305 · WCW: World Championship Wrestling

• NES Longplay
• Manual
• WCW VS WWF
  • I grew up on WCW because my dad loved the old WWF wrestlers
  • Monday Night Wars
  • WCW vs NWO then the NWO vs itself
  • Goldberg
  • But it’s all too early for this!
• It was the first (and, to date, only) video game based on the National Wrestling Alliance (at the time, WCW was a member of NWA).
  • Lou Thesz
  • Jim Cornette (manager)
  • The Iron Sheik
  • Ric Flair
  • Terry Funk
  • Dusty Rhodes
• The Wrestlers
  • Lex Luger
  • Ric Flair
  • Mike Rotunda
  • Kevin Sullivan
  • Sting
  • Rick Steiner
  • Ricky Steamboat
  • Road Warrior Hawk
  • Michael P.S. Hayes
  • "Dr. Death" Steve Williams
  • "Hot Stuff" Eddie Gilbert
  • WCW Master is based on André the Giant
• Choose Your moveset
  • Each wrestler has a menu of eight moves (with each wrestler featuring a unique moveset), from which players choose four (each move selected is assigned to a direction on the D-pad).
• Each wrestler has his own finisher move. These must be performed in the middle of the ring and can only be accomplished when the opponent had two squares remaining on his health meter. The move is performed by pressing A and B simultaneously. Finishers deliver significantly more damage than a regular move and are likely to end the match in a knock-out or submission.
• Tag Team matches
• Cover Art
  • After The Road Warriors left WCW for the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), WCW continued to advertise the game in their own catalogs with a mock-up cartridge showing Sting on the label, though no such copies of the game with an alternate label are known to exist or believed to have ever been manufactured.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Super Star Pro Wrestling was the japanese version of the game featuring wrestlers from Japan's AJPW and NJPW promotions
• EGL
• Next week -
• NEStalgia Byte -

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 WCW World Championship Wrestling. Challenge the world's greatest wrestlers in the grappling action game that puts you in the toughest competition of all.

00:25 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe the Wrestler. Yeah, that's right, Joe. Thought you were getting another episode, another normal wrestling episode. This ain't the time. Not so today. Yeah, that's right, brother. We're doing a wrestling episode like you've never seen before. Iron Mike and sexy Sean are coming at you, brother. Uh, that's enough of that. Are you guys both? I'm not. I'm not done.

01:06 I can't imagine having somebody listen. Like, you think about it. They listen to the podcast in the shower, right? Or something like they have a Bluetooth speaker and then we're just shouting at them for the next couple hours. That's how long this podcast is going to be. It's going to be a couple hours. Yeah, a couple hours. Yeah. Well, maybe just the next few episodes you'll do in that voice, regardless of whether or not they're about wrestling. Joe, what'd you think of the voice?

01:28 Uh, it, I, you know, honestly, I felt, uh, I was upset with myself that I, that I wasn't confident enough to do the voice myself. Uh, you don't need to, you don't need to beat yourself up over that. Yeah. Once I heard you guys doing it, I was actually very glad that I wasn't doing it. Oh, I get it. If you're, if your wrestling name was, and I'm Joe, then you would sound like that. You would sound exactly like the person you were playing. Yeah. I like to be like the, yeah, I'm like the, the one guy that's like, just doesn't have a character in this wrestling thing. And he's just like the guy that like, got like pulled out of the audience sort of. It's like, Oh yeah, I'm the wrestler too.

02:03 So this is WCW, um, which isn't, I mean, for us even we were around when WCW was around, so it's not weird or anything, but it hasn't been around in a long time, something like, uh, 20 years now or so. So WCW versus WWF. WCW versus other wrestling promotions. Did you guys ever tune into a WCW match? Did you prefer WCW over WWF? Or is this still, as I checked in last, uh, week, we didn't even know who Ricky the dragon steamboat was and now he's in this game. So that's pretty cool. So just give me, I guess in general, WCW thoughts and knowledge. I'm pretty sure I even owned like a WCW PS1 wrestling game. If that was a thing. Nitro?

02:50 It was Nitro. Yeah. There you go. I had that, didn't know who was who, but I played as an unlockable, like, uh, like T-Rex character, which was funny. Um, I didn't know what I was doing. When I was a young kid, uh, too young to really have like any real knowledge of WWF, but like I was into it cause my brother was into it. I do remember there being, I have vague memories of there being like, like a value brand version of WWF, but I don't remember it being WCW. Was there another one? Oh, there were a few.

03:25 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's big one. ECW probably would have been the next in line. That had a Dreamcast game that I had. It'll probably come to me some point during the episode, which one it was. Okay. Hopefully it's not like that backyard wrestling with the insane clown pasta.

03:40 Confirmed that it was not that. Okay. Do you think that it was like localized to a region? No, it definitely wasn't. It was definitely like, well, I don't know. I used to think that the Drink, Milk, Love, Life song was also not localized. That's true. We were there.

03:53 Who knows? And I actually grew up on WCW before I ever saw the WWF because my dad loved the old WWF wrestlers and WCW in the mid nineties kind of made it their business to make sure that they acquired all those guys who were basically having a WWF contracts expire. And then they were like, Hey, we can offer you way more money because we're on Ted Turner's bankroll. And so they had Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and Lex Luger and eventually Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, who were technically different characters on the WWF.

04:27 But that's a whole meta thing that this episode actually won't cover because believe it or not, yeah, there's, well, there's, that's the NWO, you know, and the NWO, which is probably one of the biggest selling points of the WCW's entire history is something that will not just be covered in this game because that was more of a late nineties thing. Well, I do have an NWO story though.

04:48 So back in, back in like the late nineties, my stepbrother had a, like a cup lid that was electronic. It was an electronic cup lid and not like a sippy cup, like a sippy cup. But if you weren't like a baby and you were like a cool kid. Only the lid was electronic? Well, I mean, there was a cup there, but like the, what was electronified was the lid. And I think that's what it was at least. And there was sting, like, you know, goth era sting, which until this game, I thought there was only that era sting.

05:22 Um, and if you press the button, he would say, uh, he would grunt and be like, uh, and then there was another one. If you press the button and be like, I'll be back. And then if you press the button again, it'd be like NWO is going down. And I just kept, I just kept pressing that button over and over. And so like that sequence is just burned to my memory. Um, not anything about wrestling, just the wrestler saying those things out of like a, a one inch speaker just wanted to go down that rabbit hole real quick.

05:53 Amazing that they would let, um, you know, electronics get that close to liquid. Maybe it wasn't a cup. Maybe it was some other thing, but I don't know. It just sounds crazy because it's like, did it make the sounds every time you went for a sip? Maybe. Yeah. Like sting is telling you, he'll be back to beat up the NWO as you're taking a drink. Maybe somebody that listens to this, uh, episode knows what I'm talking about. Surely somebody will. Yeah, absolutely. Somebody will know exactly what product you're talking about. Send us one. Yeah. Send one to Sean.

06:25 Um, uh, I, just for the record, I just texted my older brother and asked him what the, uh, sort of knockoff wrestling league we used to, that used to be on when we watched WWF was. And his answer was, in fact, WCW. So I guess that's what it was. You called it knockoff wrestling. That's great. I'm trying to remember like, like when I was a kid, I was just like, oh, WWF is the wrestling. And then there's this other one that's like not the real wrestling. That's so funny. Because WWF was obviously real. They spent so much money to make sure you would know that they were the real wrestling.

06:54 And you know what's funny? For the longest time in the nineties, actually, WCW looked like they were the, the bigger deal. Like WWF's ratings were going way down and it just wasn't working. And obviously like, this is not a wrestling history podcast. It won't attempt to be, but really wasn't until like Steve Austin and Bret Hart had their match at like, what was it? WrestleMania 13 or something that like, you know, basically Steve Austin revitalized the WWF into something that people would be like, oh yeah, I'd actually prefer to watch that on Monday instead of WCW. Stone cold Steve Austin.

07:27 Yeah. Sorry. I'm, I did. Yeah. Do you want, do you want more? Like, should we just go through the Texas rattlesnake? Like, do you know every nickname he's ever gone under? I didn't know that there were any other nicknames. No. Okay. Yeah. Austin 316. You got it. Anyway, it's all too early for these things that we're talking about, which is why it would never work because this game comes out in 1990 and we weren't really even alive yet. Right. Everybody wasn't alive. You guys weren't alive. Yeah. What month? That's funny. I should check. So it's important. April. Okay. Yeah. I was still, I was being gestated.

08:05 I was neither born nor into wrestling yet. So. Got it. So yeah. But you do know these wrestlers. Sean even referenced Sting as the goth era Sting, which a lot of wrestling fans just tuned out as soon as Sean said that line. But Sean, by goth era Sting, you're referring to the trench coat and the bat and the black and white mask. Yes. Black and white. I thought it was face paint, but yeah. Yeah. It is face paint. I just, anything you put on your face is a mask.

08:33 That's just, I, I, you know, why use lots of words when few words do trick. That's true. Also though, I mean like, come on, Ric Flair, the nature boy, everybody, you guys know the woo. I know. I know Ric Flair. I wasn't going to do the woo like he does. Yeah. And now you guys do know Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, thanks to last week's episode. Very well now. You excited to see him here? So excited.

08:54 Nah. Okay. Um, but also important, the game, uh, like on the box art had the road warriors. And do you guys know them? Like, it's funny that they're the ones that they chose to put on the box because I'm sure at the time of the promotion, like they would be the hot tag team to put on the cover of your box and people would recognize them at that time. But now it's kind of funny that like WCW wouldn't be using, uh, like sting or Ric Flair, two people that are, you know, way more popular than the road warriors as like the idea of what would be the face of their wrestling.

09:33 Yeah. They just kind of looked like two guys with, uh, like cool football pads on like that. I didn't, I mean, I guess that's their shtick, but I thought they were kind of like generic wrestlers for the box. Hmm. Oh, you didn't even think they might be like wrestlers that you could play as in the game. Just the idea of what wrestling is. Yeah. Just like cool wrestling dudes.

09:57 It seems unfair to be allowed to wrestle in those, uh, sharp, spiky football pads. I can't believe the referees just let these guys in. Yeah, this is allowed. Uh, also funny thing though, because I brought them up, they eventually left the WCW to go to the WWF and, uh, WCW would continue to advertise the game, you know, in their own, like, you know, magazines and promotions and anywhere they could sell copies to. And instead they did remove them from the game rather than pretend like, okay, yeah, like let's just put the box art on there. Instead they made a mock-up box art featuring Sting on the label.

10:36 And yet, you know, like if you looked for that copy in the stores instead of this one with the road warriors thinking that you were getting a different game, like that just never happened. They never produced actual copies of the Sting cover. They just put it in, you know, in magazines being like, check out this WCW game that you might think is a new one, but it's actually that old one. And if this happened like in modern times, they would just pull the entire game from e-stores. Yeah, right. And make sure that those who have it, um, could never download it again. And then those consoles would become worth a lot of money. Yes. You know, PT style.

11:11 This is also the first and apparently to date only video game that is, uh, not based on the WCW or the WWF, but actually confusingly the NWA, the National Wrestling Alliance. So at the time, WCW was a member of the NWA, the NWA being the bigger brand. And so even though it says WCW World Championship Wrestling, all of these wrestlers in the game, even if they would later go to WCW or WWF, didn't matter. At the time, they were NWA wrestlers. Uh, I don't think we really need to get into the NWA as a program because certainly I never, uh, saw it on TV or anything. I'm, I'm sure Joe doesn't even know about it. Yeah, this is mostly, I'm just hearing about this now.

12:01 Yeah. So don't worry about it. Uh, though a lot of great wrestlers such as obviously Ric Flair, but Terry Fong, Dusty Rhodes, Iron Sheik, they all got their start in the NWA. So it is a very important historically, uh, wrestling association. And so it's kind of weird that they only got this one video game, allegedly. Uh, I didn't actually do much fact checking on that, but it seems to be true.

12:23 So, uh, is that confusing from a standpoint of like, it says WCW, but it's actually NWA wrestlers. Does it even matter? Like, cause technically when you play this game and you don't even know these wrestlers, you're just treating them no different than the wrestlers that we played as in Tecmo World Wrestling. Well, I mean, again, because I at least recognized one or two names, I'm like, oh, this feels more like, you know, an authentic piece of licensed sports game stuff. Um, whether that's true or not. I, I can only imagine that NWA and WCW were associated in some way if they're like borrowing

12:59 wrestlers. Like, so I guess, you know, I wouldn't have thought about it if you didn't bring it up. Right, right. But more, more importantly, Sean, I guess what I mean is, uh, in NFL and MLB games or sorry, just generic baseball and football games, we have touched upon the ones that couldn't get the licenses and how it's not as fun to just play as, uh, you know, uh, Joe Schmidt from some random team that they generated versus playing as Ken Griffey, right? Like it's better to have the actual athlete.

13:30 What I'm asking you as somebody who's not that interested in wrestling, you can give us maybe the alternative and say, well, I don't really care if the wrestler is real or not. Uh, as long as they do cool stuff in my video game. I still appreciate the authenticity, whether I, I personally get the reference or not. Um, but I, I can see people having the opposite opinion or just not caring. Yeah. I mean, as someone who doesn't.

13:57 Is not familiar with any of these people. Uh, it was maybe lost on me a little bit, but the, you know, like the, the fact that you get different, different moves, depending on who you pick, I'm guessing that some of those moves are correlated with that specific wrestler and others are just to fill it in. But like, if that's so, that's pretty cool. But also as someone who doesn't know anything about it, it's also just cool to be like, oh, this guy looks cool and he's got this move that I like, you know? So I think it, I think it is a positive either way.

14:26 Joe, you know, there's something funny about that too, where in a, uh, in real life, you know, the stories that are built out over these programs where you're watching every Monday and have a pay-per-view and everything, and they build out these narratives and kind of create the characters. There's a lot of like, uh, you know, work going into that, that translates well into bringing them then to the video game and kind of bringing that personality alongside them.

14:53 Whereas when you just develop a character for Tecmo World Wrestling, you just kind of pick up on like stereotypes and tropes and stuff. And so maybe there's something there where the actual character development that happened in the storylines on TV, make them better characters in video games than just the random, like, uh, you know, this guy's from the Amazon, like watch out for him, you know? And like that, that somebody just made up in a day. Yeah. The, like the weird, the weird, uh, themed guys from the, the game we just played like last week. Uh, Tecmo World Wrestling.

15:29 That one. I knew the name. Um, where it was really weird that the American dude seemed to be like, they, they go for these themes and then they seem to be like wildly off base. Even when you give them a theme, I don't know if that makes any sense, but you'd think that they were based off of real people with the decisions that they made. It makes a lot more sense to have, uh, oddballs when, oh, that's because that dude just is like that in real life. Yeah. I think it does lead.

16:01 I mean, I guess it doesn't necessarily lead away from tropes because I'm sure a lot of them already are drawing on tropes, but it leads away from like very, um, basic tropes, you know? Like, yeah, this guy's patriotic and that's his whole thing, you know, or it's like, yeah, there's like a little more style to him because like you said, yeah, each person is, is actually a person. I would just like to chime in real quick that I've confirmed with my stepbrother that it was indeed a mug or at least a vessel for liquid, um, that the Guth era sting toy, um, came from. So just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah. If anybody has that vessel for liquid, please send it to us.

16:43 Last week we joked, of course, that we talked about, uh, Tecmo world wrestling for long enough that, uh, do we really need to do anything on this wrestling game, uh, to do any additional work or who's going to look forward to this episode or anything. So, uh, you know, rather than cover the whole thing, which I feel like we can do kind of,

16:59 uh, more efficiently now, uh, the most unique thing, at least in terms of what makes it stand out from the game that we just played last week is that in this one, yes, you're playing as recognizable wrestlers, but also that you get to choose your move set. They give you eight moves for each wrestler and you choose four of those. Um, each of those moves is not necessarily unique to that wrestler, but they each do get, um, uh, their, you know, like their signature moves attached to them and everything.

17:30 And so, um, when you choose the four moves, each one of those, and it's actually done pretty well, uh, in the actual menu itself, the way it lays it out, it's assigned to a direction on the D pad and it shows you with a cross pad that kind of, um, the color choice isn't necessarily the best. Like I would have personally just filled in the direction that you were assigning it to. It's clear enough though. You know, but it's clear enough, but it is just, it's a weird color choice. If you know what I mean, it's, uh, like purple and yellow and it's like, okay. Or green and purple. And it's like, should I be selecting all three of the other buttons or just the button, just the one that's the other color. It's like, look, just think about it for a second.

18:11 The idea of selecting three out of the four buttons on a D pad is just like so cumbersome already. It does require your brain though, at least 0.1 seconds to think about, which is worse. The thing about this game is at least like the presentation of the controls, like not even the presentation of the game or the controls of the game that this game has a leg up on our previous wrestling, uh, backlog basically in that, that, that menu screen does so much

18:43 legwork in my brain for trying to understand the controls of a wrestling game because they're all, they're all just crazy coded, like way too complex to me so far. That did a lot of, of work to tell me like, Oh, that's how this game is played. Like, yeah, because like not even, not even the fact that I get to pick that just the way that it's communicating it to me helped a lot.

19:05 Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, it's just normally, yeah, we've been like kind of digging into the manual to be like, how do we do our things? And then it's like, I got to remember all this. This is like, cause, cause not only like you picking it, not only because you picked it,

19:20 picking it gives you like more reason to remember it. You know, it's like, well, I chose this. So like that sticks in your brain more than like just being told these are your moves. And there's something about, uh, the fact that all the moves necessarily, you know, I don't think anyone's more powerful than the other, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's also that you just choose the ones that sound the coolest to you. Uh, right. Like, so there's not necessarily a, uh, you know, a stats thing behind it where it's like, oh, I got to have the pile driver cause it does the most damage or something. It's like, I chose the pile driver cause it's a really cool name. Yeah. I kind of remember what it, what it is and I was correct.

20:01 That is something I'm a little torn on because I do like that, that it's like you, you're picking the ones that you like and it's not like one is better than the other, but also so like, is that all that these things are just kind of like aesthetically they look different, but they just like do the same amount of damage and, and knock the other person down that I don't know time because that would be a little disappointing to me like that. There's not, I guess there's, I guess maybe it's not like robust enough to have like, well, this one takes his overall health down more, but this one will stun him for longer or something like that. Like, so where you'd have to like strategize of like, well, what, what moves do I want together?

20:38 Sorry. I'm like drinking a beer and I'm right now. Well, I know that like, it's like he pausing in the middle of my sentence. I know that when you're like actually executing these moves, like there, there's sort of a pause between like phase one and phase two, like phase one is like the grapple getting him into the move and phase two would be the move just executing in front of you. And there's like a meter that shows up and you kind of have to time the meter. And I think like that depending on where you went, where it lands, like you do more damage or one thing or the other. And maybe the, uh, the sort of risk reward is waiting long enough to get it to like maximum damage, but the guy can also like break out of it faster.

21:24 Mike, tell me if I'm completely making up, uh, uh, mechanics here. No, I don't think you're making them up. And just to get back to a question by Joe too, uh, Joe, I, you know, I don't have any definitive evidence, I guess I should say, like we didn't play this game long enough to say that the pile driver is definitely the same as the backdrop. Right. But it certainly appears that way. And I don't know, like those moves, right. Are not like the entirety of your control scheme. Like you still do have a lot of basic moves at your disposal, punching, kicking, body slamming, head butting. And then there's also situational moves too. So, um, I don't think it's like necessarily a negative.

22:06 Yes, they could have built it out more and created stats around these that like, depending on the four moves you change, you also become a more technical wrestler versus a power wrestler, right? Or something like that. All I'm saying though, is that it's, if it is true that they are, that all these moves do the same thing functionally. If you take off the aesthetic coat of paint and like, yes, you have these other moves, but so do all the other wrestlers. It's like you have this variety of wrestlers with this variety of moves and they each have their unique moves and you choose them. Um, but like, if you kind of like look behind the scenes, like your choices don't actually matter there at all. It's just your, what you're doing in the game.

22:45 Yeah. The only thing that I, that I may, that I, I kind of was going to go into after I went on that whole ramble was maybe between those moves, like the range at which like the damage is done. Like maybe that's wider or narrower move to move. Um, or, or maybe like the, the, it moves faster or like the, the time window is shorter move to move, but there, I don't have enough information to say when, where are the other, it could all be exactly the same for all. It's officially confirmed that it is all exactly the same. So you are just picking, and maybe this will sway some votes the different ways, but you are just picking the wrestler based on their appearance and everything else is just the,

23:29 the look of the animation, not even the time it takes or, um, you know, the power it does. So each thing is just basically, uh, in terms of the unique move set is just going into a grapple, hitting that a button as fast as you can to build up your power. And then just hoping that it does enough damage to eventually lead to a pinfall. What I don't like about that is that there are some different types of moves like, uh, sorry,

23:56 I keep using the pile driver as an example, but if the pile driver versus like the Boston crab, now the Boston crab is more of like a, a submission kind of move, right? Something you might expect something, uh, it's a squeezy boy, right? They might tap out from the pain, the unbelievable pain of it. Whereas a pile driver will knock you out. And so therefore you wouldn't be able to tap, uh, that doesn't happen in this game. So the Boston crab, a submission move is just instead, just something that like the opponent,

24:22 no matter what, how weak they are, like breaks out of essentially. And then you just pin them as a result. Like it doesn't lead to that awesome, like, can they grab the rope style situation and break it off the call? Like that, that won't happen in this game. Huh? I do like, um, that this game, it feels like there's more of like a, a loop. Like there's actually like a sequence of events that I can grasp because again, in previous wrestling games, I have not been able to grasp like what I'm even supposed to do.

24:58 And I still think that it has those problems of like the computer can sense your inputs immediately. And like, just, it knows exactly when to strike, but I can at least grasp in this game that, okay, you, you land a couple blows, whether it's a punch or a kick, that'll put them into just like a daze for a second. And that's when you actually go into your grapple and that's when you input these moves and, or you can throw them into a word that I learned, a lariat or not a lariat, uh, the, the Irish whip.

25:29 Um, and I think this is the first time I'm really seeing that actually feel good. Um, where you're throwing a guy between the ropes and, and then like the cycle sort of continues from there and whether you're on top or he's on top until you've done enough damage that you can try to pin after one of these things.

25:48 So I was finally able to like, get like, yeah, that gameplay loop of a wrestling game that I was a lot, I'm a bit more, uh, used to, whereas the previous games that we played, it seemed a bit more removed from that. Yeah. And even presentationally with the wrestling, um, it's more, I don't want to say like focused on the rules, but certainly the fact that you can leave the ring, but you will start being counted out and, uh, that you can find items like a wrench and stuff and hit each other with it. Now, now technically they didn't tell us the rule set. So I don't know if it's a no disqualification match or since you can't see the ref, he's just assumed to not be looking, but in most wrestling matches, you're not allowed to look at, um,

26:32 you're not allowed to look, you're not allowed to hit somebody with a wrench and, and, you know, and just get away with it. So, um, you know, maybe not, maybe it's not about the rules so much as the presentation,

26:44 uh, that it has some good flair here, but even just like jumping up on the top ropes, like switches views to make sure that it's got like that sweet spot. Uh, I like all those touches and yes, I do like that you can do the Irish whip and that you have running moves that are specific to the characters and also that you have finishers, um, which is not unique to this game, but just maybe the, uh, easiest finishers to pull off. Just, um, make sure that they're in the center of the ring and that they only have two bars of health left. And then if you just press a and B, uh, at the same time, you will pull off your finisher in other games.

27:18 Uh, later on, it'll become even easier, but sometimes I feel like it's a combo that, uh, I just don't feel like learning or that I'm going to have to be like staring at the manual, uh, and trying to put it in at the same time.

27:29 So I liked that. I like you, Sean, I liked that. I was able to go through all the motions of a match in my very first match. Uh, you know, just like figuring it all out right then and there, not like, oh, well, if I play this long enough, I'm sure I'll learn it all. Yeah, exactly. All around. It feels more user friendly than we've been, we've been privy to recently. Yeah. I think that, I think that like a lot of, I think we're like slowly seeing evolution from like the idea of wrestling and video games with like, you know, there's definitely some ups and downs. It's not just a straight, uh, up upwards trend, but yeah, this, it felt, you know, reasonably

28:12 closer to like what I remember on the PS one. I mean, that doesn't mean it's close, but it's like, I can feel the trend, but the wrestling isn't all good. And one, uh, you know, point of beef, I guess I had with the game, uh, that I noticed in my first match and then didn't improve upon in later matches is the punching and kicking. And just the first off the way that comes off between the two wrestlers as you're kind of like slap fighting away from each other at a distance, both with your fist and your feet, which is kind of funny, but again, just doesn't look good.

28:44 And I can't tell, you know, the hitbox animation versus what's actually doing the damage of who's getting who and like what, what registers for like, why did, why did my head count that time? But then technically I was spamming the kick button, but now they got to kick in on me. Like, how does it decide who gets that stuff? I didn't like that slap fighting portion of the game. And I preferred more of the grappling.

29:08 I, I, sometimes, sometimes with the, with the kicking particularly, it felt like you had to be so precisely lined up on like the Y axis that like you, sometimes you could be like a, a core, what looks like a quarter inch in space off from each other. And it's like, well, you're just completely missing each other until you, it was like, and lead to these little, like, Oh, Oh, we're not lined up. Like, let's get lined up. So I can kick you. Like, you know, these little like awkward, like meat cutes just felt really weird.

29:37 Uh, I, I like the concept of it mechanically. Like the, you, you trade blows for a bit before you move on. It's sort of like a, who gets the opportunity to do an actual like grapple move. And I know that might not be how it actually works, but in a video game format, I kind of understand it. Um, but I, I, I get it. Like it's, it's feel, it feels too imprecise. And the whole idea of I've like, okay, every three hits means that that person gets stunned for a second and then can have them an actual move done to them. But then I would get hit once and then I'd be dazed or, so I don't know if there's like some hidden like stamina meter somewhere, but it feels kind of unfair at time.

30:29 Yeah. And I get that like, as far as if there is a hidden stamina meter or even like there's clearly a hidden health meter or whatever it is. That's like how, how much you can resist getting pinned, you know, which goes down over time. You can, you can read it as you like tell how much longer it's taking you over how many more hits. But it's, and I get that like it breaks quote unquote immersion to have that like on screen.

30:52 Cause if you're watching wrestling, you can't see that. But like, I don't know. I, I, I wish you could see all that, those values because this is supposed to be simulating being the wrestler and they are aware of how they're feeling and we can't do that visually. So like show us their health bars, you know? It's like, I don't, not that it's a huge complaint, but that that's just something that's stuck out. Well, now that you say that, I kind of wish that most games would also have like an emotional wellbeing meter.

31:21 Yeah. Right. Did you guys feel like there was ever much reason to punch? Cause the punch is just a shorter range kick. Yeah. And more so than most games with a punch and a kick, I just felt like I'll just kick the whole time. I'm not going to get in that close and let him kick me on the way. I felt like at whatever angle you were coming at them with or getting approached by, uh, the, the kick or the punch could be more effective. Like if he's more above you than a punch would work, it doesn't really work if you're thinking about this as a 3d environment, but that, that's sort of the vibe I got, but I could not tell you if that was the correct way to go about it.

32:21 Also there was a, there's like a tag team match that you can do, right? Did anybody do those tag team matches? Joe? Uh, I did. Yes. Um, so first I played a regular one-on-one match with a buddy. Then we did the tag team matches and I'm not exactly sure what triggers like your, maybe you have to be weak. What triggers your like partner to try to tag you in. But, uh, like honestly it was like a ways into the match and suddenly like one of us, I think

32:52 I got hit and like this like silhouette guy shows up like on the, uh, on the other side of the rope. And it's just, it was just more like alarming for a second. I'm like, what the heck was that? Like what was that? It turns out it's like my partner, but he like appears and disappears very quickly because like, I think it, I think it's like when I walk over a certain point that triggers him to appear at certain, like after a certain amount of time, I don't know.

33:16 It's like all of a sudden we had basically forgotten it was a tag team. Then he showed up, but I did tag out and it did, um, prove useful for me because I ended up winning when I was greatly losing because I tagged out and then I was able to pin him before he was able to tag out into his fresh person. So pretty, you know, nice, a nice addition, I suppose. Joe, for the tag team matches, um, and they can be played just by yourself too, for the record, you don't need a friend, uh, to do the tag team match.

33:44 Um, your tag team partner will come only if you, uh, go to your team's corner and use the, uh, a button. Did you, did you go to the correct corner? Uh, so maybe his tag team partner was available too, cause I, we, we saw them appearing in both corners, but not until very late into the match. So I'm assuming there still must be like a, a threshold for your health before or time or something before they started appearing.

34:09 Yeah. Maybe it's like in and out of those corners before that. Right. Maybe it's like a system where like your, your partner needs to sense you're in danger so that you can tag them in rather than just constantly tagging in and out because it does say in the manual that there you have to wait at least eight seconds before you can tag again, which I'm not sure if that's like an official rule on, on, it's funny. Nobody's ever tried that strategy, right?

34:32 Of like tag teaming and just like tag him in, get it, you know, punch him across the face, knock him out, tag the next guy. And now you're stronger tag, punch him in back and forth. Be a fun, be a fun match. I'd see that. I'd watch that. I'd like to see a tag team, real life tag team wrestling match in which the rules are you can't be in the ring for eight seconds without tagging out. So like every seven seconds you have to tag out both players.

34:56 Yeah. Oh yeah. There's like, there's like a dozen people on each side and they're just wrestling each other. If you defeat every other wrestler other than the one you're playing as in the single player mode, you will unlock the secret character. What is up first off with all wrestling games having a secret character? Uh, the secret character in this game is the WCW master who is not real. There is no WCW master. That, that's stupid. He's seven foot six. If there is, if this is a licensed video game and everybody else is real, I don't think that the unlockable dude should be a completely made up. I don't know. I thought it was going to be master hand.

35:39 Right, right. Uh, I'm trying to think about like who would have been like an awesome secret wrestler for the WCW at the time. Um, cause if you want somebody who's like seven foot something, uh, the giant, um, who eventually became the big show. Andrew. What's that? Andrew the giant. Andre the giant. Andrew the giant. Uh, Andre the giant is, I mean, maybe he wrestled in the WCW, but I think of him more as a WWF wrestler. Uh, I was talking about the giant from WCW who became the big show in the WWF. Uh, but he didn't join until like 95.

36:15 It looks like, so not a candidate here, but also like, this is a weird crossover between like the, this secret character between the giant and like Kane with the mask and stuff. It's like, I don't know what they were going for here, but this is, it's just weird. It almost feels, uh, like if you dedicated yourself enough to fight all these other WCW wrestlers and then just get handed this guy as your reward feels kind of cheap.

36:46 On the sequels and spinoff side, I could talk about WCW sequels, but Sean, you mentioned that you had that nitro game on PS1. What'd you think? Yeah, it was fine. Fine. Okay. I also had a game on N64 WCW versus NWO. And, um, that was a good game. I appreciated that one. Um, it was really like, especially for an N64 game though. And something that was, I guess like, you know, at the time more for kids and fun and all that. It wasn't a lot of fun. It felt very technical again. It didn't feel like as crazy as the WWF games go in terms of presentational and flair and everything. I, I remember thinking as a kid, like, it's weird that the referee's always around and he's always watching us and we get counted out if we're outside the ring.

37:33 Like, I just wanted to have like fun, no disqualification matches. And that just wasn't even an option. That, that was sort of my problem with Nitro is because like, I was playing this PS1 game well into the PS2 era and I had played like, uh, uh, the, one of the, you know, the, the one, the classic on PS2 that, that, that generation, um, where you get to leave the ring and then go backstage and then use whatever props back there that you want.

38:01 On PS2 that would have been like, shut your mouth? Something like that. And you get the whole like creative, the creative guy was super advanced for the time. So when I was like first playing that game and then I was playing Nitro and didn't even like, let you leave the, the, the, the arena. I was like, what is this? I want all my fights to be backstage.

38:21 Um, so yeah, that, that, that left something to be desired. Funny story about WWF, uh, or at the time, I guess it was officially now WWE, uh, WWE SmackDown, shut your mouth. Uh, funny story about that. I was at GameStop looking for this game and my dad was nice enough to drive me and we were just looking, um, around and he said, he said to me, Mike, what's the name of the game again? And I said, shut your mouth. And he said, what did you say to me? And it was just like a quick funny thing. And like, obviously like I told him like, no, that's the name of the game.

38:53 Like, but you know, they definitely like design that kind of situation. Right. Now they want to start family fights. Yes. Right. No, or just like say that, you know, you don't want to call it WWE SmackDown, shut your mouth. Right. Like you wanted to, they wanted it shorthand, shut your mouth as the name of the game. What's funny is, is that it would continue to follow that line of thinking for all the other SmackDown games across that era. So they even had, uh, just bring it as a game. And maybe that would have been funnier if I told my dad, like, just bring it.

39:21 Yeah. Like you're challenging them to a fight. I prefer shut your mouth. And then he'll get the answer to your question. Not even challenge them to a fight, Joe. I'm thinking like, don't ask me the name of the game. Just bring it to me.

39:32 You know, this used to happen to me with Nickelodeon's figure it out. My mom would be like, what are you watching? And I'd be like, figure it out. Ooh. Very nice. Yeah. Don't give me that lip. Uh, on the real sequels and spinoff side though, I just want to say that, uh, obviously, uh, this game before it became WCW licensed had like a Famicom version first. And that was Superstar Pro Wrestling, which, uh, featured wrestlers from Japan's AJPW and

39:59 NJPW promotions, uh, which are, you know, a big deal, uh, in the wrestling world, but also obviously in Japan. And so, uh, that game also featured, you know, different licensed characters. So that's kind of cool. I guess it's also just interesting that, um, you couldn't just do like a, like a, a color swap. You had to, they had to, when you're localizing this game, they had to like reanimate everything because there's like different moves too. Right. And, and just, yeah, that the actual wrestlers look different too. Like you can't just say like, yeah, Ric Flair today, he's just going to look like this Japanese guy. Although I think there was like.

40:41 One character was in both of them or something like that. Road Warrior Hawk, um, is in both versions of the game. It seems like that's kind of cool. Wow. Less, less work for the, for the North America team.

40:57 And Sean, since I'm looking here, it says WCW master is based on Andre the giant, but I don't think they have any, uh, yeah, I don't think that they have any, uh, I'm going to actually challenge that. How do you challenge things on Wikipedia? They take this stuff so seriously. There should just be like a, next to every comment, there should be a, yeah, there should be a challenge button next to each thing of like, you guys should really look at this because you look at everything.

41:19 I'd also like to apologize to our listeners. I do know that it's Andre the giant and not Andrew the giant. So. But you're still saying Andrea the giant, not Andre the giant. I, that was just a slip of the mouth. Yeah. He was talking about his sister. Andrea. Andrea the giant. There you go. Andrea. Well, this has been a giant wrestling episode for us. And the only way to finish it off would be with the essential games list.

41:48 WCW wrestling is, you know, which feels weird to just call it that. Like, uh, that's like a, you know, it's a whole show. I don't know. Like, I guess technically like if the fresh Prince of Bel Air had a video game, you would just call it the fresh Prince of Bel Air game, right? Like you would just say fresh Prince of Bel Air. Like here's, it is, but what would that game be like anyway?

42:03 WCW world championship wrestling, uh, made by FCI on the NES with the official Nintendo seal of quality. Now that feels better. Right. And I actually feel better knowing that it got the seal of quality. Just kidding. This game is actually pretty good. And as far as the wrestling games go. And I do actually, uh, think it's a step up from Tecmo world wrestling. Is it enough to get on the essential games list? It has a few problems. The slap fighting thing that I mentioned isn't the only problem in the game. Probably my biggest gripe with the game though, to be honest, but also because there's the ability to change your moves, but that the moves changing don't matter.

42:39 You actually just would only pick the ones that you like. So you just do wind. It's an illusion of choice. You're not always just being like, well, got to pick this move this time. Cause I haven't played with it the last three matches, right? Like you just don't do that. You're just going to pick the moves that you like, and you're going to do those things. And even if you did choose different moves, it wouldn't matter. The only thing that would change would be the animation. All that to say that they could have went a little deeper to get something like this on the essential games list. Cause I feel like it could have got there with a few more like, um, uh, not necessarily

43:10 RPG like mechanics, but some more, um, differences between each wrestler. It's kind of weird that, uh, Ric Flair and sting are, are like on the same caliber for, for everything. Like technically in a, you know, in later games that would include both of them, they would be different kinds of wrestlers, not just because their move sets are different, but just because there are more than one type of wrestler. There isn't just this idea that, uh, everybody punches and everybody kicks. Cause it doesn't work like that. Uh, if it did wrestling would be fairly boring. So, uh, this still doesn't quite put wrestling games on the NES over the edge. And so Mike three 16 says, I just whooped this game's ass. Sean. Yeah.

43:58 Um, I don't know enough about wrestling to, to, to like, to give that deep of an answer, but I do appreciate that this is probably the most user friendly version of, of wrestling that we've been able to play so far, uh, insofar as I was able to actually understand the inputs and maybe I still think that the computer's cheating a lot. Uh, I still was able to enjoy it more than the previous ones. Um, I don't really have much else to go by. I don't think that that really means that it would be an essential game.

44:33 Maybe in the future we'll get one. Uh, but for me, no, it's not essential. Joe. I don't think this game is bad. Um, I guess you could even say that I, I would say that it's good. You know, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not opposed to that, but, uh, I have, I feel like unofficially become the multiplayer tester on games like this. And, uh, I did play a lot of multiplayer first while playing and it was fun. We, we enjoyed it. We, you know, we had a good time, um, played a couple of matches before we were like, okay, do we want to do another one? They kind of take a long time.

45:08 Like already we were getting, we were kind of over the multiplayer, but then afterwards I was like, well, I got to play some single player and play the, um, the campaign and like, you know, see, like go through the different wrestlers and stuff like that. And I played like maybe about half of one match and I kind of was like, okay, like, do I really, do I really want to do more of this? Like I already did a couple of multiplayer matches, the single player matches just feel like the multiplayer matches, but without, you know, it's like, there's nothing.

45:32 It didn't feel like other than like, yes, you're, you're going through wrestler to wrestler. Fine. But like, there wasn't much more to that. I guess all this to say that I think being spoiled by living in 2023 with video games today, this one just doesn't have enough to it. Uh, I, I got bored with it pretty quickly. So, uh, for that reason, not essential.

45:52 Next week, we will continue the hunt for the next essential game with Wrath of the Black Manta, which could be another wrestling game if we're being honest, right? It could just be like you play as one particular wrestler who goes through, uh, the motions,

46:07 uh, uh, you know, uh, backstage maybe even it's behind the scenes look after he was screwed out of a title and now he has to track down the owner. You know, funny enough, that actually is the plot a little bit of a Game Boy Color game called WWF Betrayal where you have to play as, uh, the Rock and, uh, save Stephanie McMahon only to find out that her father was the kidnapper. Pretty cool stuff. Uh, definitely check out that game. It's a beat-em-up. It's not a wrestling game. Um, and you play as the Rock, so why not?

46:39 Yeah. Um, it's a lot of, it's a lot of different things. Wrath of the Black Manta, of course, is not a wrestling game. We could not go three for three. I don't know when the next time we'll see a wrestling game is, but it'll probably be WWF or WCW again. Um, and with that, Sean, final thoughts? Uh-huh. Thank you.