http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uE3-avXVIk
There are a few ads to start the video, 'cause hey, a buck's a buck. We will be moving them to the end of the video for the next episode.
Joe
I'm all for you making a few bucks, Joe. Keep up the great work!
More game review, less pointless asides going forward plz.
ReplyDeleteI played the hell out of this game. I didn't have a N64 until a while after it came out, and only then for WCW/NWO Revenge, so this was my first real exposure to a WCW game (I'm not counting my experience with WCW Superbrawl). Ninja and Bad Blood were my guys. Didn't know who Great Sasuke or Muta were at that point but I'd like to think it was my future smark self sending me a message back in time to play as these badasses. Also loved the create a belt feature. There hadn't really been anything like that in an American wrestling game before.
ReplyDeleteI sorta wish a game company would create a wrestling game similar in concept to this or WCW vs. nWo World Tour. Don't use the real guys for obvious licensing reasons. Create rosters of similar characters or completely original creations for like four or five companies from around the world.
Can't wait for the Warzone one. I played the hell out of that game when I hadn't had an N64 very long and never owned any games for it besides Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Doom; so I didn't realize how ass fucking backward and completely non-intuitive the moves were. Doing anything more complex than a bodyslam was like landing a spaceship.
ReplyDeleteNever played this one but it sounds pretty superfluous. I remember a really bad WCW Nitro game that came out for N64 around this time where you could only control, like, one of 12 people but they'd have interference from EVERYONE on the roster right down to Jerry Flynn. I also had the WCW Revenge game where you could hit people with stun guns and make them light up like a cartoon, I can't wait for that one, or its sequel, that godawful Backstage Assault game.
WCW really had lightning in a bottle with the AKI series, too bad they WCW'ed it up like everything else.
I liked this game a lot -- it was pretty mind blowing at the time for us folks in the US. It's not necessary to play now in a world that has the AKI series of games but it was all kinds of awesome in the interim and definitely blows away the awful WWF and WCW games that came out around the same time.
ReplyDeleteYeah there really are a lot more bad wrestling games to review than good ones! He did some fun ones for a bunch of games from the 1980s too, including two of my personal favorites "Takedown" and Microleague Wrestling.
ReplyDeleteI am hoping he'll do a review of what was long-considered the holy grail of pro-wrestling games, FirePro Wrestling S: Six Man Scramble. It was only available on the Sega Saturn and I can remember people were CRAZY for it back before the AKI games came out. I've never personally been a huge fan of the FirePro series controls, but a lot of people love them.
Fire Pro Wrestling for the PS2 game closest to doing this, but it didn't have a huge American roster. The game packs you can get with a Max Drive, though, more than makeup for it.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember much about Warzone other than the fact that 12-year-old me loved it.
ReplyDeleteI forgot all about this game. The engine is kind of strange, sort of like a mix between the AKI games and Fire Pro. Pretty amazing for the time, especially when you consider the last wrestling game to come out was Raw for the SNES and Genesis. Never knew back then that all the non-WCW guys were based on real wrestlers, I thought they were just made up by the programmers. Even if I did know, I had no idea who any of the Japanese guys were yet. Warzone sucked (what kind of game won't let you choose your opponent?), but the sequel, Attitude, was OK. Had real choppy animation though, not smooth at all like the Smackdown games for the PS1. Ad I never got all the hate WCW Mayhem gets. It's not great or anything, but it's better than Nitro/Thunder. At least Mayhem is playable, something that can't be said for any wrestling game on the original XBox.
ReplyDeleteI think I rented Mayhem once, I remember thinking it was okay but that it was a far cry from the AKI games and really at that point, I only wanted to play a wrestling game that was better than the last. I'd agree though, it wasn't awful -- at least not in the same class as Warzone, Thunder and Nitro. Attitude was a bit better, but still not what I'd call a "good" game. Smackdown was a lot more fun -- although it had it's little annoyances too, I just remember thinking it was too arcady in comparison with the AKI games. I remember if you threw someone off the steel cage, they'd get right back up the same way they would after a punch.
ReplyDelete"I remember a really bad WCW Nitro game that came out for N64 around this
ReplyDeletetime where you could only control, like, one of 12 people but they'd
have interference from EVERYONE on the roster right down to Jerry Flynn."
LOL. Leave it to WCW.
Best line in the OP video clip is: "Road Warrior Animal is named Overdose!? JESUS!!"
Yeah, the guys that made Smackdown (at least the first 2) didn't get that wrestlers are supposed to take longer to get up as the match goes on. It was kind of like a regular fighting game in a ring. The first one for the PS2 sucked, with the shitty collision detection and constant, I mean CONSTANT, reversals by the CPU. And it took up more than half your memory card space, nearly 5 1/2 megs. Why the hell does a wrestling game need over 3 times as much memory then Madden? And the load times were ridiculous, it was like playing a Sega or Neo Geo CD game.
ReplyDeleteThunder (the sequel to Nitro) had 64 guys in it, and if you put in an obscene 30-odd button code at the title screen you'd 64, most of which weren't even wrestlers (like a horse and a robot), and a snuck-in-past-the-lawyers Ric Flair. You could also change everyone's outfit to different factions. Raven as an nWo member and Kevin Nash in the flock looked pretty word. Too bad those are the only good things I have to say about that waste-of-plastic shitpile they tried passing off as a game.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that made me laugh too (Overdose).
ReplyDeleteThat's right! I forgot about the crazy memory space issues.
ReplyDeleteIt should have came with a coupon for a discount on a memory card, like the 2K sports games on the Dreamcast did.
ReplyDeletewcw vs the world is awesome.
ReplyDelete200 wins was my boy.
me and my friend had a 20 minute match benoit vs 200 wins and i lost to a camel clutch.
thats why i loved the aki games.
but i pretty much gave up on wrestling games these days. until they have an either online 4v4 Survivor Series match or a up to 16 player online royal rumble, i am boycotting all wrestling games.
Great idea for Game Developers:
ReplyDeleteCan you please make another game like Royal Rumble where you can have up to 10 guys in the ring at once!
Oh yeah! I don't remember being crazy impressed with that Dreamcast game, but that aspect of it was pretty awesome.
ReplyDelete