Favorite Wrestling Video Games

[cm funk]

To whoever asked about who wrote the 83 mod for TEW 13, that I don't know. But the original DOTT 83 mod which you can play in TEW 05 freeware was written by 2 people, one of whom was credited as Grimmas. I always assumed it was the Grimmas who used to post at DVDVR.

 

I still play TEW 05 on occasion, like JVK I'm a fan of those sorts of sims (big OOTP baseball fan), but I don't have the patience to stay with them for long stretches of time. I find myself picking it back up a few times a year when I have spare time, play it for a few weeks or a month off and on, then lose interest. It can get really time consuming, and other interests/life tend to intervene.

 

The longest I lasted was a WWF 83 scenario where I played from January til about September in game years. I had a good sense of accomplishment from getting myself up to C- popularity in a lot of enemy territories and getting on local tv in enough markets that when I stopped playing I think I was getting pretty close to being "national". I also had the major pain in the asses of GCW stealing Hogan from me shortly after I'd stolen him from the AWA and was building him up to take the belt off heel champion Jimmy Snuka. I ended up putting the belt on Mil Mascaras instead, lol. I went to war with just about every mid-major promotion. I think when I left off Flair's contract with MACW had just run out and I'd signed him and created a quasi Horsemen/Heenan family group with Flair, Orndorff and two other guys I don't recall off the top off my head. The Bulldogs contract with Stampede had just run out so I signed them, but they aren't over anywhere but Canada/UK/Japan, so it would have taken a while to build them up. I'd taken the Road Warriors from GCW and built them up pretty well, to eventually challenge my tag champs Dusty Rhodes and JYD. When I eventually pick it up again I'll go back to this game, because I was so deep into it.

 

So yeah, it's a very fun game if you're obsessed with wrestling, but very time consuming. It's not so bad once you get used to the lay of the land and how everything works and learn all the little shortcuts, but for a new player you're putting many hours in just to get comfortable and setup with everything. EWR is much, much more basic...too basic for me now after playing TEW.

 

My all time favorite console/arcade wrestling game is Wrestlefest. I was an arcade junkie in the late 80's/early 90's and whenever I found a place that had that I would pump it full of quarters. I never actually saw the SuperStars arcade game anywhere, but Wrestlefest was pretty common. Old school Pro Wrestling arcade (the one that was ported to NES) was fun as a kid when I could find it, but by any sort of modern standards it's objectively terrible and good for maybe 10 minutes of nostalgia. Didn't they make an updated version of that a while back with all the classic characters?

 

When I was maybe 15 or so I had an SNES emulator and Super Fire Pro X ROM, and I LOVED that game. Never played any other versions of Fire Pro.

 

Someone asked about SuperBrawl for SNES, I remember renting that for a weekend when I borrowed a cousins SNES for the summer. From what I recall the gameplay was pretty rough, but I had fun with it just for having a WCW video game with people like Sting, Vader and Rick Rude back then.

 

My first console was a Genesis and I had Royal Rumble and the sequel RAW (which wasn't as good). I was always pissed that the SNES Rumble had Flair and Perfect and the Genesis one didn't. The SNES one had a much stronger roster overall. There was another game for Sega which came out before Rumble which had Hogan, Warrior, Savage, British Bulldog, Bossman, LOD...basically the 92 roster. I found that a few years later in a discount bin. Graphics and gameplay weren't as good as Rumble, but it had the same blister inducing button mashing gameplay. I broke a couple controllers playing those game.

 

Never had a 64, but played either WM2000 or No Mercy and definitely WCW/nWo Revenge on other peoples. Those games were a lot of fun, especially Revenge with the massive roster and number of moves

[Troy]

I remember playing RAW for Sega. I was Razor going for the belt vs. Diesel. Kwang comes out of nowhere and interferes so I Razor's Edge his ass then turn around and Razor's Edge Diesel for the win. I remember telling my friend about Kwang but he never believed me until years later when he discovered it online. Good times

[Marty]

Funny how I change my username, eliminating the EWR part, and then all the EWR talk happens.

 

Actually, I'm happy people still have good memories of it, although I would've done things different. (For those who don't know me/this all that well, if EWR was the WON HOF, I was basically jdw to Adam's Dave. I gave him North American info on things like ratings, buyrates, etc. as well as getting to test things beforehand.) I probably would've suggested more numbers surrounding buys and viewers rather than ratings/buyrates. At the same time, I probably didn't have the mindset back then as I do now. Oh, and for the record, since the Hart-Austin thing was brought up, a lot of the stats/numbers of wrestlers was Adam's interpretation of them. Thankfully, they're editable. I remember telling him, for EWD, that I thought he was nuts for having Benoit with a 5 charisma (out of 10) when Blackman had a 7 charisma.

 

Regardless, again, I'm glad people enjoyed the game and I was happy to play a small part in it.

 

Favourite games over the years for me:

- WrestleFest, for all the reasons others have stated.

- WCW/nWo Revenge and WWF No Mercy were the best games around the new millennium.

- Showdown: Legends of Wrestling was a lot of fun. Amazing capture of venues. Hard to tell which my favourite was, they did a great job with all of them. The gameplay was alright, but thinking about how well they not only did the venues well, but simmed the atmosphere quite well makes me want to re-hook the PS2 up again.

- SD: HCTP gets some love from me too. I also liked SDvR 06 and 07 mainly because of the story/season modes and how the voiceovers were. Some of the stories were amusing: HHH wanting power for himself (accurate!), Trish wanting to compete with the men, Eddie stealing Taker's urn, etc.

I got a PS3 as a gift so I've played some more recent ones:

- Legends Of WrestleMania is, like Showdown, a nice nostalgia trip, but I can't play the game for too long. It's the last WWE game that captured Mania venues fairly well, as the stadium ones actually look like stadiums. It's hilarious that Michael Hayes is in the game, and not a guy like Savage though.

- All Stars is fun, but I can only play it once in a while, and not for very long. Game takes a while to load on the PS3. Fun to play, but not a lot of depth to it.

- WWE 13. Yes, I love the game, not just for the Attitude Era, but the Universe mode keeps getting better, in my opinion. I hope WWE 2K14 keeps it and improves on it (an NXT part of the mode would be nice, where you can call up guys, send them down, etc.). It's not perfect right now, but I like how you can have more than two brands now (I've done an Attitude Era brand), you can reset the Universe if you're getting bored with it, huge roster (even though there's a lot of repeated characters), etc. To be honest, in the series, it's the most fun I've had since SvR 07.

[BrickHithouse]

I chalked up my struggles with EWR/TEW to something I was doing wrong. Like, if I can't get a good match out of Bret and Austin, I have no business playing the game. I suspect that is still the case rather than any game design flaw. I love the game in theory, but just can't play it.

 

FOF - Flawed NFL sim to be sure but the best of a shallow pool. I guess I've just gone blind to the AI oddness. Troubling that the most popular American sport has basically ONE quality sim. Surprised there isn't anything out there that is halfway comparable to OOTP, or EHM 2007 for that matter. My ultimate game would combine team building features of FOF with the Strat O Matic game tacked on for playing actual games.

 

As far as wrestling games go, was I the only one that liked the WrestleMania Arcade game? Had it for PS1 and played it in the arcade as well. I always had success with Yokozuna. Doink swung a big oversized mallet and Undertaker had bats or something that shot out of his hands. Seems like when you'd hit Razor Ramon, razor blades would fly all over the place. Shit like that.

[concrete1992]

All this TEW talk made me step back into it last night. It is a very slippery slope.

 

Always a fan of FPR. Let's me destroy wrestlers I hate with wrestlers I love from across eras. Sami Callihan has killed RVD. AR Fox was mauled by Vader. The joy

 

As a kid I didn't have any clue about WCW outside of the video games. While I hadn't seen any of them on TV, WCW vs. NWO Revenge made me fall in love with characters. LA Parka was killin' errybody.

[jdw]

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.

Then you played it wrong! Real men take some team in the Conference (or personally, Wrexham as I support them) and make diamonds from coal with no money due to diligent scouting, hard work and tactical knowledge and lose days of sleep as it's more addictive than smack. I actually lost relationships due to the time I spent nurturing 16 year old Finnish lads I got on a free for Cefn Druids on CM01/02.

I did that as well. There was no Conference at that time in the game, so it was down to the "4th Division"... which was the 3rd at the time behind EPL-1-2-3. Brought Crewe up to the top, won the EPL, won Europe... and then really didn't care enough to continue on.

 

In contrast, as a United Fan, I was playing with United Playes. As they aged and "retired", I would go pick up their "kids" (i.e. the player would regenerate into the game as a 16 year old with the same nationality and skills but a different name). Then I would have fun spending years developing Peter Schmeichel 2.0 until he was ready to take over as United's keeper. Or 2.0 versions of guys that I loved such as Roberto Baggio.

 

But...

 

The game at that time had a 30 season cap on it. And after 20+ straight Win Every Game seasons... or getting to the mountain at Crew... it did get boring.

[jdw]

The last two versions of OOTP have been nearly flawless. Literally my only complaint is that the AI when doing an inaugural draft is a little weak. Other than that, I don't know how you can make a better game.

 

I am a fanboy, though, so take that for what it's worth.

I was a fanboy as well... enough to do online leaguing with the game, which eats up an insane amount of time.

 

But there were almost always things that I wanted to do when simming that the game wasn't flexible enough to let me do. Example on the older game:

 

You couldn't set specific PH/Platooning patterns on how the in-game AI Manager would use your bench. So if I'm starting my RHB Catcher against a LHP, and the other teams switches to a RHP... the AI Manager might use my LHB Catcher to PH for the pitcher (burning my LHB Catcher)... or use some other LHB PH to PH for my catcher (burning that LHB PH). What I really wanted some sensitivity on was that my LHB Catcher would specifically PH for my RHB Catcher: 1-for-1, not burning any other players, etc.

 

More than that: the ability to set *when* I want that to take place. If we run the LHP in the 2nd inning, that means we've put some runs on the board... I'm fine letting the RHB Catcher play a few more innings, and eat another AB or two. What I'd like to be able to do was set that for:

 

* specific guy to PH for him if

* after X innings

* score differential options

 

That's a lot of shit. But those are decisions I make when I'm actually playing a Game rather than Simming it.

 

It's a minor thing. But there were several dozen things like that still in 6.5. There were also all sorts of dumb things I'd see my own AI Manager do in games when looking at box scored / PBP. There were times when I wanted to play out all 162 games + the playoffs, and there were other times when I just didn't have the time to invest, and wanted to Sim stuff out and know the AI Manager was doing what I wanted. You invest time in building a team... you want it used how you envision.

 

On the flip side, it was 100 times better than say the old Tony Larusa or Earl Weaver games in the flexibility of being able to set the AI Manager. Just needed more.

[Death From Above]

I tried the TEW 2005 freeware game but it doesn't seem stable on my system. Not sure why but it froze a lot, and in different places. Fiddled with it for about an hour and had at least 5 freezes, then gave up. I guess being 8 years old you are bound to run into some glitches like that. I'll stick to EWR I think if I decide to do that sort of thing again, as it's always been stable for me.

[thebrainfollower]

My favorites per system

 

 

NES - Tecmo Pro Wrestling. Best NES game by a mile. WWF games were awful but this was pretty good and had Inoki, Flair and Road Warriors knocks offs. A good moveset and a very hard game, though no tag matches.

 

 

SNES - Monday Night Raw - Liked the fact that finally different wrestlers had different movesets, even though those movesets weren't always accurate. And what was that odd powerslam/belly to belly hybrid some wrestlers had anyway? Also the Super moves were a preview of the nightmare that was to come with the next game being awful.

 

 

N64- No Mercy - Got this and was so obsessed with it that when I bought it the next day was a college student govt 6 day Disney trip. And I brought it with me so I could play from 12-2am every morning and start unlocking stuff. At one point I had done EVERYTHING, 100 percent on all titles and everything even the Ho unlocked. Then some little kid of a friend of my parents accidentally knocked into my SNES and erased the memory. I'm on my third copy now and still play regularly with friends.

 

PS2 - Here Comes the Pain - most varied roster, best movesets. Can't remember much more about why I loved this one but I did.

[ButchReedMark]

I did that as well. There was no Conference at that time in the game, so it was down to the "4th Division"... which was the 3rd at the time behind EPL-1-2-3. Brought Crewe up to the top, won the EPL, won Europe... and then really didn't care enough to continue on.

 

In contrast, as a United Fan, I was playing with United Playes. As they aged and "retired", I would go pick up their "kids" (i.e. the player would regenerate into the game as a 16 year old with the same nationality and skills but a different name). Then I would have fun spending years developing Peter Schmeichel 2.0 until he was ready to take over as United's keeper. Or 2.0 versions of guys that I loved such as Roberto Baggio.

 

But...

 

The game at that time had a 30 season cap on it. And after 20+ straight Win Every Game seasons... or getting to the mountain at Crew... it did get boring.

How did you find the regens? A tool like CMScout or obsessive scouting? I really saw my cock when the regen for Stefan Selakovic after retiring from Wrexham was in the Chester City youth system on 00/01.

[Migs]

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.

Oh, I loved Fast Break Pro Basketball. Spent way too much time on that in law school. Very deep game, although it had some AI flaws that got very easy to exploit (like how a good PG could always be had for the mid level exception).

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

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.

Oh, I loved Fast Break Pro Basketball. Spent way too much time on that in law school. Very deep game, although it had some AI flaws that got very easy to exploit (like how a good PG could always be had for the mid level exception).

 

A new version of FBPB came out a few months ago. Many improvements. Great game.

 

http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/showthread.php?t=524229

[jdw]

How did you find the regens? A tool like CMScout or obsessive scouting? I really saw my cock when the regen for Stefan Selakovic after retiring from Wrexham was in the Chester City youth system on 00/01.

This was back in CM 2.0 and the one right before it, so I don't know how applicable it would be to later games.

 

With guys like Schmeichel it was easy: how many Dannish keepers regen to 16 year old in a given year? There were few Dannish players in the game: this was before CM/FM started doing massive work on the non-EPL players.

 

Baggio was tougher, because there were more Italian players, and Italy was an alternative "league" you could play in at the time: when installing/loading, you were asked what league you wanted to play. EPL / England of course, Serie A / Italy being the second... and that may have been it or perhaps also the Scottish League. Anyway, lots of Italian players.

 

My recollection is that there was that there were several outside-the-game editors. You could edit club characteristics, and you could edit player ones. Each player was assigned a # by the game, like 1 to 3000+ or so. You write down the numbers of your players or the players you want, and then search them after they die. They always get assigned to a club in their home country. Then you try to buy them.

 

Cheat? Sure. But after you've already Won Everything and Won Every Game, you're looking for something to interest you. So developing Baggio 2.0 and Bergkamp 2.0 and Matthias Sammer 2.0 (who was a kick as in 2.0 since it was after BvB won the CL) and Maldini 2.0... that was fun to do when you're starting to get bored.

 

For my my version of CM 2.0 version, my buddy Scott sent me a modified player database that added in Cantona since he had just retired before the version I had came out, and thus wasn't in it. This was before I got the editor utility. So we talked about what type of ratings Eric should have, he added him, sent me that db to drop on in my folder just after installing, and bang! I had Cantona back on United at the age of 31 heading into the 97/98 season, he died shortly there after, and Scott told me go look at young French players to see if there was a new 16 year old forward. Bingo~! there he was, and transferred him in. He was the first of those younger regen players that I developed, with Schmeichel some years later being the second.

 

I don't know how the later versions handled it. I do seem to recall reading that they added "editor" tools to the official game at some point.

[Death From Above]

My favorites per system

 

 

NES - Tecmo Pro Wrestling. Best NES game by a mile. WWF games were awful but this was pretty good and had Inoki, Flair and Road Warriors knocks offs. A good moveset and a very hard game, though no tag matches.

This was an amazing game, for 8-bit. Doesn't really compare to the modern more fleshed out games but I agree it wins the 8-bit wars by a mile. It had some pretty neat features to it. The cinematic up-close shots of finishers that would play when low on health were really 15 years ahead of the curve. And play by play!

 

I remember going to buy something else (probably one of the WWF games) and it being sold out, and buying this as second choice. That worked out really well.

 

Dr. Guildo 4 ever!

[ButchReedMark]

How did you find the regens? A tool like CMScout or obsessive scouting? I really saw my cock when the regen for Stefan Selakovic after retiring from Wrexham was in the Chester City youth system on 00/01.

This was back in CM 2.0 and the one right before it, so I don't know how applicable it would be to later games.

 

With guys like Schmeichel it was easy: how many Dannish keepers regen to 16 year old in a given year? There were few Dannish players in the game: this was before CM/FM started doing massive work on the non-EPL players.

 

Baggio was tougher, because there were more Italian players, and Italy was an alternative "league" you could play in at the time: when installing/loading, you were asked what league you wanted to play. EPL / England of course, Serie A / Italy being the second... and that may have been it or perhaps also the Scottish League. Anyway, lots of Italian players.

 

My recollection is that there was that there were several outside-the-game editors. You could edit club characteristics, and you could edit player ones. Each player was assigned a # by the game, like 1 to 3000+ or so. You write down the numbers of your players or the players you want, and then search them after they die. They always get assigned to a club in their home country. Then you try to buy them.

 

Cheat? Sure. But after you've already Won Everything and Won Every Game, you're looking for something to interest you. So developing Baggio 2.0 and Bergkamp 2.0 and Matthias Sammer 2.0 (who was a kick as in 2.0 since it was after BvB won the CL) and Maldini 2.0... that was fun to do when you're starting to get bored.

 

For my my version of CM 2.0 version, my buddy Scott sent me a modified player database that added in Cantona since he had just retired before the version I had came out, and thus wasn't in it. This was before I got the editor utility. So we talked about what type of ratings Eric should have, he added him, sent me that db to drop on in my folder just after installing, and bang! I had Cantona back on United at the age of 31 heading into the 97/98 season, he died shortly there after, and Scott told me go look at young French players to see if there was a new 16 year old forward. Bingo~! there he was, and transferred him in. He was the first of those younger regen players that I developed, with Schmeichel some years later being the second.

 

I don't know how the later versions handled it. I do seem to recall reading that they added "editor" tools to the official game at some point.

 

I never did the original CM2 db much, but I did 96/97 and 97/98 a lot which used the exact same engine and you could actually edit that going into a .txt file in the data. I'm a Champ Man obsessive so would spend hours pissing around with stuff like that. I even edited all the in-match commentary on 96/97 to be euphemisms for having a dump when I was 18. I believe the first to come with a proper editor was 00/01, the final installment before THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME in Champ Man 01/02. I only really used the editor tools though to give all scummy EPL teams fuck all money so they can see what it's like for a change, now and again.

 

If Cantona wasn't on your version I imagine you were playing the 96/97 or 97/98 db updated version then, also known as "Tom Youngs from Cambridge is King of the Universe" as Cantona was on the first CM2 with it being released in 1995.

 

And yeah, the third playable was the Scottish, IIRC, along with Italian and English as Italian football was massive here in the UK at the time due to Platt, Walker, Gascoigne, Sharpe and DANNY DICHIO (!) going to play there and it getting top nation coverage every Sunday afternoon of a Serie A game, and a Saturday morning magazine on Channel 4.

 

CM01/02 still has a lot of support, updates, tools and patches due to a thriving online following which only bolstered by it being made freeware recently. I suggest you have a nose around http://www.champman0102.co.uk/

[Death From Above]

I just plugged in No Mercy for the first time in years. First of all my memory card is screwed which is probably no surprise. I'll have to see if it was one of those "haven't turned it on in years" wipes or if it just doesn't work at all before I fiddle with this too much.

 

I forgot how relatively fun hardcore stuff was in that game. The part where you can brawl in the bar and break the pool table with a brainbuster is hilarious.

 

The ladder match also isn't completely God awful which in itself seems nearly impossible.

[goodhelmet]

My biggest problem with No Mercy is that tag matches and multi person garbage matches slowed to a crawl, something that isn't not a problem in the VPW2 or WM2000 game.

[jdw]

If Cantona wasn't on your version I imagine you were playing the 96/97 or 97/98 db updated version then, also known as "Tom Youngs from Cambridge is King of the Universe" as Cantona was on the first CM2 with it being released in 1995.

Eric retired after the 96/97 season. 96/97 was also the year BvB won the Champions League, and as I said Sammer was a beast coming off the 1996 Euro and the 96/97 CL run. What's interesting, though, is that I'm pretty sure that runner-ups weren't in the CL, just the league winners. That change happened in 97/98 in real life... but I don't know if it was in the 97/98 version of CL 2.

 

I wonder if I had the 96/97 base "game" (which lead into the 97/98 season), and Scott pulled the db updated for the start of 97/98 for me, and edited Cantona back in. That makes some sense.

 

I don't remember Tom Youngs becoming a stud. The guy who went batshit in my game was Sean Dundee, coming off a pair of good but not earth shattering seasons for Karlsruher. He was 25/26 when the game started, someone in England grabbed him (Leeds strikes me as the team), became their anchor as they became the #2 team in the EPL in his peak, and won a number of Cup Winners Cups and UEFA Cups while I was bagging the Champions League. He was basically up in the Original Ronaldo and Alan Shearer range of nutty goal scorers. That wouldn't have been an adjustment that Scott made since neither of us cared about Dundee. I just found it cool that he turned out well.

 

 

And yeah, the third playable was the Scottish, IIRC, along with Italian and English as Italian football was massive here in the UK at the time due to Platt, Walker, Gascoigne, Sharpe and DANNY DICHIO (!) going to play there and it getting top nation coverage every Sunday afternoon of a Serie A game, and a Saturday morning magazine on Channel 4.

Shit... I forgot about Regen-Gaza. He was a fucking blast in the game... when healthy... and when not getting tired.

 

 

CM01/02 still has a lot of support, updates, tools and patches due to a thriving online following which only bolstered by it being made freeware recently. I suggest you have a nose around http://www.champman0102.co.uk/

Scott keeps talking about getting into CM/FM again. I'll likely do it when I get a new gaming PC. Seriously, the won I want is leading into the 2008/09 season, with United the reigning champs and that loaded roster. They doing a little edit job on the Spanish players since leading into 2008/09 it's highly likely that they didn't rate Xavi and Iniesta and Sergio (and of course Messi) quite high enough for how they turned out. Then I'd have to ponder: do I resist the temptation to steal some Barca players (including Xavi who I love), or do I leave them as the continental rival. The notion of playing Ronaldo and Messi together is hard to resits.

[ButchReedMark]

The fun of CM is how shit the wonder players off it turned out in real life. Sean Dundee for example became a Liverpool player of Istvan Kozma and Torben Piechnik levels of shite. And Maxim Tsigalko? Well. He probably still dines off being good on CM as he was shit in the real world.

 

Thinking back, I'm pretty sure Cantona was in 96/97, yes. I just had a look through 97/98 on my PC and he's not on that one. Obviously as he retired, although a cursory look online says the game has his details in it if you want to edit him in.

 

Tom Youngs started at 17 and had top stats for almost everything. Shit, in 97/98 the whole Cambridge United team was MIGHTY for some reason.

 

There's updates for 08/09 on the site, so you'll be sorted there. I even found one for 89/90 on there which I've been hammering as of late. Ian Rush, Dean Saunders and my home village's very own Mark Hughes up front banging them in. Surely it's every man's dream to play a manager game where they can sign John Wark, Clayton Blackmore and Mel Sterland?

[BrickHithouse]

Out of the Park Developments just sent out an email this afternoon announcing Franchise Hockey Manager, due out in Sept.

 

Stoked about this.

 

This gives me hope they'll produce a football game in the future.

[bradhindsight]

My biggest problem with No Mercy is that tag matches and multi person garbage matches slowed to a crawl, something that isn't not a problem in the VPW2 or WM2000 game.

This is actually solved (for the most part) if you have a N64 Ram Expansion Pack. There are some third party retro ones in circulation (the original came either stand-alone or with Donkey Kong 64).

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

Out of the Park Developments just sent out an email this afternoon announcing Franchise Hockey Manager, due out in Sept.

 

Stoked about this.

 

This gives me hope they'll produce a football game in the future.

Markus has been asked about doing a football game and said he doesn't know anything about American football and wouldn't know where to start. I doubt he makes enough money to bring someone else on board to make a football game, either.

[Death From Above]

Been playing more No Mercy and yeah, still a great game. But those handicap hardcore matches in story mode can go get fucked. Even with the difficulty turned down to the children's setting the APA just gangbang you. Eventually they catch you in a double powerbomb, and it's even worse if you play as a fat guy because every rear grapple is basically a backdrop driver.

 

Other than that, still great.

[BrickHithouse]

Out of the Park Developments just sent out an email this afternoon announcing Franchise Hockey Manager, due out in Sept.

 

Stoked about this.

 

This gives me hope they'll produce a football game in the future.

Markus has been asked about doing a football game and said he doesn't know anything about American football and wouldn't know where to start. I doubt he makes enough money to bring someone else on board to make a football game, either.

 

Dammit

[pantherwagner]

I played a lot of Tecmo World Wrestling. I loved that it was a Japanese game and you had tons of cool moves like german suplexes or giant swings that you'd not see on American games. Like a lot of kids here, I spent a lot of time playing Wrestlefest. Weirdly the machine wasn't a hit at all at the arcades in Barcelona and you could see it popping around from place to place in the neighbourhood, but it was forever at the arcade in my father's town in the countryside.

 

After NES I didn't have a videogame system until PS3 but I played a lot of Emulator games in the mid 90s. I bought a bootleg CD-ROM once with a shitload of SNES games (and I made a lot of money reselling it as a friend from a well-off family had a CD-ROM recorder when those cost at least a thousand dollars). There was what was my favourite game for a very long time: the Super Fire Pro Wrestling of All Japan women. If I recall they had two games and this was the first. I only knew Toyota, Kong, Nakano and Hokuto but it didn't matter (it was only a few months later in 1994 when I got my first 90s AJW tape and I became a fan). You had tag matches, moonsaults, dives and tons of other features that I had only seen in my dreams. It took me a very long time to learn how to do stuff and what each option meant as there was obviously no guide and it was all in Japanese. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to do pinfalls. This was my favourite game until I got a copy of one of the men's SFPW X Premium.

 

That CD had a lot of wacky games: a WAR game with Tenryu and a bunch of clones (can only remember a Muta clone), a crappy Akira Maeda RINGS game where he'd fight other style fighters, a JWP game that was alright but nothing special, and one that I really loved called Ikkyu Pro Wrestling where you had exploding matches and all kinds of good stuff. There may or may not have been a Cutie Suzuki wrestling game but that one may not have been an SNES game. These games were the reason why I learned katakana, which I still remember 20 years later, even if I have never bothered much with hiragana which my Japanese friends think is very weird.

 

As a side note, in the late 90s I'd probably have given my left nut to own the PC-FX All Japan Women game that I saw announced on the Gong magazines. Years later I realized that it was a shitty select-your-move type game, kind of like the WWF Microleague games.