Pride GP 2003

During the height of the Mixed Martial Arts boom in Japan, the famous video game company Capcom partnered with the MMA promotion Pride Fighting Championship to create their last licensed game before the yakuza-filled promotion went south...

...Speaking of Capcom, the game could have been the debut of a famous Street Fighter star in the squared circle.

Sub-Pages#

Unused Audios

Cut Characters#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Check arcade ROM to see if there's any extra characters

Analysing the game's audio files and their order, it's fairly evident that the game is missing many characters with partially complete character-related audios delivered by announcers and commentators. The three unmade characters that made it further are kickboxing superstar Bob Sapp, Fighting Network RINGS veteran Hiromitsu Kanehara, and, most surprisingly, Gouki from Street Fighter, each having a planned slot in the final roster which was either replaced (Saku Machine in the Bob Sapp slot) or left out (Kanehara, Gouki).

The audio files also include partial hints of RINGS veteran Kiyoshi Tamura, UFC star Chuck Liddell and Pride veteran Renzo Gracie as planned characters, and even at one point the newcomer Antônio Rogério Nogueira was seemingly considered. Less likely, however, is the inclusion of Tom Erikson and Gilbert Yvel, who also appeared in the previous Pride video game.

Surprisingly enough, late 2003-2004 newcomers Josh Barnett and Murilo Bustamante have audience cheers, but there's no any other indicator of their possible appearance.

Note that the unlisted character values 01-17, 19-26, and 28-29 (and their respective voice files order) have been removed for easier reading, since they're complete and share the same VA order.

Bob Sapp, one of the biggest celebrities in Japan at that time, was for a long time meant to be in the game. According to the audio file order, he would have filled the character slot 18 — however, in the final game he is replaced by Saku Machine (an alternate Kazushi Sakuraba persona based on his intros), who seems to have been hastily created to fill his slot. Sapp was probably dropped from the game for licensing issues with the K-1 kickboxing promotion, as he didn't appear in any Pride match after 2002, while he's playable in almost every K-1 game from World Grand Prix: The Beast Attack! to Premium 2005 Dynamite.

Hiromitsu Kanehara was also meant to be playable at some point, filling the character slot 27. However, for some unknown reason, he was also dropped from the roster at a fairly early point, since neither Masaharu Miyake or Nobuhiko Takada recorded any audios featuring him. Unlike Sapp, his character slot is empty in the final game.

Gouki, also known as Akuma from Street Fighter fame, was clearly meant to be in the game during most of its development, filling the character slot between 31 and 33 (Mirko Cro Cop and Referee Yuji Shimada). Much like Kanehara, his character slot is also empty in the game.

Kiyoshi Tamura and Chuck Liddell seem to be temporary mid-development additions: commentaries from Takada and Miyake are the only remainder of their participation, although most of Miyake's lines were deleted. Likewise, although they were seemingly dropped later than Sapp, neither Lenne Hardt's victory lines nor Miyake's latest lines feature them.

Renzo Gracie has the exact same audio file attributes as Tamura and Liddell — however, unlike them, he's also got announcer and audience audios, which are probably a leftover from the previous Pride 2002 game where he was a playable character. Likewise, Tom Erikson and Gilbert Yvel's audios are also very likely to be leftovers from the same game, since neither fighter had a strong presence in 2003.

Antônio Rogério Nogueira was likely a character cut in the earliest stages of development, since only the announcers recorded audios for him.

Unused Images#

While trying to play as Gouki (or Kanehara) only lets you use a Gary Goodrige dummy model (Character 0), there still exists a placeholder image for Gouki's versus profile.