Golden Age of Wrestling Games

After playing the very fun WWE All-Stars the past month or so, I've been thinking about what makes a great wrestling game. All-Stars is fun to me because the matches flow back and forth, each wrestler (which is what I will call them regardless of what WWE tells me to do) seems to have their own identity and play style. All moves can be reversed, and anyone can pick up and have fun with the game, but if you spend some time with it you can learn how to chain moves together and have a lot of fun

Also in the past month, I transplanted my otherwise ignored N64 into the “Classic Games Corner” he has set up in his basement. We've been going through some old games, most notably (to me) the AKI developed wrestling games.

Many people have fond memories of these games for various reasons, they came out at a time when Pro Wrestling was a hot commodity, the time when WCW and WWE were going at each other in the Monday Night Wars, which gave them a lot of publicity. As games in their own right, they also stood out above wrestling games that came out before them. Before these games, we were used to wrestling games with small rosters and button-mashing galore, and the ever present fighting game like health meter. We took these games in stride, we didn't know any better.

Somewhat inspired by the Tony Hawk feature running on 4th String right now, I'm going to do some write-ups on these 4 games (WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000, and WWF No Mercy) specifically, and maybe touch on the other wrestling games coming out around this time.

First up, WCW vs. nWo: World Tour

(I would like to preface this with saying that I am aware of the existence of “WCW vs. The World” on the PS1 that came out a few months before this game, and that it does have some of the same features, I played it back in the day, but don't remember it being anything spectacular, but it did lay down some of the groundwork for this game)

The Time

WCW vs. nWo: World Tour came out in late 1997, right when WCW was dominating the WWE (WWF at the time) in the Monday Night Ratings war. As the name implies, the game was built around the WCW vs. nWo storyline that had propelled WCW to their current position.

The opening cinematic that plays via in-game character models was nice, but I'm betting it was mostly done due to the N64's lack of space for full video. We see a scene typical of WCW at the time, The Giant in the ring making a challenge to Hollywood Hogan on the outside, and Sting drops from the rafters.

Game Modes

Getting into the main menu we are presented with the typical game modes, exhibition, league challenge, which is the name for the single player “beat everybody” mode, knock-out tournament, and round-robin tournament. (A personal favorite mode of mine) and “WCW vs. nWo” which was a team based gauntlet style match where each team chose 5 (or less) wrestlers, and tried to beat the other team in a series of 1 on 1 matches.

Going into exhibition mode, we see the standard match types, 1 on 1, tag team, 2 on 1 handicap, and 4-player battle royal. Pretty standard stuff, although the 4-player battle royal was kind of unique to the game, and this kind of match did not happen very often (if ever) in wrestling at the time.

Before getting into a match, you are given match options such as changing the amound of time you can spend outside the ring before getting counted out, weather or not reaching the ropes will break pins and holds, and how victory can be achived. Messing around with these options gave you some match types that weren't necessarily stated. Wanted a submissions only match? Turn off count outs, pinfalls, and knockouts. You could also set up matches that had no way of ending, if you perhaps wanted to do a match with your friend to see who could play the longest without getting bored/having to use the bathroom. (I never did this, and in fact only thought of it just now)

The Roster

Finally we get to the roster screen, where we find the first major difference between this and every other wrestling game that came before it. We are presented with the WCW roster, which has the standard number of wrestlers we've seen in a wrestling game to this point, and is a healthy selection of WCW wrestlers of the time. We have Ric Flair, Sting, Lex Luger, along with cruiserweight favorites like Dean Malenko, Rey Mysterio, Jr, and Ultimo Dragon. Paging over we find the smaller selection of nWo wrestlers, including Hollywood Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash.

Also included in the game are two pages of “fictional” wrestlers. These guys are actually faked up versions of real Japanese wrestlers, such as Taka Michinoku (who was wrestling for WWE at the time) and The Great Sasuke. It was easily the biggest roster assembled in a wrestling game to that point, where wrestling games typically featured 12 or so of the biggest names of the promotion.

Gameplay

Finally we get into the gameplay, which was unlike anything we had seen in the united states at this point. The first thing I noticed was that there was no health meter, in it's place was a “Spirit” meter that fluctuated as the match went on. It worked similar to a health meter, in that it started in green, and as the match went on, if you were winning, it worked it's way up to read, and eventually “Speical” which would allow you to perform a powerful finishing manuever. Similarly, if you were getting beat on, your spirit meter would drain and eventually read “danger” at which point it was more likely you could be beaten, but if you could make some counters and get back on offense, your spirit meter would recover. This allowed for great back and forth matches that hadn't been seen before.

The controls were simple and effective. The A button initiated grapples, and the B button launched striking attacks. Hold the buttons down to get more powerful grapples and strikes, at the risk of leaving you open to smaller attacks. Once in a grapple, a combination of either the A or B buttons and the D-Pad gave you a couple different moves to try, or you could press a button to irish whip your opponent to the ropes or to the corner. The controls worked exactly the same no matter what position your oppponent was in, if he was on the ground, the grapple button would lock on a hold, and the strike button would drop an elbow or knee. Throw your opponent to the corner and grapple them to do something like superplex off the top.

Countering moves was done via the L and R buttons, L would counter grapple attempts, and R would catch strikes. Depending on who you were, the counters were as simple as a counter punch, or sometimes more complicated like catching a kick and then doing a dragon screw leg whip to take your opponent down. To be quite honest, I'm not sure there is a definite way to reverse moves, but it did depend on your spirit meter, the higher it was, the more likely you were to reverse a move.

Variety

Wrestling games before this were victims of giving the already limited selection of wrestlers one or two common movesets, with perhaps only a finishing move to differentiate between guys. For the first time here, every wrestler seems different, with very few common moves between them. If you play as The Giant vs. Rey Mysterio Jr, The Giant is going to have to try to get a hold of Mysterio and not let him get away, while Rey Mysterio is going to have use his speed and get off running strikes and set up top rope maneuvers. It was fun to play as different wrestlers and actually have to play differently because of it. The Japanese wrestlers that I wasn't familiar with were especially fun, and they had moves that are not common in US wrestling.

This is also one of the first games to feature multiple costumes for each wrestler, since 2 or more players could play as the same wrestling if they wanted to. Some of these were simply palate swaps, but others were given thought into the wrestlers history. Sting is feaured in his black and white The Crow gimmick, as well as his more classic multi-color facepaint and tights. Hollywood Hogan has his then-current black and white gear, as well as a class red and yellow Hulk Hogan look. Lex Luger has both his WWE “Narcissist” and “Made in the USA” looks to choose from.

Faults

No game is perfect, so I will spend some time with some of the more bothersome things the game had going on, which at this time, aren't many. The graphics are passable, but do come from an era that haven't aged well. Even at the time, wrestlers arms always look seperate from the rest of their bodies, and there were some clipping and collision detection issues, but never anything that made you want to break your controller in anger. The music is all generic MIDI rock, in fact, if you have to fault this game for much of anything, it's that it's very generic. The WCW and nWo wrestlers have moves that look like their finishing and signature maneuvers, but nothing was done to differentiate the way Kevin Nash did his finishing powerbomb from the way Rey Mysterio or any other wrestler in the game used a powerbomb. DDP's Diamond Cutter looks slow and weak. Some wrestlers didn't have their signature moves at all, Steven Regal does a standard STF in place of the Regal Stretch, and Chirs Benoit's Crippler Crossface and Tripler German Suplexes are missing. There was also no weight difference in the game, which didn't hurt it too much, but it was funny to see Rey Mysterio slamming The Giant with ease.

Legacy

As the first game in the series, it's mostly forgettable now, but it is fun to go back and actually see how much of the guts of this game stayed in place for the next three games that came after. The later games will do just about everything better, have better rosters, and the graphics will improve. It is worth noting however that Round-robin tournament and WCW vs. nWo game modes would only appear in this game.

Great post mate. Really enjoyed reading that.

I used to be a fan of pro wrestling until the old ECW died.. then my interest slid sideways to MMA.

My first wrestling game was actually WWF Wrestlemania on the C64. Very much like Madden, computer games were how I got into the "sport" with the limited tv coverage of it over here until the early 90s.

As my platforms got upgraded, so did my games.. WWF Super Wrestlemania and WWF Raw on the SNES followed, followed by WCW vs NWO, and WCW vs The World on the Playstation, and after the PS2 was released, The WWF Smackdown! Series.

It was then my interest wained in WWF/E - but I do have very good and fun memories of the game I got the most enjoyment - SNES WWF Royal Rumble. That was a cracking game. Although recently with the Smackdown series I actually got more fun creating ECW wrestlers in the Smackdown CAW mode - the developers were very savvy in incorporting "move sets" that were blatently from WCW and ECW before the buyouts. I used to be able to make a superb Rob Van Dam and Sabu.