Wintereenmas: WCW/NWO Revenge

Oh, it’s been a  year since I quit action games, and focus more on starslots.com for gambling games where the money is flowing and now, it was my return to gaming. My brother had an N64, and I was the good brother that got him this for some sort of gift giving holiday, I’m sure.  And oh boy, did we play the heck out of this one.  WCW/NWO Revenge was certainly from the height of the company’s dominance over WWF.  You had the NWO, Goldberg, Raven, and a whole slew of WCW wrestlers.  While all of my friends were having a great time with WWF Warzone creating characters and versions of our crew, I was playing the best damn wrestling game there was, and there was a reason for that.  This game (check this out for complete details) was one the the early wrestling games put out by THQ, the company that would later bring us the fantastic WWF/E Smackdown series we still enjoy today.  Luckily, this version made the Playstation renditions of WCW Nitro and Thunder look like a joke. In case you’re interested in what I’ve been up to lately, just follow this site to see why I move to online casinos.

The game was not without it’s faults.  Due to the unfortunate size limitations, while our friends were getting CD quality DX theme music, we were stuck with some generic digital entrances.  WrestleMania for the NES at least had custom themes!  Also, in what seems like an attempt to expand the roster, there were inclusions of several fake feds (at least I’ve never heard of them).  This may be a hold over of the WCW vs the World/World tour games with awkwardly large, and Japanese, rosters.  All of the characters were cheasy, and you’d avoid them, except the ninja, for me I would rather play with 666 Casino games.

But the rest of the game was great.  You didn’t have a custom wrestler mode, but you did have the ability to arrange the wrestlers in factions as you’d like and swap wardrobe amongst the roster.  I recall making great strides to divide up the NWO at the proper point, and turn Hogan back to the Red and Yellow.  Also, I think I turned The Giant into Big Show when that change occured.  The game had fun weapons, that came from the crowd, a good battle royal mode, and decent enough title modes.  And venues for all of the major PPVs of the era!  All this, and the quintessential representation of the NWO, The Flock, cruiserweights, and tag teams.  I’d dare say this was the best WCW game ever done.

Of course, the Asmik Ace/AKI engine that was known for a great grappling system, was carried over when THQ took on WWF in WrestleMania 2000, and the epic No Mercy.

But while this game didn’t have all the fancy CD-quality features, it did have this sweeeeeeetttt intro…

Wintereenmas: WWF Wrestlefest

"Meeeeeaaaannnnn Gene...."

I recall back in the day, I had maybe a year’s worth subscription to the good old WWF Magazine circa 1992.  This was where you heard of great things like those sweet wrestler ice cream bars, or, of course, WWF Arcade games!  I once happened across a machine for WWF WrestleFest, and it was wrestling fan Nirvana.  The characters were large and colorful.  This was likely one of the first appearances of the Royal Rumble, ring entrances, actual people in the crowd, and the only showing of Saturday Night Main Event that I know of.

Glad to see the guest of WMS 204 in a video game!

I had a chance to revisit this one, taking the aforementioned Saturday Night Main Event Tag Team mode the distance, beating the unplayable Legion of Doom with my team of Ultimate Warrior and Jake “The Snake” Roberts.  The button mashing was to be had!  Then the Royal Rumble mode, the only other mode in the game, is great.  Six guys start off, and after pinning, yes pinning, you see the entrance of the next.  This, and digitized Mean Gene Okerland!  This is easily the most fun game of one of my favorite eras in wrestling.  There’s even a page dedicated to bringing the game back to Xbox Live!

Wintereenmas: WWF Rage in the Cage

I wasn’t on the cusp of technology in the early ’90’s. I found that the best way was to wait until a console was in it’s later years and clean up at the used game store, ebay, etc.  One of the best things I found, and something that had been on my wish list for some time: WWF Rage in the Cage.

It was the quintesential wrestling game.  It had all of the colorful graphics we came to expect of the Super NES and Sega Genesis WWF games of this era.  The huge 16-bit graphics.  Man.  This was good stuff.  On top of that, that Sega CD delivered on the major promise of CD-Rom:  Full.  Motion.  Video.  Watch as your favorite bigger than life wrestlers actually move on the screen in glorious 16 color palettes in the quarter center of your screen!

It wasn’t all good in Mayhem Land for this installment, though.  We had the cage.  We had the video.  We had the Fink giving digitized ring announcements, as well as digitized voices of the roster.  We even had a tag team representation in the Headshrinkers and the Nasty Boys!   But no tag team option.  Ouch.  But still, for 1993, this was the best game in town, and this week we celebrate it!