'UFC 2009 Undisputed' Gives a Look at B.J. Penn vs. Georges St. Pierre

Video games have come a long way since the days of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, when playing a boxing game was as simple as pressing one button to control the right hand and another button to control the left. But for all the advances video games have made, how could they even begin to represent the virtually limitless possibilities in mixed martial arts?

That was the challenge for Neven Dravinski, the product manager on THQ's UFC 2009 Undisputed, a video game set to be released this spring. Dravinski told me he thinks THQ has developed "the most faithful representation of mixed martial arts" that gamers have ever seen.

"With regards to striking it's the same buttons: right punch, left punch, right kick, left kick, with height modifiers and blocking high and blocking low," Dravinski said. "But half of the moves come from the ground, grapple and clinch positions, and that's the big challenge with creating a mixed martial arts game, which is why previous attempts have been unsuccessful."

Dravinski, who did some Brazilian jiu jitsu training while studying software development at USC, said the game gives players a realistic feel of the ground game.

"You'll end up in, say, open guard, and then you've got moves that let you go to half guard, or to side control," Dravinski said. "If a guy's in side control on the bottom he can transition the guy on the top back into half guard. When you're on the bottom you've got the option to pull your opponent down so he can't tee off on your face. We've tried our best to capture the complexity and the struggle of the ground game. Once you play the game and see the differences in the position that you're able to achieve, you'll see we've managed to capture the essence of getting to these positions, struggling within them and then initiating submissions."

UFC 2009 Undisputed will include more than 80 fighters, including the champions in all five weight classes, and Dravinski says the depiction of those fighters will be extremely realistic.

"We work with a studio that does CG for Hollywood films, and we use 3D scanning -- taking a 3D image of the fighter's body, so every indentation, even things like the scar on Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira's back, is represented. And then we take high-res photography of each fighter from every angle, from the bottom of their feet to the tops of their heads, and that's actually what we use to create photo-realistic representations."

Dravinski said the fighters who have worked with THQ on UFC 2009 Undisputed have come away impressed.

"They've come into the office and played the game, and we get an insight into their thoughts," he said. "They've been overwhelmed with how this game looks -- 'Wow, that's me' -- and guys like Rampage Jackson and Michael Bisping, who are serious gamers, have been really, really impressed with the things they can do, with takedowns, sweeps, even rubber guard. That nuance they appreciate."

The game will also include commentary from the UFC's regular announcers.

"We have some of the best audio commentary that you're ever going to hear in any game," Dravinski said. "Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg came in for over 36 hours. We'd play the game for them and they'd call it like a normal fight, and we'd set up a specific situation and they'd call it."

Fighters included in the game are classified based on their abilities in boxing, muay Thai, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu jitsu and wrestling. Every fighter in the game can do the basic punches, kicks and takedowns, but the ability to pull off, say, a complex submission in UFC 2009 Undisputed is based on whether the fighter has high-level jiu jitsu in real life.

"If a fighter has been submitted by a knee bar before in real life, in the game he'd be more vulnerable to that," Dravinski said.

Dravinski said he thinks that before big fights, UFC fans will use the game to play out the match-ups they'll see. But while fighters can move up or down a weight class, the game doesn't allow players to use a heavyweight to squash a lightweight.

"We stay faithful to what you could find," Dravinski said. "You can have a guy move up or down a weight class. You can have B.J. Penn vs. Georges St. Pierre, but you can't have B.J. Penn vs. Brock Lesnar."

As for Penn vs. St. Pierre, we'll find out who wins when they step into the Octagon Saturday night at UFC 94. But what would their match-up look like in UFC 2009 Undisputed?

"You'll be able to see that GSP has a reach advantage, that GSP has stand-up skills like his axe kick," Dravinski said. "B.J. has a special animation that shows how good he is at dodging punches. B.J. is one of the best Brazilian jiu jitsu guys and he's rated as such in the game. GSP is one of the most well rounded individuals around, and I think we captured that in the game. Those details are why this is the best MMA game made to date."