Day of Reckoning was well received by fans and critics alike, due in large to the title's pick-up-and-play control mechanics, a decent selection of superstars, divas, and venues, a fun story mode, and a deep create-a-wrestler feature. Without doubt, the fundamentals were in place, and they worked. But the title was not without shortcomings. As intuitive as the game's grappling system proved to be, the control configuration lent itself to button mashing, which turned some hardcore wrestling game fans off. Meanwhile, the story mode was positively shallow compared to some other wrestling projects on the market. And sure enough, some critics complained that the title looked less realistic than its counterparts.

The 20-something team at Yuke's and the creative gurus at THQ combed the message boards, compiled a list of what worked and what didn't, and ran with it. The result is WWE Day of Reckoning 2, the aptly named sequel to last year's game. DOR 2, which has been in development ever since the first shipped, is a true sequel in every sense. It doesn't dismiss the mechanics of its predecessor for all new ones, but rather builds on top of them, enabling a bigger, meatier product on all fronts.

If all goes as planned, Day of Reckoning will be, to use associate creative manager Matt Greig's own words, "the definitive GameCube product for WWE." He explains further: "What we mean by that is that it's a superset of everything that came before on GameCube. We're not taking anything out. We're using Day of Reckoning as a starting point and building in features from previous games, and adding new stuff that we prototyped and realized would work well. We're looking at it as a collector's edition. Obviously, GameCube is nearing the end of its lifecycle so we're trying to put something out there that will stand the test of time for several years to come."