IMAGES COURTESY MEGA CAT STUDIOS

If you grew up watching professional wrestling, you likely collected brightly colored action figures of your favorite stars, pitting them against one another in epic matches on the bedroom floor. In the new video game “WrestleQuest,” that experience is a sprawling role-playing game, as digitized toys square off in an intriguing fantasy world.

And the game, which has drawn raves from players and critics alike, was developed and designed in Pittsburgh.

Developers Mega Cat Studios specialize in newly designed but retro-feeling games; some of their prior creations have even been issued in ’80s-style packaging and hard plastic cases. Company founder James Deighan says that the company, which is based in Polish Hill, are lovers of the pixel era of gaming.

“When we started Mega Cat, we knew that we wanted to make a fantastic, classic JRPG,” he says, referencing the genre that includes Super Nintendo classics such as “Chrono Trigger” and “Earthbound.” “A lot of us grew up in that 16-bit era, and we have a reverence for those games.”

Several of the developers, Deighan says, also grew up as wrestling fans, collecting and playing with tiny muscled grapplers. The team, however, wanted to make something new. The challenge: “How can we create a unique visual identity for a wrestling game that doesn’t get lost in the sauce with the other 500 pixel-art wrestling games that have been made?”

The solution was the action-figure concept. In “WrestleQuest,” figures come to life a la “Toy Story,” subbing out plastic accessories and climbing into Lilliputian wrestling rings. “You can create your rules with toys,” Deighan says. “If Andre the Giant wants to be an actual giant and snap the ring in half,” he can — without breaking the reality of the world.

The legendary Andre is in the game, as are a dozen other wrestling heroes such as the Road Warriors and “Macho Man” Randy Savage. While the big names gained the attention of wrestling fans, Deighan says the game isn’t just for devotees of the squared circle.

“The wrestling fans showed up pretty heavily, but the RPG fans showed up even bigger … I’ve never, at Mega Cat, had projects that resonated so well with a lot of fans. We get daily fanmail.”

It’s a new level of notoriety for Mega Cat, as the company has made several successful licensed games — some with notable names such as Transformers and Power Rangers — but has never delivered such a large and highly anticipated game. That’s unusual for a studio based in Pittsburgh.

“Ninety percent of the video game industry exists on the West Coast. People are always shocked when we say Pittsburgh,” Deighan says. “Without having this hotbed of gaming, we really can’t emulate the success of others.”

Deighan hopes that the video-game community only grows in a tech-focused city, citing the amount of talent coming out of local universities as an asset. He’s quick to say, however, that the DIY origins of Mega Cat were a large part of the studio’s success.

“All the leadership team,” also including head of studio Zack Menko and COO Nick Mann, were “born and raised in Pittsburgh. Most of us were already in the retro gaming community … It was almost like, ‘OK, do you guys want to start a band?’”

“WrestleQuest” is available now on Nintendo Switch, XBox, Playstation, Steam and Netflix Games. More information and more games are available on the Mega Cat website.