Credit to Videogames.com for Reviews. WCW VS The World for Playstation The game boasts nine WCW wrestlers, including Hollywood Hulk Hogan, Sting, Dean Malenko, and the Steiner Brothers. The rest of the game's wrestlers hail from six different wrestling federations from all over the world. This sets up an atmosphere similar to the old Saturday morning wrestling shows, where a super-huge wrestler would beat the life out of some fool you'd never heard of.The gameplay in WCW is pretty good, but feels a bit limited. Moves are selected by the length of time the grab button is held. Tap it, and the move will be fairly weak, like a toss into the ropes. Holding it down will result in a flashier move, but it also leaves your wrestler wide open to all sorts of punishment. The game also moves a bit slowly, and control is a touch sluggish. WCW VS NWO:World Tour for N64 WCW vs. NWO features tons of licensed wrestlers for the WCW enthusiast, with dozens of special moves.Unfortunately the game is flawed with sluggish control and play mechanics. However, the list of pile drivers, body slams, sleeper holds - hell, the sheer number of submissions in general - is long enough to make it worth checking out. Plus, the game is blessed with a battle royal mode that may be the best comedy dollar spent on the N64.Control is unresponsive and sluggish. A sense of timing is required not only to find holes in your opponent's defenses, but also to find the points at which the Nintendo 64 will allow you to perform moves at all. Run at your opponent and push the attack button and watch as your wrestler performs a flying kick - in the wrong direction. For the bulk of the game, the analog stick is only employed for special moves and grandstanding. The remainder of control is performed with the standard D-pad. Collision detection is sketchy at best. A punch will connect in one instance, but move one centimeter closer and attempt the same punch, and watch as your wrestler's hand moves right across your opponent's face and doesn't connect. The animations of the individual wrestlers are pretty solid. The use of multiple or rotating camera angles during pins, holds, and special moves is a nice touch also. There is a fair amount of pop-up when the depth of field allows for the ropes to enter the view, but its effect on the overall feel is minimal. The animation of the crowd is a downright surreal blur of horrific shades of mauve, gray, and pale blue that somehow makes the ring seem to exist somewhere in Dante's Inferno rather than on pay-per-view. Very odd. The AI is fairly competent, if a little random at times. It can hold its own against a novice player, but once you get used to the control it's easy to beat. It also exhibits a strange tendency to block or duck when neither is appropriate. WCW vs. NWO is much better as a multiplayer game. Maybe it's the license, or maybe it's the capacity to grab foreign objects from outside the ring, or throw opponents from it, but this game brings out the best and worst in human competitors. Options include tag team play, season play, and round robin tournaments, but it's the battle royal, with four wrestlers in the ring - all the time - that really takes the cake. One word sums it up: shenanigans. With one to four human players and the CPU controlling the rest, battle royal is wild and crazy - and absolutely hilarious. It's so, well, downright silly, to have four people in the ring at once. The sheer number of onscreen bodies makes any time the right time for a flying leap from the turnbuckle. With its ups and downs, you may want to rent WCW vs. NWO before purchasing it. Fans of the real-life WCW may find the treatment of the license not realistic enough for their liking. The characters' moves and appearances aren't very accurate, making the license appear like it was slapped on at the last minute. Control issues and poor collision detection aside, though, the battle royal mode is one of the strangest things going for the N64. WCW Nitro for Playstation The game has all the standard options that one would come to expect from a wrestling game. There are exhibition matches, tournaments, tag team matches, and the like. Actual gameplay is where Nitro chooses to make its differences known. Rather than rely on senseless button mashing to execute moves, Nitro instead has more of a fighting game style to it, with each move having its own set of buttons that trigger the move. Don't be fooled - there is still a bit of button pounding in the game, but not nearly as much as most other wrestling titles out there.The game was made to look and feel like WCW's Monday night program, from FMV intros to ring decorations. The pregame graphics are all quite good, but once the game starts, the game takes a huge downturn. While the characters look quite a bit like their real-life counterparts, the graphics are also very blocky. The game's frame rate is decent in a one-on-one match, but the minute another character runs down from the locker room to help out, the frame rate goes way, way down. Adding a fourth character makes a bad situation worse. The game's sound effects are nice, although commentary is very sparse. The announcers only butt in to state the name of a move or mention that someone is running down to join the match. Even with its graphical difficulties, WCW Nitro is still the best WCW-licensed wrestling game out there. WCW fans won't be disappointed, and wrestling game fans will have something to cheer about as well. THQ already has another WCW game, this one based on WCW's new show, Thursday Night Thunder, in the works. If the game fixes the few problems with Nitro, then WCW fans are definitely in for a treat. WCW VS NWO Revenge for N64 The sequal to WCW VS NWO World Tour, The gameplay modes include challenges for all of the WCW belts, as well as a battle royal, handicap matches, and exhibition matches. Winning belts unlocks wrestlers like Kidman, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Curt Hennig. A few of the belt challenges are also locked at the beginning of the game. The actual wrestling itself is mostly timing based. Rather than grapple and pound on buttons for supremacy, he who ties up usually wins. There are a few counters here and there that will allow you to reverse certain moves and strikes. The game has a decent number of moves per wrestler, but it still feels like there just aren't enough variations. The computer's lack of skill in one-on-one matches doesn't really help, either. It does, however, manage to put up a good fight in tag team matches, as well as the battle royal.The sound department is lame, at best. The only real music contained in the game is the WCW Nitro theme. None of the wrestlers' entrance music is in the game. Also, the game has zero commentary. Even a few phrases from Bobby "The Brain" Heenan or the fans counting to ten when you ram someone's head into the turnbuckle would have done wonders for the game's audio department. The sound that is in the game is pretty bad. All the music has an extremely generic sound to it, and the sound effects are pretty drab. WCW Nitro for N64 This is essentially a slightly updated version of the WCW Nitro that appeared on the PlayStation. The gameplay remains the same, but the roster has been updated, and wrestlers like Bill Goldberg have been added to the lineup. Gone from the original are the short taunt videos, which, by the way, were the best thing about the PlayStation version of the game. Also gone from the original are the poorly pixelated character graphics. Here, the wrestler models are very sharp, though the skin textures look quite bad. The crowd also looks really, really terrible. The game moves a lot quicker than the PlayStation version, but this gives the game a really strange look - it seems as though the motion-captured animation is simply running too fast.For those unfamiliar with the original version of the game, Nitro eschews the tie-up system of gameplay used by previous WCW games, as well as WWF Warzone, for a different, move-based style. Instead of tying up and pounding buttons to pull off moves, you execute the moves via a series of button presses. When this game came out for the PlayStation, it was nice to see someone trying something new in wrestling games, even if it wasn't too spectacular. But now that THQ has milked this style of gameplay for three games, it's way past its prime.Gameplay modes include the standard championship, which pits you against ten different opponents, one at a time. Win and you're the champion. Lose and you'll get to continue. There's also a tag-team mode and a battle royal, which forces you to toss your opponents over the top rope to eliminate them. WCW Thunder for Playstation WCW Thunder is a rehash of THQ's previous PlayStation wrestling game, WCW Nitro. The wrestlers, graphics, and modes have changed, but the gameplay is still substandard.The gameplay in Thunder is different from most wrestling games. Instead of relying on button mashing and complicated tie-up exchanges, Thunder uses a series of button presses to execute moves from both the standing and tie-up positions. Once your opponent gets hold of you, all you can do is pound down on the controller, hoping you can execute the escape move before he can pull off a move. The computer AI is absolutely terrible, and you can take out any computer opponent in around 30 seconds using the new button-mashing move that's been added, where you grab each other's hands and attempt to gain leverage. Using this move can easily drain half of the computer player's life. So, that said, use it twice, kick the poor guy once to knock him down, and pin him. Bang. Occasionally the computer will get a move or two off, but it's just about impossible for it to come back from being that far down. If he manages to regain some power, slap that move on again (press up and circle at the same time) and drain it all away. Human opponents obviously put up more of a fight, but the total lack of strategy involved in the game's various moves and holds really keeps it from being any fun.The game, like its predecessor, is pretty long on atmosphere. The game has short FMV ring intros and hilarious rant videos (be sure to check out Nash's and Piper's rants - they're classic) that play on the wrestler selection screen. Also, you can flip your wrestler's affiliations around. So you can put Goldberg into NWO White, force Sting to join Raven's flock, and make Hogan a Horseman if you so desire. Some affiliation changes change the character's in-ring appearance, but this is usually limited to painting a red T-shirt onto your guy. The WCW's three main singles competition belts are in the game, and the selection screen reflects who the current belt holders are at any given time. Modes include championship tournaments for all three belts, exhibition matches, tag matches, the 30-man battle royal (though only four wrestlers are in the ring at any given time), and cage matches. WCW Mayhem for N64 & Playstation The companies in the business of making wrestling games recently played a high-stakes game of musical chairs. Longtime WCW collaborator THQ managed to get hold of the WWF license, leaving Acclaim to sit around and talk about its secret plans for a new wrestling game. Electronic Arts stepped in and grabbed the WCW license. The company is taking the same approach here as it has taken with most of its sports titles. The development team aimed to be as faithful to the source material as it could. The resulting game, WCW Mayhem, is a very good first effort, but it still feels like a first-year title. Mayhem contains loads of different rings, all based on WCW television and pay-per-view events, ranging from your basic Monday Nitro set all the way up to Souled Out and Bash at the Beach. EA has provided an entire slew of WCW wrestlers to fight in these rings. Most of the popular wrestlers are featured, including Kevin Nash, Sting, and Goldberg. The game also features a slew of midcard wrestlers, like La Parka, Rey Mysterio Jr., and Disco Inferno. As in most other wrestling games, the roster isn't entirely accurate (Chris Jericho and Raven are still in the game, Hogan appears in his old NWO gear, etc.) but this doesn't really get in the way of the game at all.The main focus of the game is the ability it gives you to get out of the ring and fight your way to the backstage area, which is filled with chairs, tables, tasers, and other objects that you can use to bash your opponent's skull in. As a result, the game defaults to no-count out, pin-anywhere matches. WCW Mayhem's gameplay is much more arcade-like than most of the wrestling games that came before it. There's still plenty of strategy involved, but it's more of the "step out of the way of that drop kick" variety than of the "what move should I do next" type. Reversals are easy to perform, but very tough to master. If your opponent hits a button to execute a move, and you hit the same button shortly after, you'll reverse his attack. But reversals aside, the game really boils down to who can do a move first. There aren't any fancy fighting-game moves here, either. Each of the four main buttons is capable of three moves, depending on which direction you're pressing on the controller at the time. The arcade-style gameplay is a nice change of pace from the other games on the market, but it's not without its flaws. Rather than focus too greatly on health, the game relies on a momentum meter that tells you how well you're doing at any point in the match. The meter moves back and forth, and it will move toward your side when you execute impressive moves or find the time to taunt. If all the wrestlers in the match are fairly inactive, the meter will center. The more momentum you get, the harder it will be for your opponent to stop you. When your momentum meter is full, you can perform your finishing move. This allows for some good back-and-forth swings, but in actual use, it really just makes coming back from a deficit much tougher. Once you and your friends have all gotten good at dodging attacks, though, it becomes very hard to pull off a string of moves, and the result is a stalemate match that takes forever and ends on a lucky pin after a weak move.The computer player doesn't fall prey to that problem, though, because it's got problems all its own: It's completely stupid. The computer will get off a few kicks and punches from time to time, and it may even reverse a move or two if you've got it set to the hardest difficulty setting. There's no one move you have to do - any move or hold will do. All you need to do is get off a few quick attacks at the beginning of the match. Then, after you've worn the enemy wrestler down a bit, just start grappling and pulling off moves at will. It's possible to hit a finisher within the first 30 seconds of the match, though you won't be able to complete a pin until much later. The difficulty setting has less to do with how aggressive the computer plays and more to do with how long it takes to damage the other wrestler enough to successfully pin him. The computer is also very shy about getting out of the ring. If the computer player doesn't think it's close enough to attack you once you're both outside the ring, it will simply climb back into the ring and taunt a few times. Since one of the main points of the game is getting out of the ring and wrestling in the backstage area, this is extremely annoying. The create-a-wrestler feature is nice, but it doesn't really touch WWF Attitude in terms of depth and choice. The textures provided are a bit more realistic than some of Attitude's clothing, so most of the wrestlers you create will look as though they actually belong in a ring. There's even a set of clothes that look a bit like Kane's. Graphically, WCW Mayhem is more about speed than graphical shine. The wrestlers look good enough, but the game is rife with collision problems, and some of the models look a little weird. Most of the wrestlers have strangely skinny wrists. The game has a pretty good camera, which covers the action from a distance when you need to see all the action, but it'll zoom in and show the action from dynamic close-ups during the more powerful moves. The motion capture looks best in the wrestlers' reactions to punches and kicks.The N64 version of the game has decent sound, but most of the wrestler themes have been cut into short, looping segments. And though the game's credits list all three of the WCW's commentators, only one, Tony Schivonne, actually speaks during matches. The voice work is excellent, but there just isn't enough of it, especially when compared with the PlayStation version of the game. As such, you can expect to occasionally hear Tony say the same thing two or three times within the course of a minute. "Mean" Gene Okerlund handles the ring introductions, which sound pretty good. Despite its flaws, WCW Mayhem still manages to be a fun, original game, and it is definitely worth picking up. WCW Backstage Assualt for N64 & Playstation The sequal to WCW Mayhem, it features over 50 authentic characters including Goldberg, Sting, and Vampiro. In the game, the wrestling action takes place in one of seven out-of-ring venues - with three adjacent rooms each - where wrestlers can use "foreign objects" such as lead pipes, 2x4s, bathroom sinks, and more. While avoiding opponents' attacks, players must also be aware of environmental hazards such as fire, steam, and sparks. The environments are also fully interactive as players can remove sinks off the wall or pick up other peripheral objects to use during a match.WCW Backstage Assault features a comprehensive rewards system through which players can unlock special weapons and power-ups. The game also includes a create-a-wrestler mode that lets players customize their own wrestlers by tweaking several attributes. "Being the first company to offer an out-of-the-ring feature, as we did last year with WCW Mayhem, it was a natural decision for us to create a completely interactive backstage wrestling experience," said Dean Elissat, product manager for EA. "We're preserving all of the physics and gameplay mechanics of traditional wrestling, but adding many unique features and challenges that are presented in nontraditional settings." WCW Backstage Assault will be released for the Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 this fall. According to EA, this will be the final WCW title for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. The company plans to release new games using the WCW franchise for next-generation consoles - particularly a game for the Sony PlayStation 2 to be released in Spring 2001.