Halo developer Sabre Interactive once worked on a game about Donald Trump. The idea for the project, which Sabre Interactive ultimately abandoned, can be indirectly attributed to Shaquille O’Neal. Between Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Space Marine 2, the studio wanted to make a game about Donald Trump. This was stated by Sabre co-founder and CEO Matthew Karch, reported by GameRant.

Founded in 2001, Sabre Interactive has earned a reputation as a versatile studio capable of both managing projects and providing co-development services. Although the company has achieved many successes over the years, its first big breakthrough came with the critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, a remake of Microsoft’s iconic 2001 Xbox FPS.

Sabre Interactive was working on a Donald Trump game around 2018

The company later played a supporting role in Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and recently had success with Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, a hit third-person shooter that debuted in September 2024. The idea for a Trump game didn’t come overnight, but can be traced back to a fateful meeting Karch had with Shaquille O’Neal sometime after the release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary in 2011.

During their first meeting, Shaquille O’Neal pitched the idea for a game in which he would play a detective. Karch wasn’t exactly thrilled with the concept, but he eventually came up with something different, a sequel to EA’s 1994 game Shaq Fu. One Indiegogo campaign and $458,884 in crowdfunding later, Sabre Interactive created Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn, which ended up being one of the worst games of 2018.

The game, titled Trump Fu, was conceived as a concept for Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn

The fighting game even got Barack Obama-themed DLC in the form of Barack Fu: The Adventures of Dirty Barry, which, according to Karch himself, “absolutely no one played.” Trump’s cabinet sabotages him, his plane crashes, and he gets stranded in the Mexican desert, and he has to escape back through a wall. That was the story. Sabre later planned to create a spin-off called Trump Fu. The project was developed sometime during Trump’s first term as president of the United States. The idea was eventually scrapped, and Karch proposed an alternative fighting game concept themed around Putin, which also came to nothing.

While Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn didn’t exactly set the world on fire, it paved the way for Saber to land a deal for NBA Playgrounds. The sports game launched in May 2017 on a variety of platforms, including the then-two-month-old Switch. With Nintendo’s hybrid console suffering from a lack of games in its early days, NBA Playgrounds faced no competition and took over the eShop.