Second Look: WCW/nWo Revenge

Ah, the wrestling video game. These days, they're as regular and consistent as any other sports title; annual releases with updated franchises and rosters, and occasionally an interesting gameplay enhancement. While consistently improving graphically to keep current and competitive within their respective console capabilities, these games have simply become serialized, much as their NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA brethren. I don't mean to cast a disparaging hue on this fact, but at the risk of sounding like Grandpa Scoundrel, these kids today don't know how good they have it.

Alright class, let's take a quick look at the evolution that has brought us to where we are today, shall we? In the 12 years since the millennium, there have been... wait for it... over 30 licensed WWE video games released. These include the 13 official, chronological titles that began with WWF Smackdown in the year 2000, became the Smackdown vs. Raw series for a good seven years or so, and was only just recently simplified and rebranded as the "WWE Series" with the most recent entry, WWE '12. Outside of that primary series, another 8 "serious" WWE wrestling sim games were released with updated rosters and realistic physics, along with a handful of supplemental, non-canon offerings highlighting legends of the industry and featuring exaggerated, arcade-style graphics and gameplay. There were even a few novelty titles bearing the WWE mantle, such as the Twisted Metal-esque "Crush Hour" and the turn-based card game "With Authority!" for the PC. 

My... how far we've come.

If you've been paying attention thus far, you'll have noticed two things: first, there is clearly a market for WWE branded video games, and second, World Wrestling Entertainment is quite obviously making a killing off these titles. What may not be immediately apparent, however, is that ALL of these games released since the year 2000 (yes, even the 8-10 released for handheld consoles), were released by THQ, who quietly but consistently have been collecting their own steady stream of ducats for over a decade, thanks to their mutually exclusive relationship with Vince McMahon’s sports entertainment juggernaut. So how did THQ wrestle their way into being the sole purveyor of the WWE’s interactive digital offerings? For the answer we have to go back even further in time and to an entirely different wrestling promotion company altogether, which is where we'll unearth this entry of Second Look.

In 1997, before the WWE was the undisputed king of the ring, they were battling with rival company WCW (World Championship Wrestling) over television ratings, merchandise, live show attendance, and basic seniority as the top dog promotion. Video games were a part of that rivalry, however trivial they may have been proportionately, and the WWE, (back then known as the WWF) were content to coast by with their exclusive developer of over 12 years, Acclaim Games. Remember them? It seemed like every third video game released throughout the nineties was associated with Acclaim in one way or another. Well, the WWF games were no exception; starting way back in 1988, the WWF contracted them to produce their video games, and they didn't revisit that decision until someone forced their hand.

Prior to THQ stepping into the squared circle, wrestling games were generally hit and miss. Some are nostalgically fun now, such as Pro Wrestling for the NES (A Winner Is You!), and some accomplished exactly what they set out to and were met with critical acclaim, as was the case with the outlandish and absurd brawler WrestleMania: The Arcade Game. But by and large, very few of the games released throughout the 1980-1990's actually felt like you were engaged in a real pro-wrestling match. Best case scenario was that you got a great, traditional-feeling fighting game that just so happened to take place in a wrestling ring, and in some of the worst cases you could expect to be punching complex combos into your controller, akin to Mortal Kombat finishing moves, just to perform a simple suplex on your opponent. It wasn't until the professional wrestling industry hit its peak of popularity in the late 1990's that someone attempted to create a wrestling game that truly FELT like a wrestling game. Enter the AKI Corporation.

Ugh. No thanks.

AKI was a small, independent video game developer based out of Tokyo who had done essentially nothing before they tried their hand at making a wrestling video game. Since the "big guys" were in bed with Acclaim, that left WCW as the only available major promotion that would potentially commission a video game based on their product. And so they did. Attempt number one was the little-known WCW vs. The World for the PlayStation, developed by AKI and published by THQ in early 1997. It was crude, clumsy, the graphics were poor, the sound quality was lackluster, and it featured a ratio of roughly 12 actual WCW wrestlers against nearly 40 Japanese or fictional wrestlers. It didn’t look, sound, or feel like a WCW experience, but what it did right, however, was successfully create a 3D wrestling game that truly felt not only 3D, but like a wrestling game.

Late that same year, the team of AKI and THQ put out WCW vs. NWO: World Tour for the Nintendo 64. This was a drastic improvement over the previous game, and introduced the world to their "grappling system" which would revolutionize and legitimize the wrestling video game industry. Essentially, it allowed you to grapple with your opponent, and input simple commands from within the grapple that would translate to different wrestling maneuvers. For example, while grappled to your foe, pressing A would make your character perform a sidewalk slam, pressing up+B would perform a snap suplex, down+A would perform an Irish whip into the turnbuckle… essentially it offered over twenty different combinations that translated to twenty unique maneuvers per wrestler, each with simple commands that didn’t feel like a chore to input. The rest of World Tour was lackluster; the graphics and controls were drastically improved over WCW vs. The World, but it still featured a very limited amount of real wrestlers, and it didn’t feel like a WCW product as it was missing the company’s signature attitude and style. There were glaring issues with the game as well, such as the complete lack of entranceway (the audience was around the ring 360 degrees, which begged the question: how’d the wrestlers get in there?), and the proportions of the characters were WAAAAAY off (5’ 6" tall Rey Mysterio Jr. stood eye to eye and nose to nose with the 7’ 1" Giant, and they had the same body mass dimensions as well).

Despite these issues, WCW vs. NWO: World Tour became very popular and, in a move that paralleled the brand’s television ratings at the time, WCW’s video game surpassed the WWF in both popularity and product quality. In the meantime, Acclaim’s WWF video game offerings, while they were rulers of the roost on the 2D 16-bit plane just a few years earlier, were losing popularity and were tanking in quality. WCW, the black sheep wrestling company, had put out the first true wrestling video game in history, all because the AKI Corporation and then-small publisher THQ had created it. And the consumer public just ate it up. Fast forward almost one year to late 1998, and the wrestling game revolution cemented its place in history. THQ/AKI released their third collaboration, and it was the most jaw dropping sports entertainment video game ever created up until that moment: WCW/nWo Revenge.

The New World Order, in all their glory, talkin smack from backstage. THOSE were the days.

WCW/nWo: Revenge took everything the last two games got right and either carried them over or enhanced them, and it fixed nearly everything the last two games got wrong. It had everything a wrestling/video game fan could want: it featured over FIFTY current WCW wrestlers broken up into their real-world factions, it featured accurate representations of real arenas and events, and it carried the company’s signature attitude and style, all in glorious and beautiful 3 dimensional, hard hitting splendor. It featured title belts you could win and your character would wear, varying outfits for each wrestler that represented different points in their career (i.e. red and yellow Hulk Hogan from the eighties, or the black-clad "bad guy" Hollywood Hogan from the nineties), a number of game/match types, and they took an individual pass at each character to make them all as individually accurate as they could. This meant that the aforementioned 5½ foot, 150lb Rey Mysterio was an agile character who flipped around the ring and somersaulted about like a true cruiserweight, while the 7’+ tall, 400+ lb. Giant lumbered about at a slower pace, stepped over the top rope when entering and exiting the ring, and moved as his flesh and blood counterpart did on television. It also meant that each character’s signature in-ring moves and maneuvers were faithfully and accurately included, not to mention specific personality traits represented by an impressive taunt mechanic that boasted multiple unique taunts and trademark mannerisms for each character.

Four player action in WCW/nWo: Revenge

This game also made full use of the Nintendo 64’s four player system. It offered a battle royal mode where four players could all fight each other, it offered your standard 2-on-2 tag team, it offered handicapped matches where you could take on two of your friends at once… Really, the highlight of this game was the local multiplayer; something I feel sadly has been missing from most recent titles on this current generation of consoles thanks to online play. There’s something to be said for a bunch of your friends in the same room, either enjoying a soda if you’re 15 or a beer if your 25, all battling it out on the same television while trash talking from one end of the couch to the other. And just like many other Nintendo 64 titles like Starfox 64 or 007: Goldeneye, this game shined in the local multiplayer department.

Of course, every game that came out later surpassed WCW/nWo Revenge in nearly every way, from graphics to features to controls and sound quality. WWF, not content to continue getting stomped by the competition, kicked Acclaim to the curb and stole the THQ/AKI duo right out from under WCW’s nose. They’d go on to put out two WWF wrestling games on the Nintendo 64, using the same engine and gameplay mechanics in the form of WWF: WrestleMania 2000 and WWF: No Mercy, both of which were vast improvements over the WCW offerings. This translated to the WWF crushing WCW in the video game market, and as a great example of art imitating life, they began to crush WCW in the ratings as well. A few short years later, the World Wrestling Federation bought World Championship Wrestling and shut it down, effectively stomping their competition out of existence and becoming the ultimate winner of their multi-decade feud.

Consider this next time you feel like complaining video games are too expensive. And that was 15 years ago!

After that, THQ and AKI parted ways, each taking a chunk of what they had created together along with them. THQ would team up with Yuke’s to become a storied developer, using the revolutionary gameplay mechanics developed by AKI to create the wrestling video-game empire for the WWE we all know today. The AKI Corporation would use the same wrestling and grappling mechanics they themselves created to release the popular Def-Jam: Vendetta and Def-Jam: Fight for New York games for the sixth generation consoles, before changing their name to syn Sophia and fading into obscurity, releasing primarily Japanese-only games ever since.

Let me paint the picture for you this way in regards to why WCW/nWo: Revenge deserves your second look: Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition is an amazing fighting game, no doubt about it. It’s new, it cool, it looks and plays great, and it’s the culmination of decades-worth of effort. Think of WCW/nWo: Revenge as good old Street Fighter 2. Sure, there was a first Street Fighter game, and that would be WCW vs. NWO: World Tour, where both franchises were shooting in the dark to see what they hit with those games. Like Street Fighter 2, though, Revenge is where they got the formula right. Sure it would be outdated and improved on almost immediately, but just as every true Street Fighter enthusiast will take some time away from their hyper/ultra/mega/turbo editions to play the original every now and then, I encourage you to take a break from the Smackdown vs. Raw series for a bit and go back to see where wrestling games as we know them now were born. And for wrestling enthusiasts, having the chance to recreate legendary battles like Sting versus Hulk Hogan, or the nWo White versus the nWo Red withOUT having to painstakingly and meticulously build them from the ground up using a create-a-wrestler feature should be more than enough to grab you. Besides being revolutionary, this game is a snapshot in time, where the wrestling industry was king, the WWE was not, and the fans were the ultimate winners because the big companies were putting out the best possible product they could in order to remain competitive, something which we sadly haven’t seen in a long, long time.


Sting and his trusty baseball bat. The one franchise the WWE never got their grubby mits on.