Def Jam: Fight for NY

PlayStation 2 (2004)

Uli Troyo
2 min readOct 6, 2018

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You might not know this about me, but back in the mid-2000s, me and my Wu-Tang buddies Redman and Methodman took to the violent streets of New York to clean up the riff-raff with our fists. Together, we served justice to the likes of Busta Rhymes, Fat Joe, Flava Flav, Danny Trejo, Omar Epps, Sean Paul, Xzibit, Ice-T, and Bone Crusher. Unfortunately, I never got past the biggest baddie, Mr. Snoop Dogg in a pimp suit, who trounced my ass pretty thoroughly. Man, this game was such a blast — by far one of my favorite beat-em-ups since the Ninja Turtles. The combat mechanics were really fleshed out, and you could customize your fighting style through specialization in different martial arts. You could also customize your character by choosing his clothes, which made the whole thing double as a very cute (and seriously, quite exhaustive) fashion sim. I played this at a time when my three best friends were working at Hollywood Video, and thus getting free game rentals. My boy Dick and I got pretty invested, and spent countless nights fruitlessly hunting Snoop Dogg, though if I remember correctly, he finished the game one day when I wasn’t around. Classic.

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These blurbs are part of an ongoing drawing challenge called Inktober. This year, instead of following the official prompts of the challenge, I’m drawing the casts of my favorite video games, with the exception that I’m drawing an entire franchise only once, to limit the number of Final Fantasies and Zeldas. The blurbs that follow are just a few memories of the game and reasons for their inclusion. You can follow me on Instagram if you’d like to see more. Thanks!

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