An Indiegogo campaign has begun to get Shaquille O’Neal back into the gaming world with Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn.

A supposed sequel to the infamous cult classic game from 1994, this project was started by Big Deez Productions, “a team of video game industry professionals that comes from legendary projects like HALO, Street Fighter [and] Final Fantasy” along with the man himself, who has himself professed to be an avid gamer.

The Indiegogo page gives a history about the original game, which says that the developer of the original Shaq Fu pushed out the title with multiple errors. Big Deez intends to distance themselves from the original by having only the name and the man in common with the “abomination that was born in the nineties.”

The trailer revealed that the game will not be a fighting game like the original Shaq Fu but instead be a beat-em-up with the artistic style of Street Fighter IV. It will feature a leveling system, cooperative and competitive multiplayer with customizable characters, a story that leads an ass-kicking Shaq through multiple stylized environments like Asian markets and skyscrapers in “the lost art of the beat ‘em up”. Along with these features, many different challenges will be available, including several bosses that will become playable once beaten.

The campaign has multiple goals ranging from a copy of the game and DLC, keyboard lessons by the soundtrack artist, the addition of a person’s likeness in the game, and the chance to hang out with Shaq at his place in Miami or at a dinner (sorry, ladies, he’s not single).

The goal is currently set at $450,000, with 5% going to The Boys and Girls of America. Additional goals include $650,000 for an iOS version of the game, $775,000 for Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, $960,000 for 3DS and Vita versions, and $1.62 million for the Xbox One and PS4 versions.

The campaign is set to end April 20 with a planned release price of $29.99.

My Opinion

First of all, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I can barely take this seriously, especially from the campaign video. Not only is the team relaxed about it, they don’t instill that much confidence in me, although the animation they showed looks great. It is simply the fact that this studio has no games under their belt. However, I actually hope this does well, as I want to see how it ends up. It might actually get the taste of the original out of our mouths and lets us have a laugh and some fun as Big Diesel. I mean, it’d be better if it didn’t have the name attached to it, but it was better than “BioShaq” and “Shaq Bandicoot”. Also, fun fact, Shaq lives in the same smallish city where I live and go to school.

Source: Indiegogo

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Shawn Richards studies games to understand how they work. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.