Shaquille O’Neal Crowdfunding Shaq Fu Sequel

Almost 20 years ago, EA released a game called Shaq Fu. It was a fighting game starring basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. As one would expect from that description alone, it is considered one of the worst games of all time. But Shaq doesn’t want that game to be his legacy, so he’s taking another run at it.

Shaq has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund a sequel to his fighting game for $450,000. Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is being developed by Big Deez Productions, a new studio staffed by people who’ve worked on some pretty big name franchises like Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Max Payne, and Halo. The game is a beat-em-up being developed for the PC, where players will control Shaq as he fights to defeat the Black Star Ninja and his army of assassins. It will also have a soundtrack done by Steve Molitz, the keyboardist for the band Particle, featuring remixes of songs from Shaq’s “illustrious” rap career.

Now some of you might be wondering why go the crowdfunding route. Shaq is a millionaire, with a net worth of $350 million. Surely he could afford to fund the entire game on his own. Well, Big Deez thought you might say that, so they included this little blurb on their campaign page…

He is the best center ever to play the game.  Of course he’s got money, and yes he will be investing a lot of his own time and money in this project.  We will be investing considerably more of our own money in the game than we are asking for.

The purpose of bringing the game to the public is to see how much interest there is in becoming Shaq’s partner and in seeing the game happen.  In exchange for your help, Shaq, is offering unprecedented access to his life with incredible perks.

Some of these perks include signed size 22 shoes, playing a game against Shaq on his own private court, and being part of the taping of a TNT show at an NBA game, plus a lot more stuff.

At time of writing, the campaign has raised $56,345 of its $450,000 budget with 44 days to go. The campaign will be ending on April 20th, 2014, at 11:59pm PST.

Source: Indiegogo