WCW/nWo Revenge

Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of WCW/nWo Revenge on the Nintendo 64 and the game I consider to be the greatest wrestling game of all-time.

I took a break from console gaming after the Sega Genesis. I had gotten a home computer, so my gaming priorities shifted to that. I mean, why would I want a cartridge when I could have a CD-Rom!?

Oddly enough, what led me back to console gaming was pro wrestling. The wrestling game market was pretty bare on PC in the mid/late 90’s. The only two games I could get my hands on were WCW Nitro (by far one of the worse WCW games) and WWF Wrestmania Arcade, which was a version of Mortal Kombat with WWF wrestlers. Neither of these games scratched the itch that the WWF Warzone commercial gave me, so I began doing research on what console I wanted to buy.

Back then, the only way to “test” a console if you didn’t have a friend with one, was to rent one from Blockbuster. My dad had to put down a significant deposit (I believe it was $250) and we were able to take home a Playstation. We rented a few games and tried it out for five nights, and decided to see what the Nintendo 64 had to offer. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time, and I had already jumped ship from Nintendo to Sega, so I had little interest in going back to a “kiddie console.” But this console was to be shared by my little brother and me, and he liked the games on the Nintendo 64 and well… the games did play better.

We took all of our old consoles and games into FuncoLand and traded everything in towards a used Nintendo 64. My dad helped cover the difference, and my brother and I went home with a our new console. My brother picked up a Mario Party game, while I got WWF Warzone which was getting a heavy push on WWF TV at the time.

However, it was difficult to admit that Warzone was not all that fun. Sure, it had a mostly to date roster and okay graphics, but the game play wasn’t much better than WCW Nitro. Luckily for me, that Christmas my mom picked up WCW/nWo Revenge for me for Christmas, and I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t excited. But once I popped the game in, my opinion changed fast.

The opening video was fantastic, the roster was great, and the gameplay… it was perfect. The game was followed up by WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy, which both became a bit bloated, so I stand by that Revenge was the one game that had the gameplay dialed in the best. It didn’t have as many options for career modes and such, but you just couldn’t beat that in-ring action.

I played the heck out of Revenge, as well as Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy. Of course, as the new games came out, the old games got neglected, but whenever I popped WCW back in for a quick match, that joy came rushing back to me. It was so much fun.

About a decade ago, I bought a Nintendo 64 for a short time. I also picked up my old favorite games including WCW Revenge. It held up so well. Okay, maybe the graphics didn’t, but that gameplay was still dialed in.

 

It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since it was first released, but on this birthday I raise my glass to the greatest video wrestling game of all-time, WCW/nWo Revenge.