SmackDown! confidential - part 1

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The developers at Yuke's come clean about their creative process, the early years and the secret of Rey Mysterio's costumes

Looking back at these games, which years do you think really pushed the gameplay forward?

Taku Chihaya: For me [WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role] and [WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth], were the biggest ones. When we did the first SmackDown! game, we weren't really sure what we were doing. We just looked at all these WWE tapes, we looked at what we thought was cool, and we put it in the game. We just made a game that we thought would be fun for ourselves.

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Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.
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