports world and now it's recruiting the best from the sports entertainment world by adding the stars from WWE.
Ozzie Mejia
Ozzie Mejia
1

Recently, Shacknews had a nice chat with Ben Freidlin, the CEO and founder of Bit Fry Game Studios, about the upcoming Ultimate Rivals: The Court. This is the arcade-style basketball game that boasts a roster of the top names from across the sports world, including the NFL, NBA, NHL, NBA, and more. These stars are about to be joined by a pair of WWE champions, as WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns and WWE Smackdown Women's Champion Sasha Banks have been added to the playable roster.

In terms of modern-day WWE Superstars, they don't come much bigger than Reigns and Banks. Universal Champion Roman Reigns is about to headline Wrestlemania in a three-way match against Daniel Bryan and Edge. Reigns' career has found new life since returning from leukemia, taking his spot as the Head of the Table and suffering no disrespect from opponents, the front office, or his lackey, cousin Jey Uso. As for Banks, she's set to defend her title at Wrestlemania against Royal Rumble winner Bianca Belair. However, she's had a pretty big year herself, as non-wrestling fans may recognize her more as Koska Reeves from The Mandalorian.

Ultimate Rivals: The Court was announced earlier this year and will act as a follow-up to Bit Fry's rookie outing, Ultimate Rivals: The Rink. While The Court will release on Apple Arcade, just like its predecessor, it will also release on PC. The addition of the WWE Superstars marks the developer's continuing commitment to lining up sports' biggest stars, as CEO Friedlin told Shacknews in our recent interview:

I think the fact that we were all in, and committed to making this happen, and that nobody else in the market could be insane enough to seriously attempt it, gave it the lift it needed. We just refused to give up on it, because there was not a single person who heard about it and even challenged it on the basis of merit, merely on the basis of feasibility.

But we made sure the feasibility really came down to our willingness to not rest until it was done. More practically speaking to your question, we built the company early on with a network of pro athletes, a former MLB team owner, and eventually secured the support of David Stern, the then Commissioner Emeritus of the NBA. All of those relationships really helped and we're grateful for their belief in us.

Ultimate Rivals: The Court is expected to release later this year on Apple Arcade. The game will come to PC (via Steam) shortly afterwards. For more on today's announcement, you can check out the announcement on the WWE website.

Senior Editor
Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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