First I should talk about my favorites. I'll start with the current generation of wrestling games. While WWE'2K14 is easily the most polished and well made wrestling game in recent years, packed with loads of nostalgic hooks and some if the best match mechanics, WWE'13 is easily my favorite wrestling game. It's not that far behind 2K14 in terms of quality, and the roster is by far the best as it represents the best nostalgic era of the WWE, the Attitude era.
Now a lot of people hold the old Aki games close to their hearts and I'm no different. I've probably played Wrestlemania 2000 and WCW/NWO Revenge more than any other wrestling game and these are still two of my favorites. No Mercy is also a game worth hours of time. The Nintendo 64 was one of the best eras for wrestling games and will always be where some of my fondest memories remain.
While eventually Smackdown would come out and be the best wrestling game on the PlayStation, there was less success with the WCW games. When I was watching wrestling as a kid I was watching WCW. I loved Sting and the angle with the NWO so when I was looking at wrestling games, naturally I wanted to play a WCW game. Unfortunately when it comes to PlayStation (which was what I was playing at the time) there were only a handful of bad to mediocre WCW games. I played a lot of WCW Nitro and Thunder even though they were both pretty terrible. However my friends and I found solace in WCW vs The World. A game for PlayStation the combine the big main members of the WCW roster and some Japanese wrestlers. I remember late nights with this game as Danny's older brother consistently stomped me into the ground with this game. I remember WCW vs The World fondly but I recently revisited the game.
So now we live in the modern age and have our first next gen wrestling game out with WWE 2k15. The WWE games are the only noteworthy wrestling games being released anymore ( I enjoyed TNA Impact but I doubt we will see another outside of mobile) and if you are looking for something different you have to look to the past or to obscure Internet games which is where I found two shining gems. Two wrestling mobile games that have hooked me like any other mobile game has before. The first is called Wrestling Manager by a company called Serious Parody. This is a game similar to the general manager mode in the Smackdown vs Raw series where you are buying and trading wrestlers and trying to put together the best shows you can. Each show gets a rating and review and you can look at each match on your card to see what matches were better than others. The entire game is played trough menus and the wrestlers are represented by what look like playing cards. All of the characters are parodies of real wrestlersbut there are a lot of original made up wrestelrs as well. You can bid on or buy new wrestlers, match types, and arenas and you try to put together the best shows you can.
Now the one game I HAVE to mention, and also half the reason I wanted to write this, Is Wrestling Revolution for phones and PC. This game is essentially the most pure and earnest wrestling game. Now the art style is kind of like flash meets construction paper and colored with MS paint. It controls very weird but once you get the hang of it, it's easily the best playing phone game that has buttons on the screen that I've ever played. If that's an issue for you then you can download a PC version which works better. It's not exactly the gameplay that makes this game so much fun though. Yes when you figure it out it is fun to play, however the lifestyle aspect is the draw here. So you start out in wrestling school and you can be contracted by different wrestling promotions that are all parodies of existing wrestling promotions. The wrestlers are also parody. Cm Punk equals Mc Puke and Colt Cabana is Kute Kavana. That sort of thing. So when you finish an event you get a recap of the week between all of the promotions. You see who leaves, who wins titles, who resigns a contract, and even who died of an overdose. That's right wrestlers will die and then you have to wrestle charity events.
.jpg)
There are so many more wrestling games out there but these are some of the ones I feel deserve some attention or are worth remincising about. While I may have fallen off of actual wrestling for a long time I never stopped loving the games and I will continue to play all of the ones that come out. So what are you favorite wrestling games? Do you know any that a lot of others may not have heard of? Feel free to share it.While the modern day roster has some obvious gaps, this game is loaded with so many great wrestlers that a lot of the B tier characters that are neglected aren't missed. The only one up that 2K14 has on WWE'13 is the rivalry system which really steps up the universe mode. Looking back to the inception of the PS3 and XBox 360, Smackdown vs Raw 2007 was the first split gen wrestling title (though only on 360 and PS2) and was a phenomenal game. The general manager mode is one of my favorite additions to any wrestling game and the roster was amazing. The gameplay was fast, the hits felt hard, and had an addicting Road to Wrestlemania mode that I played multiple times. Now if we step back a generation to the Playstation 2, Smackdown here comes the pain is easily my favorite game of that era.
Like most of these games for me, it all comes down to the roster and replay ability which Here Comes the Pain has both of. The career mode is a lot of fun with different ways to play to keep it fresh every time you jump in.
While I spent days of my life with the Aki games, my earliest and fondest memories of really losing myself to wrestling games was WWF Warzone. While I had encountered wrestling games before with the Super Nintendo WWF games, I wasn't an addict until Warzone. While nothing about this game would be considered good by any of today's standards, its multiplayer was enough to bring me and my best friend Danny to the same couch everyday after school just to pick our favorite wrestlers (or create our own favorites) and beat each other senseless. When we weren't playing Warzone we were wrestling on his trampoline with our friends. It was the time of the attitude era and wrestling was our everything.
Incredibly stiff and bare bones compared to wrestling games today, WCW vs The World is a game that relies on its nostalgia and doesn't hold up well over time but is probably the best WCW game on the PlayStation but really the Aki games are where it's at. I choose to ignore WCW Mayhem and Backstage Assault and you should too.
You can choose the winners or just let the matches play out, only represented by watching bars rise and fall. After the show you get a raiting and profit, or loss. Honestly all the game amounts to is buying the better wrestlers and bigger arenas and putting together as many matches as you can until you build up enough money. You do have different tiers of challenges that add a lot of playability to the game and keep you coming back. It's fun and addicting. You want to keep completing your challenges but beware because as soon as you finish the challenges the game has little to offer.
Not real enough for you? You can also injure/get injured during a match, which is signified by a scream and your character having trouble manuvering after. Sometimes however after someone get's injured you might find out afterwards that they went to the hospital and died from their injury. It's easily the most earnest wrestling game and doesn't shy away from the darker aspects. This game even has ten man matches that are pure mayhem and it's incredibly fun in just how much of a mess it can be. It's easily one of my favorite wrestling games currently out and I would love to see this game make it to a Vita or 3DS or something. It's worth checking out and you can tell it's a wrestling game made by a wrestling fan for wrestling fans. There's also a new 3D version out but I haven't had the chance to play much of that yet.
