There are some stories that are best told by those who lived them. I can say I was an almost complete mark during the era of the Monday Night Wars. I, like most of my fellow television watchers, switched from WWF to WCW when the NWO hits its stride with the Hogan turn at the Bash at the Beach, easily the biggest mark out moment in pro wrestling history for all marks. I loved the WCW product but eventually returned to the WWF as things got sillier and sillier with WCW. The emergence of the Wolfpac started to push me back. The Montreal Incident and “Austin” sent me over almost for good. By the time Tony Schiavone announced, “That’ll put a lot of butts in the seats,” I changed the channel for good.
There are much more qualified people to talk about that story that story this week. Instead, I’ll look back at something that I’m much closer to. The battle between WCW and WWF had a very interesting background on the Nintendo 64 and the Playstation. The “Video Game Wars” created some of the most interesting battles away from the ring. Simply put, the WWF’s victory can be paralleled on the gaming market just as easily as it could be seen on television.
The Pre-Playstation/Nintendo 64 Era
WCW had only released two video games in the era before video games entered into the mainstream. These titles were WCW Wrestling (for the NES) and WCW Superbrawl Wrestling. WCW Wrestling was a port of Super Star Pro Wrestling, a game featuring such greats as Big Van Vader, Abdullah the Butcher, Giant Baba, the Road Warriors, and Stan Hansen. The US version of the game lost all of these characters besides the Road Warriors but added Ric Flair, Sting, Kevin Sullivan, Rick Steiner (misspelled as Ric), and “Dr. Death” Steve Williams. The ultimate boss, WCW Master, was thought to be based on Andre the Giant. This game was really ahead of its time featuring such innovations as weapons.
The sequel to it, WCW Superbrawl Wrestling, was mediocre at best. Featuring the likes of the Steiner Brothers, Sting, Lex Luger, Dustin Rhodes, and Ricky Steamboat, the game featured bad animation and shoddy collision detection. Considering this is from the mini-movie era, it could have been a lot worse.
On the other side of things, the WWF cranked out video games of varying quailty. For every solidly entertaining game like WWF Raw or WWF Wrestlefest there were two horrible games like Super Wrestlemania, WWF Steel Cage, or WWF Rage in the Cage. Still, the market was dominated by WWF games because Vince was marketing to children and families at the time. It only makes sense that the WWF games literally outnumbered WCW games 15 to 1.
WCW vs nWo: World Tour
THQ’s first attempt on the Nintendo 64 at making a wrestling game was clearly the best wrestling game stateside. The game came out of Eric Bischoff’s mind as a way to not just beat the WWF in terms of pure wrestling and rating, but also in merchandizing. With cartoonish wrestling games filling the market (Wrestlemania: the Arcade Game allowed the Undertaker to smash your head in with an actual stone tombstone as a finishing move), WCW vs nWo: World Tour was an attempt to capture a more realistic wrestling experience. The game, developed by Asmik Ace and AKI, was the first fully 3D wrestling game and it consisted of a grapple based fighting system, each with different strengths. The puro based grappling system added a degree of real strategy to what used to be a button mashing experience.
Even more interesting was the fact that many of the wrestlers from New Japan were in the game. Despite not having the official license, the likeness and move sets of several wrestlers such as The Great Sauske, Abdullah The Butcher, TAKA Michinoku, and The Original Sheik were all available. Despite some gameplay issues (mostly based on collision detection), this was easily the best wrestling game in the United States until its sequel was released. WCW vs nWo: World Tour sold like hot cakes. It was one of the earliest Player’s Choice titles for the Nintendo 64 selling several million copies and making the WCW property one of the hottest video game licenses in the 32/64 bit era.
WCW/nWo: Revenge
The sequel to WCW vs nWo: World Tour capitalized on the success of the original game by making some improvements, but took a few steps backwards in other departments. The unlicensed wrestlers of the previous game were (mostly) cut to make room for a much larger roster from WCW. The costumes of several of the Japanese characters were changed to make them less recognizable as opposed to World Tour. New factions included nWo Wolfpac, Raven’s Flock, and nWo Hollywood. Revenge added in wrestlers such as Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, Raven, Booker T, Randy Savage, and Goldberg. Also, real finishing moves for several wrestlers such as the Jackknife Powerbomb for Kevin Nash or Chris Benoit’s Crippler Crossface. For some reason, Ric Flair was not playable in this game.
There were other improvements made to the game. Several wrestlers could have their valets accompany them to the ring. A replay feature was added, recapping the last ten seconds of the match. Real WCW venues and wrestler entrances were available for this installment of the game. Additionally, for the first time in the history of wrestling games, you could “steal” your opponents’ taunts creating a more realistic wrestling experience.
A new combo system was added to this installment. Unfortunately, this combo system was pretty largely flawed. The system was incredibly difficult it was to use. Furthermore, the combo system minimized how effective the grappling was. Frontal grapples were essentially cut in half. This feature wouldn’t survive in the next incarnation of THQ’s hit series, nor would the WCW license.
The Playstation WCW Games
Three WCW games published by THQ found their way to the original Sony Playstation. The three games, WCW vs the World, WCW Nitro, and WCW Thunder, were received with a *cough* mixed reaction.
The first game, WCW vs the World, was the first WCW game released under the Eric Bischoff “flood the market” era. It essentially mirrored the grappling system seen later in WCW vs nWo: World Tour. While the roster was bigger then World Tour, featuring over 50 different wrestlers (most having their likenesses copied from New Japan), the game had several issues. For one, it was ugly. We’re talking what Lex Luger brings home after spending all of his money on cocaine ugly. Otherwise, the game was pretty solid and is probably the best of the WCW games on the Sony Playstation.
The less said about Nitro and Thunder, the better. Developer Inland Productions wretched gaming history accounts for both Thunder and Nitro, along with a bass fishing game. WCW Nitro was a wretched game. It features commentary from Tony Schiavone that makes John Madden sound like John F Kennedy getting fed lines from Steven Hawking. The game has awful graphics to match the horrible sound. The controls are exceptionally difficult and most matches end up turning into trying to button mash your way to victory and hoping the computer isn’t able to perform any grapples on you. Finally, there is an absurd amount of characters to unlock, each one forcing you to go through the game’s tournament mode. You start out with 16 characters and can unlock nearly 50 more characters. These characters range from the good (Steven Regal, Disco Inferno, Chris Jericho) to the awful (T Rex, Frankensteiner, Santa Claws, Dude man). This game for some reason was ported to the Nintendo 64 so everyone can enjoy it…
Then we come to the ultimate of bad WCW games. WCW Thunder is the direct sequel to WCW Nitro. Rather then trying to streamline and simplify the experience, WCW Thunder builds upon all that was wrong with WCW Nitro. Bobby “The Brain” Heenan joins Schiavone on commentary adding in “Piledriver!” or “Sting is getting tired”. This is mixed in with some of the worst rock music of all time. The controls once again are ridiculously difficult to pick up without a strategy guide, but the AI evens this out as it is about as threatening as Pepe was after being shoved into a wood chipper. The game features actual wrestlers this time around rather then awful “original” characters, but that is about the only bright spot of this game.
In short, THQ put this dog of a developer down before moving on to the much more entertaining Smackdown series on the Playstation.
The License Switch
Acclaim had churned out two WWF games in response to the success of the WCW games. WWF Warzone and WWF Attitude were much touted for their “create-a-wrestler” mode, really revolutionizing the industry. Both Warzone and Attitude though were inferior games in terms of control to THQ’s WCW series. THQ never created a “Create-a-Wrestler” mode for any of its WCW games. The closest they came was to that mode was a costume editor mode in Revenge that allowed players to swap the pallet colors of a wrestler’s outfit.
A third party entered into the wrestling game equation in Electronic Arts. At the time, WCW was a much more profitable brand having put out several successful video games and having lead in the Monday Night Wars. Electronic Arts inked a five year deal with WCW in March of 1998. This was seen as a universally good deal for both WCW and Electronic Arts as WCW vs nWo: World Tour had sold over 500,000 copies is under one month, an extraordinary number for a game put out by a third party at the time. THQ had taken a pretty extraordinary blow.
Despite this, THQ had realized what a profitable license the WWF license could be. THQ signed a contract with the WWF in 1999 after Acclaim’s contract expired. They proceeded to put into development two games. Wrestlemania 2000 was the successor to WCW/nWo: Revenge on the Nintendo 64. Rather then subjecting the world to another Inland Productions abortion, THQ hired YUKE’s Future Media Creators to develop a completely new game, known as Smackdown, on the Playstation console.
Acclaim was essentially left out in the dust. Realizing that wrestling games was one of the largest sellers, they invested in the ECW license combining the unique brand of garbage wrestling with THQ’s own unique brand of “garbage game”. The two ECW games were considerably awful due to bad graphics and even worse controls. Furthermore, both Electronic Arts and THQ had installed create-a-wrestler modes into their games which essentially underminded Acclaim’s one advantage.
WCW Disasters with Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts put out two games with the WCW moniker, WCW Mayhem and WCW Backstage Assault. Electronic Arts and WCW put massive amounts of marketing into these games. For weeks, Monday Night Nitro and Thursday Night Thunder were adorned with a clock on how close WCW Mayhem was to release. WCW Mayhem was even turned into a pay-per-view (held in November 1999) to promote the game during the holiday season despite being released at the end of August.
WCW Mayhem featured an incredibly unique backstage hardcore match. Mayhem also was the first WCW game to feature the arenas of all the WCW Pay Per Views. It also featured a create-a-wrestler for the first time in a WCW game. Mayhem featured quite a large roster to flesh out the game.
The reactions to WCW Mayhem were strong in the gaming press (IGN gave it an 8.5, Gamepro gave it a 4.5/5), but eventually criticisms by gamers who had spent more then an hour or two with the game began to spread across the Internet. WCW Mayhem was an incredibly shallow game. The create-a-wrestler mode didn’t offer much, well, creativity, and each character had a very limited moveset. While the backstage modes were entertaining, they didn’t provide a very deep experience. Furthermore, the game’s collision detection was sorely off. In short, WCW Mayhem presented gamers with an interesting idea or two, but the core of the game was deeply flawed.
Rather then working on the flaws of the original game, Electronic Arts released a second game called WCW Backstage Assault, a game that focused purely on backstage brawls. The game was lambasted by both critics and gamers alike. While there was some depth as many of the wrestlers needed to be unlocked, the game’s core issues remained the same as Mayhem. The controls were virtually untouched. Collision detection was still a major problem. The commentary from Mayhem was essentially copied and reused in Backstage Assault. All of these problems were compounded by the fact that this wasn’t really a wrestling game. Needless to say, WCW fans were pissed and demanded that Electronic Arts return to a more traditional wrestling game. Unfortunately, EA would never get the chance at WCW Mayhem 2 never saw the light of day on the day hell froze over.
Aftermath
THQ produced two successful wrestling games with the WWF license. Wrestlemania 2000 created an incredibly solid wrestling experience that was only improved on by the seminal WWF No Mercy. With the death of the Nintendo 64, THQ moved to the Nintendo Gamecube without AKI. AKI went to develop games for Electronic Arts. THQ’s first release on the Gamecube, Wrestlemania X-8, was seen as a horrid game. While each release improved a little bit, no recent wrestling games on the Nintendo Gamecube come close to achieving what was done on the Nintendo 64. Thankfully for THQ, the Smackdown series became a huge success, especially on the Playstation 2. Smackdown currently remains one of the most popular franchises on Sony’s gaming system and it will certainly be seen on the Sony Playstation 3.
Acclaim Entertainment lost the ECW licensed when ECW was purchased by the WWF in 2001. Acclaim tried a “classic” wrestlers game with Legends of Wrestling. The game was excellent in concept but clunky in execution. The Legends of Wrestling series opened THQ’s eyes to including several “Legends” in the most recent WWE games. Many WCW fans rejoiced when they were greeted by Bobby Heenan, Larry Zbyszko, and Tony Schiavone for the game’s third installment, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective), this was to be the last of these games. Acclaim Entertainment itself hit a patch of bad luck to go along with their bad games and was forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2004. The Acclaim brand name is not dead though as former Activision executive Howard Marks purchased the name “Acclaim Games” for $100,000 in December 2005.
Electronic Arts suffered only slightly from the loss of WCW. They continued to rely on their yearly sports games and purchases of other game companies and licenses to make money. Electronic Arts morphed the original intentions of WCW Mayhem 2 into a completely different beast. They hired the Aki Corporation, developers of most of THQ’s wrestling games on the Nintendo 64, to develop Def Jam Vendetta, a pseudo wrestling game that allowed players to choose their favorite rap and hip hop superstars and take them into a fight (similar to the backstage modes in their WCW games). Def Jam Fight for New York capitalized on the success of the first game and was released in 2004. It is unknown if Electronic Arts is working on another sequel to this game. Considering how well they have sold so far and how much critical praise these games have received, it seems pretty likely.
