5 Terrible Wrestling Video Games

Why don't we kick things off with one of the first major licensed wrestling game in Wrestlemania for the NES. Handled by RARE, before they knew what they were doing, Wrestlemania is sort of a mess from a technical level.

The game looked nice, but unfortunately it didn't play nice. I still have the game and even some nearly 30 years alter, I still don't know how to play the game. Moves are almost impossible to pull off.

The game almost always devolves into a punch and kick fest that and better simulates your two drunk uncles fighting at the family reunion than any sort of wrestling.

WCW fans had it made in the 90s, at least if you owned a Nintendo 64. WCW World Tour and the incredible WCW/NWO Revenge ruled the roost when it came to wrestling games period. But what if you owned a PS1 and wanted some sweet WCW action?

Well, you got the abysmal WCW Thunder. The game, only by the loosest of definitions, seemed more a cruel joke for PS1 owners than anything else. The game looked like crap when compared to other wrestling game and the controls were near impossible to get understand.

That said, PS1 owners were so starved for a wrestling game that WCW Thunder managed to sell over 1 million copies, even with gaming magazines saying how terrible it was.

I think you are starting to see a pattern here. Much like the Monday Night Wars, WCW video games changed the landscape and did some amazing things, only to fall faster than a Yokozuna Banzai Drop.

As for WCW Backstage Assault, well, some genius figured that making a wrestling game where you don't wrestle inside the ring was a good idea. Sure, everyone loves a good backstage segment, but that's not why we watch or play wrestling video games.

Running on the already dated WCW Mayhem engine, the game only has the single mode. That's right, a wrestling game where the only match-mode is fighting backstage. Add in the fact that it's only single matches and you get probably the worst wrestling game ever. Heck, WCW Mayhem already had the backstage fights as part of the normal game, so you are buying a dated game with less features.

Looking at something a little more modern we get Legends of Wrestlemania, a game that should have been a runaway success. Reliving classic matches from WWE history should have been an easy win, but was a joke.

Based on the Smackdown 2009 engine, Legends of Wrestlemania decided to take what already worked and turn it into a game for babies. The controls were simplified using only the 4 face buttons.

So if you were expecting any sort of technical wrestling from a game based on a time when that was the norm, you can forget it. To add insult to injury, the matches were turned into mostly quick time events making your direct input into events in the ring pretty minimal.

Acclaim took advantage of wrestling fans with their pile of utter crap that they called wrestling games. You see, Acclaim was known for WWF Attitude back on the N64, a pretty okay wrestling game before Akai came and changed everything.

Acclaim then lost the WWF license and pasted on ECW stuff to create another game on the same engine with nothing new. Then they lost that license and just created their own series based on wrestlers from history.

Problem was that it was now deep into the PS2 generation and Acclaim was still using the now ancient WWF Attitude engine for the Legends of Wrestling series. Why do anything new when all you're concerned about is stealing kids money.

Also, the games were crap with wrestlers all sharing the same move-set (aside from finisher) and no entrance music and poor match and customization options.

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