Favorite Wrestling Video Games

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

What are people's favorite wrestling video games? I've got several on my list, mostly for nostalgic reasons. My top 5:

 

5. WWF Royal Rumble (Sega Genesis)

I played this game for hours growing up. Nothing overly special about its graphics or gameplay, it was just really awesome to have a Royal Rumble on the Genesis.

 

4. Legends of Wrestlemania (PS3)

A great roster and the game designers did a solid job capturing the nostalgia from the 80s and 90s era. The ring entrances are better than the actual gameplay, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've used this game to teach my two little nieces about wrestling. They love it. The other day, this game taught them what a ladder match was. I don't think their parents were too impressed.

 

3. Pro Wrestling (Sega Master System)

There was a bearded guy on this game that would do the giant swing and 7-year-old me would go absolutely nuts over it. I had never seen anyone do the giant swing in a TV wrestling match, but would play this game for hours and do nothing but execute the giant swing.

 

2. WCW vs. NWO World Tour (N64)

My buddies and I played this endlessly in high school, often wagering on matches and holding cash tournaments to see how much of what little money we had we could lose.

 

1. WWF Wrestlefest (Arcade)

Ah, the memories. The parents would go the casino and I would head to the arcade the plug an endless amount of quarters into this game.

[s1rweeze]

I'll always be partial to Royal Rumble for Super Nintendo, just for the fact that you can beat up the ref. Hence my avatar. I was so amazed and entertained by that, I spent entire matches beating the crap out of that poor guy.

 

I know everyone raves about No Mercy but I was always partial to Wrestlemania 2000.

[Bigelow34]

Loved Royal Rumble...played hours and hours and hours of that game. My hands still hurt from banging the damn buttons.

 

War Zone was cool because it was so different than past WWF games.

 

Seconded nWo/WCW, spent many an evening wearing that game out in college. And I agree with s1, I always preferred Wm2000...the CAWs in that thing were awesome.

 

No topping Wrestlefest though...trips to the arcade were always spent on that game. Would love to own one some day.

[Smack2k]

WWF NO Mercy - Nintendo 64 - I remember getting out of work in 2000 (was out of college for 2 months) and heading to the store to pick this up on launch day in Oct. That fall / winter, me and my two best friends woudl play that and smoke some....stuff.....for HOURS on Friday and Saturday nights before and after going out or just staying in the whole night. Hands Down My Favorite and Tied for the best with:

 

Firepro Series of Wrestling - Many Consoles - Graphically maybe not the best anymore, but damn was it / is it deep with create abilities moves and things you can do with it that no other game had in North America. I use this today for my own home fed when I have time...great to setup and watch matches...but as much credit as the game goes to the people that made all the different wrestlers and territory stars over the years.

 

Others making the list:

 

WCW / NWO Revenge

WWF Wrestlemania 2000

WCW / NWO World Tour

Virtua Pro Wrestling (Japan)

Nintendo Pro Wrestling

 

I am a HUGE fan of the Late 90's, early 2000's THQ / AKI Engine as you can see. Cant comment on too much post No Mercy as I really didnt play that much after that...although seeing WWE 14 and that Legends game above have me thinking about it!! Can you do a ton of CAW's in teh newer games to set it to a period you'd like ala Fire Pro?

 

And yeah, Wrestlefest gets in there to for me as well...but not as high as others have it....I didnt play it a ton in arcades as I didnt frequent them so my emotional attachment isnt as big...

[Death From Above]

All Japan Pro Wrestling: King's Soul on PS1 was essentially the first King of Colosseum game and it ruled the universe. Me and a buddy used to play the hell out of this.

 

No Mercy and Wrestlemania 2000 both really good. The create a wrestler stuff has never been really done much better.

 

I never got into Fire Pro at all and thought it was boring but everyone tells me I'm wrong.

[JerryvonKramer]

1. The best wrestling game I've ever played is Total Extreme Wrestling (the modern derivation of Extreme Warfare). This is basically "Football Manager" for wrestling nerds. I spent the most time on the 2008 version with the excellent 1983 Death of the Territories mod, but the 2013 version is even better. And although Death of the Territories no longer exists, there's another 1983 mod called "War to Settle the Score" that more or less recreates it. I've never played the game without these mods, but the depth of the rosters from the guys who did them is incredible -- actually better than several pro wrestling encyclopedias I have. I will admit that it is this game that inspired my patented letter ratings for the DVDR set rankings. Actually I may start a game with Georgia soon to see if I can play out my ridiculous Ivan Koloff fantasy booking.

 

2. Wrestlefest. I grew up in a small town by the beach in South Wales historically famous for its fun fair. Back in the day, we had lots of arcades down the fair. Some of them had machines going back to the 1970s. I remember there was an original Nintendo cabinet with lots of games from 1984 on it. I spent a lot of time down the arcades. Street Fighter 2 was the big game, but there we'd spend a lot of time on stuff like Final Fight. There was this one little arcade in this small room kind of away from the rest that had, among other treasures, a Wrestlefest cabinet. I probably legit spent over £100 in 20ps with my mate playing that thing. You'd need at least £5 to beat Legion of Doom. "Snack on danger! Dine on Death!". About a year or so, I went back to my old haunts and almost teared up to find that all the old machines -- ALL of the old machines -- are gone and have been replaced with slots and gamblers. I was a bit gutted. It kills me to think of what happened to some of the cabinets they had there.

 

3. No Mercy. Like everyone else I played this into the ground. My brother and I had a Friday ritual: we'd watch Raw and Nitro eating a chinese takeaway. So we'd play a best of 7 or best of 9 series on either Smash Brothers or No Mercy and the loser had to pick up the tab for the Chinese. Since my brother was 6 years youngrt than me, he'd pull the same shit every week. I'd win, he'd start crying, I'd end up paying. Should have been harder on him and taught him a valuable life lesson I reckon. He's 25 now and I reckon he'd still pull that same shit today!

 

4. Superstars from 1988. This was the predecessor to Wrestlefest and we did have one in my town, in a different arcade again right next to the Ghost Train. As kids we just thought it was inferior in every way to Wrestlefest so never much bothered with it, although naturally I thought it was cool that Ted DiBiase was one of the end bosses and this might be the only game to feature Virgil.

 

 

The most time I ever spent on it was when my parents took us on a holiday somewhere and they had this at the resort. Again, you'd need at least £5 to clock it, and you better hope and pray that DiBiase never tags in Andre!

 

5. WCW / NWO World Tour - like others here, I was a big fan of this engine and the roster on this one was cool as hell. However, this saw less time than No Mercy because we were generally annoyed at the fact that you could suplex The Giant and other such super heavyweights.

 

---------

 

Man, sometimes I think about stuff: William Wordsworth's memories of childhood were about going on long walks and connecting with nature, mine are literally all about video games, and TV shows, and films and pro wrestling! Still waiting for the day I'm going to grow up, but 30 years in and it just doesn't look like it's going to happen

[Death From Above]

Actually come to think of it I have Extreme Warfare Revenge on my laptop too. I think I picked up some mod files so you can start from not long after The Outsiders joined WCW and basically play out the Monday Night Wars.

 

Fun game, I play if for about a month every year or so then get bored again, but a month out of a game is still a month. And it's really well done freeware. Really in fairness not sure I've played a better freeware game.

[rzombie1988]

No Mercy will always be #1. It was the ultimate multi-player wrestling game. My cousins and I spent hours winning the belts off of each other and creating total mayhem.

 

I had two memorable No Mercy moments:

- My cousin and I formed a team and were beating his annoying neighbor soundly in a handicap match. We were being total jerks and just hitting him with everything for over 30 minutes straight without him getting anything in. We could have pinned him anytime we wanted. Near the end of the match, I tried for some move and he somehow reversed it into a cradle to win it. We got owned, but I even had to give him credit for that.

- I finally had Farooq and Bradshaw almost finished in the terribly hard No-DQ handicap match in the parking lot that had to be completed in No Mercy. This was legit super hard and usually resulted in me getting my butt kicked 11 times out of 10. Anyway, I finally had them this time as I stuck to cheap mid-section kicks and irishwhipping them very far distances, which spread them far away. I was getting close to the win and one of my cousins trips over the cord to the N64. The game immediately shut off and all of my progress was lost.

 

I also really enjoyed WCW/NWO world tour due to the insane amount of wrestlers on it. I had tons of fun with The Claw, Gran Naniwa. I also got a kick out of winning belts.

 

I have fond memories of Wrestlefest, but I sucked at it.

 

The last WWE game I really loved was Here Comes the Pain. Brock was a beast in it and I really loved the different area's you could fight in.

 

After HCTP, I played some but never got into them. I really hated the Smackdown vs Raw series and I just have no interest any more. I also refuse to buy a PS3 until the PS4 comes out.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

1. The best wrestling game I've ever played is Total Extreme Wrestling (the modern derivation of Extreme Warfare). This is basically "Football Manager" for wrestling nerds. I spent the most time on the 2008 version with the excellent 1983 Death of the Territories mod, but the 2013 version is even better. And although Death of the Territories no longer exists, there's another 1983 mod called "War to Settle the Score" that more or less recreates it. I've never played the game without these mods, but the depth of the rosters from the guys who did them is incredible -- actually better than several pro wrestling encyclopedias I have. I will admit that it is this game that inspired my patented letter ratings for the DVDR set rankings. Actually I may start a game with Georgia soon to see if I can play out my ridiculous Ivan Koloff fantasy booking.

I totally forgot about this game. I probably wouldn't put it in my top 5, but I have at least one version of the game. To me, the concept and depth is great -- it's a fun game to think about. But when I sit down to actually play it, it's just too much clicking and putzing around. I grow bored after a while because my grand visions of a wrestling universe require navigating through too many menus and wearing out my finger clicking a mouse.

 

Haven't tried the 2013 version. Is it better than previous versions as far as menu layout and navigation?

[BrickHithouse]

TEW/EWR

 

LOVE this game in theory. In practice, it takes 3 hours for me to set up a game and the whole thing is just too complex for my tastes. I'll stick with the LOW card game to play out fantasy booking scenarios.

[Death From Above]

Only big problem with EWR is the setup time yeah, where you have to re-work all the worker's stats because they were done in the most stereotypical smart mark way imaginable where we live in a world that has Lance Storm having better brawls than Hulk Hogan.

[Stiva]

Only big problem with EWR is the setup time yeah, where you have to re-work all the worker's stats because they were done in the most stereotypical smart mark way imaginable where we live in a world that has Lance Storm having better brawls than Hulk Hogan.

Plus, it was always easy to just sign Danielson and AJ Styles, make them work each other on every show for 2 months and have their overness jump to 100 when the matches were awesome in game. I may buy TEW 13 when it's on sale but TEW 05 has some bizarre 90s design choices when it comes to its interface that it makes it a time consuming ordeal to book shows, especially if you play as WWE.

 

I always loved Smackdown 2 for the ridiculous story mode and the fact I must have been crazy to sit through the 15 minutes needed to sim through each show. I have the backstage skits committed to memory. "I was told I would have a match tonight. Well...I am here, who is my opponent?"

[Exposer]

In no particular order:

 

WWE No Mercy 2000 (Nintendo 64) - This ruled. I remember coming home from the 2nd grade and simulating cards or having Kane go for the Women's Title because I thought it was amusing shit. That game was fucking awesome.

 

Smackdown: Know Your Role (PS2) - The advanced entrances (for the time) and the loaded roster were highlights for me. Battle Royal's and Rumble's were always a blast on here as were the HITC or Cage matches.

 

Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (PS2) - This is arguably my favorite of the Smackdown video game era because it had fuckers like Ultimo Dragon on it whom I marked out for when I was 10 and 11 years old. I played this with my brother and cousin all throughout 5th and 6th grade.

 

WCW vs. NWO: World Tour (Nintendo 64) (I think!) - I'm pretty sure this is the WCW video game I played constantly in the 1st grade. Dylan might be able to clear this up on whether I'm talking about the right game or not. Anyways, I remember this having a packed roster with a lot of options to choose from. It was a great game for its time period.

 

Smackdown vs. Raw 2004 (PS2) - I played this all through middle school and high school until I got the 2006 version or something which I didn't like as much. This was a pretty advanced game as far as the storyline part went and I played the hell out of it. The Rumble was awesome on there.

 

Of course now I have no clue where the hell any of these games are. I no longer have No Mercy for sure or the WCW game. The three Smackdown games are possibly buried underneath of heap of God knows what in my closet. That's too bad or I might play one for a little nostalgia.

[Stiva]

In no particular order:

 

Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (PS2) - This is arguably my favorite of the Smackdown video game era because it had fuckers like Ultimo Dragon on it whom I marked out for when I was 10 and 11 years old. I played this with my brother and cousin all throughout 5th and 6th grade.

HCTP also had the great CAW wrestler mode which came right at the time I was finding sites like CAW.ws so I could max out my memory card with different versions of Sting.

[JerryvonKramer]

Re: TEW 2013, some of the kinks and fiddliness have been worked out, but it's still ... fiddly.

 

I've really morphed as a gamer over time though and realise that I'm part of a niche of a niche of a niche these days: I like to play games "without moving parts" and in which you kind of make the narrative yourself. I'll typically have a pen and pad next to me. I take a lot of time over it. One of the advantages of being an insomniac is that you have an extra 5-6 hours in the day. I play slow, strategic or what some might call flat-out "boring" games. To get the most out of something like TEW2013, you probably need a mindset like that.

 

At some point in the future I'm going to do a top 50 or even top 100 "unique and obscure games" list for PTBN which will feature a lot of games like this, so look out for that. I realise that most gamers don't have the time, patience, inclination or even the right sort of personality to play games like that though.

 

The other thing I'll say about TEW2013, is that the 1983 database that has its roots in the Death of the Territories mod is absolutely FANTASTIC and the stats are usually fair and measured. For example, the guys in the game who have A* "technical" ratings are people like Billy Robinson, so the young Bret Hart doesn't have stupid stats. I have no idea who made the database, but it's definitely someone who belongs on this board. Sometimes I'll be watching an old match from the 80s and see some jobber I've never heard of ... I'll go into the game and there they are with a bio and a picture. I'm tempted to say it's worth getting just to browse the database. I can imagine many other fan-made mods being awful or smarky, but that one is as good as you could really hope for.

[Exposer]

I know everyone raves about No Mercy but I was always partial to Wrestlemania 2000.

Wrestlemania 2000 was an excellent game also! I played that as much as No Mercy. What I remember most about that was during simulations the matches would be like Val Venis pinned Hardcore Holly in 45:47 and I would be in total "what the fuck" mode.

[Exposer]

In no particular order:

 

Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain (PS2) - This is arguably my favorite of the Smackdown video game era because it had fuckers like Ultimo Dragon on it whom I marked out for when I was 10 and 11 years old. I played this with my brother and cousin all throughout 5th and 6th grade.

HCTP also had the great CAW wrestler mode which came right at the time I was finding sites like CAW.ws so I could max out my memory card with different versions of Sting.

 

Yeah, I remember that! Man, I'm getting huge nostalgia from all of this video game talk.

[Death From Above]

While we're on the topic, I also can't stress enough how bad original XBox owners got shafted on wrestling games. PS2 had that HCTP period, XBox got... pretty much nothing. Wrestlemania 21 is seriously one of the worst releases of that generation, in any field of game you care to name. Not only was the gameplay very poor but it was astoundingly buggy (the game freezing when going into a post-match replay of the finish was very common for one), the way it loaded things was such a hackjob that it honestly placed undue stress on your internal disk reader (I have never heard a game work a disk drive that hard... ever), and the in-game store was... just astonishingly poorly designed (things like having to play about 200 matches to have enough money to unlock one new arena, and there were like 12 of those... and it was like that for everything in the store).

 

Also the CAW didn't even show you what buttons you were mapping moves to, which is so ridiculous it's hard to believe it really happened.

 

I have pent up anger towards this shitty game and it felt good to release.

[jdw]

The old Super Fire Puroresu games on Super Nintendo. This one was probably the most entertaining:

 

 

You had the long path of working your way up, including a match that you simply couldn't win that would send you off. Kind of cool stuff with Maeda and Maeda's sister, and if I recall Rick Rude was your US buddy. The "suicide" aspect at the end of that story is something lost to a gaijin who doesn't read Japanese. Most of the rest of the story could generally be grasped.

 

I think the one right before it or after it had a challenge to beat pretty much everyone in the game, including working through pretty much every fed, passing through them more than once if they had large rosters (i.e. they broke the roster up into different chunks). And working through legends as well. I seem to recall Thesz & Gotch were the last two, and quite the bitch to beat.

 

I think that one also was one of the very early games with an edit mode where you could create your own wrestler based on existing the large number of wrestlers in the game, modifying them, assigning them moves, etc. I recall creating a Destroyer variation simply updated to what his offense /holds likely would have been if he peaked in 1993/94-ish rather than the 60s/70s. Nothing nutty like giving him the SSP, but I think I gave him a variety of suplex... his wrestling background would have had something like the German that everyone in Japan was whipping out in the 90s. It was kind of fun to then take him through the game, I think paired up with Jumbo.

 

The New Japan and All Japan *specific* games were far crappier than playing the NJ and AJ players in Super Fire. There was an AJW game as well, and I recall it being as mediocre at the AJ and NJ games.

 

Oh... and it was always entertaining to take Brody outside and toss him into the barriers until he juiced.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

Re: TEW 2013, some of the kinks and fiddliness have been worked out, but it's still ... fiddly.

 

I've really morphed as a gamer over time though and realise that I'm part of a niche of a niche of a niche these days: I like to play games "without moving parts" and in which you kind of make the narrative yourself. I'll typically have a pen and pad next to me. I take a lot of time over it. One of the advantages of being an insomniac is that you have an extra 5-6 hours in the day. I play slow, strategic or what some might call flat-out "boring" games. To get the most out of something like TEW2013, you probably need a mindset like that.

 

At some point in the future I'm going to do a top 50 or even top 100 "unique and obscure games" list for PTBN which will feature a lot of games like this, so look out for that. I realise that most gamers don't have the time, patience, inclination or even the right sort of personality to play games like that though.

 

The other thing I'll say about TEW2013, is that the 1983 database that has its roots in the Death of the Territories mod is absolutely FANTASTIC and the stats are usually fair and measured. For example, the guys in the game who have A* "technical" ratings are people like Billy Robinson, so the young Bret Hart doesn't have stupid stats. I have no idea who made the database, but it's definitely someone who belongs on this board. Sometimes I'll be watching an old match from the 80s and see some jobber I've never heard of ... I'll go into the game and there they are with a bio and a picture. I'm tempted to say it's worth getting just to browse the database. I can imagine many other fan-made mods being awful or smarky, but that one is as good as you could really hope for.

I also love these types of games, Jerry. Out of the Park Baseball, Action PC Football and Fast Break Pro Basketball are a few that come to mind. Those games are also complex and deep, but are manageable due to their design and menu setups. It doesn't feel like a chore to play.

 

TEW was just so tedious. Maybe it's much more difficult to design a wrestling text sim than it is a baseball/football/basketball sim, but man, it just burned me out. Maybe I'll give the 2013 demo a whirl.

[BrickHithouse]

Don't mean to drag this away from wrestling games, but since OOTP was mentioned...

 

Anyone here play Front Office Football? The game desperately needs an update, it looks terrible, but for my money is the best (only?) pro football sim. PFS isn't there yet IMO, but is one to keep an eye on.

 

OOTP is so awesomely deep that I can't get past the start menu...

[JerryvonKramer]

The Football Manager series is the ultimate for this, divorce cases. Crossface -- TEW is pretty much the ultimate example of "great game buried under poor interface". The newest one uses a bit more drag and drop, but it's still not as smooth as it could be. The BEST change is how storylines and angles work, all a lot more forgiving and fluid -- so no more failure to advance the story because step #456 wasn't followed.

 

Since so many of the games I play are unique concepts (see also Covert Action, Gangsters: Organized Crime, Europa 1400: The Guild, The Clue! (aka Der Clou), Dwarf Fortress, so many others), I've learned to deal with, or at least put up with, poor execution and interfaces. Even with improvements, things still feel like they could be done more quickly in TEW.

 

That said, since everything takes so long, I can't tell you how proud I felt when I got Mid-South onto Telemundo 2 and shown on Mexican TV!

[jdw]

Don't mean to drag this away from wrestling games, but since OOTP was mentioned...

 

Anyone here play Front Office Football? The game desperately needs an update, it looks terrible, but for my money is the best (only?) pro football sim. PFS isn't there yet IMO, but is one to keep an eye on.

 

OOTP is so awesomely deep that I can't get past the start menu...

I haven't played any of the versions of OOTP from the period they joined the Football Manager folks and then split back off. I want to say 6.5 or so was the last version I played, and the final version we used in out online league. The AI was mediocre and the ability to sim-control your club (rather than manage every at bat) was something that needed more work. That said, it was a fun game and career mode let you have a lot of fun building a team over the years. Things like Cato let you track your data better as well.

 

Suspect that they've gotten better and deeper since then, and run with their own equiv of Cato.

 

I haven't played Championship/Football Manager past 2.0, which is way back in the late 90s. It was a shitload of fun, though again the AI was too easy. Of course I played as United, so you had that strong base to begin with, and then could pick off most anyone you wanted via transfer and had loads of money to do so. The "challenge" quickly moved from Win Everything to Win Every Game within a few seasons.

 

TEW is the one that's been around for more than a decade, right? When ever I'd read about it and get tempted by it, that game always struck me as 90% of what in that type of a pro wrestling game... but the 10% missing was mostly in the make/break range for me, making me feel like I didn't want to spend a hundred hours toiling in it to not really get what I wanted. If that makes any sense? :/

[BrickHithouse]

The Football Manager series is the ultimate for this, divorce cases.

Showed this game to my buddy at work (from UK, has been here since '99 and his wife won't let him buy the "Soccer TV Package" or whatever it is, and he really misses his EPL).

 

He bought the game a week later and IMMEDIATELY took 3 weeks of vacation in order to play it. A year later, he's still totally hooked.

[victory]

I bought the original Nintendo system in 8th grade in 1987 specifically for the Pro Wrestling game. So that would have to be my favorite. Starman, and King Slender rocked. There was also a guy who bit your head. Can't remember his name.

 

I also liked the WCW game with the Road Warriors on the cover which came around 89 or so. The finishing moves and graphics were decent for the times. I still have the box for this for some odd reason, no game as I never got it back after lending it out and just forgot about it.