Wintereenmas: WCW/NWO Revenge

From Wrestling Mayhem Show..

Oh, it was my return to gaming.  My brother had an N64, and I was the good brother that got him this for some sort of gift giving holiday, I’m sure.  And oh boy, did we play the heck out of this one.  WCW/NWO Revenge was certainly from the height of the company’s dominance over WWF.  You had the NWO, Goldberg, Raven, and a whole slew of WCW wrestlers.  While all of my friends were having a great time with WWF Warzone creating characters and versions of our crew, I was playing the best damn wrestling game there was, and there was a reason for that.  This game was one the the early wrestling games put out by THQ, the company that would later bring us the fantastic WWF/E Smackdown series we still enjoy today.  Luckily, this version made the Playstation renditions of WCW Nitro and Thunder look like a joke.

Wow, almost looks like a new game from a certain company...

The game was not without it’s faults.  Due to the unfortunate size limitations, while our friends were getting CD quality DX theme music, we were stuck with some generic digital entrances.  WrestleMania for the NES at least had custom themes!  Also, in what seems like an attempt to expand the roster, there were inclusions of several fake feds (at least I’ve never heard of them).  This may be a hold over of the WCW vs the World/World tour games with awkwardly large, and Japanese, rosters.  All of the characters were cheasy, and you’d avoid them, except the ninja.

But the rest of the game was great.  You didn’t have a custom wrestler mode, but you did have the ability to arrange the wrestlers in factions as you’d like and swap wardrobe amongst the roster.  I recall making great strides to divide up the NWO at the proper point, and turn Hogan back to the Red and Yellow.  Also, I think I turned The Giant into Big Show when that change occured.  The game had fun weapons, that came from the crowd, a good battle royal mode, and decent enough title modes.  And venues for all of the major PPVs of the era!  All this, and the quintessential representation of the NWO, The Flock, cruiserweights, and tag teams.  I’d dare say this was the best WCW game ever done.

Of course, the Asmik Ace/AKI engine that was known for a great grappling system, was carried over when THQ took on WWF in WrestleMania 2000, and the epic No Mercy.

But while this game didn’t have all the fancy CD-quality features, it did have this sweeeeeeetttt intro…

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