This Week In Retro: WCW vs nWo: World Tour (Patreon)

November 30, 1997: You can call this the New World Order of wrestling video games, brother

by Diamond Feit

I cannot recall when I developed a fascination with professional wrestling. It must have begun at an early age, for if I found Indiana Jones punching Nazis entertaining, seeing Andre the Giant throw a man to the ground like a ragdoll would have thrilled me just as much. Both on-screen fights would read as equally genuine to a child in the 1980s.

While I never went to see any live shows back then, I do remember going to a local church basement to meet a professional wrestler and hear him speak about his work. It didn't have the same impact as a match, and I hadn't heard of him before (or since), but that evening did cement the idea in my mind that the guys I saw on TV were real people.

Naturally, my interest in professional wrestling led me to play many video games recreating the action of the squared circle. I enjoyed most simulations of the sport that I encountered, but few titles resonated with me to the point that I made a habit of playing them over and over. The problems I had with wrestling video games fell into two overarching categories: Either the games focused on fictional grapplers who didn't hold the same appeal for me as the superstars I saw on television, or I felt the game's interpretation of famous wrestlers couldn't compare to the real-life performers.

Yet this week, I fondly recall a major exception to that rule, when my friends and I picked up WCW vs nWo: World Tour for the Nintendo 64 based solely on the promise of four-player action. The game not only proved to be full of world-famous wrestlers, but it also contained a cadre of interesting make-believe fighters as well. More importantly, the game played so well, it took over our group gaming sessions, and it amused those of us holding the controllers just as much as it did those of us watching.

To best explain the appeal of WCW vs nWo: World Tour, I must give a bit of background information about the state of professional wrestling in the United States in the 1990s. Back in the 80s, Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation found great success by using the growing availability of cable television to promote its brand nationwide, a shift from the traditional, highly regional approach that the business had maintained for decades prior. WWF stars like Hulk Hogan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper became celebrities, appearing in movies, cartoons, commercials, music videos, and generally found fans outside of dedicated wrestling viewers.

Just as no one holds the championship belt forever, the WWF eventually lost its position as the undisputed leader of the wrestling business. Media mogul Ted Turner used his cable empire and deep pockets to build up World Championship Wrestling as a major competitor to the WWF. WCW debuted its own weekly broadcast, Monday Nitro, in direct competition to WWF Raw. WCW also offered lucrative contracts to many of the WWF's biggest names, convincing them to jump ship. Beginning in 1996, Monday Nitro beat Raw in viewership ratings for an unprecedented 83 weeks in a row.

One of the major innovations of WCW was the presence of the nWo, the "New World Order of wrestling." Centered around a trio of three well-known ex-WWF stars, the nWo presented itself as a rival faction within the WCW organization, a rogue element that interrupted other wrestlers' matches, broadcast promos mocking established WCW stars, and often relied on underhanded tactics to win their own bouts. When Hulk Hogan, now calling himself "Hollywood" Hogan in order to elevate himself above the fans, won the WCW Heavyweight Championship, he famously spraypainted "nWo" on the belt, an impromptu rebranding that would last for years whenever he or a member of his entourage held the title.

As the name on the box indicates, WCW vs nWo: World Tour simulates that on-air rivalry in-game, splitting the roster of 43 wrestlers into different factions. In League Challenge mode, players can take on an entire stable one man at a time, eventually facing a hidden champion and, if victorious, unlocking them as a selectable character. The bulk of the competitors come directly from either the WCW or the nWo, although nearly half of the wrestlers are fictitious creations loosely based on Japanese performers. Hence, World Tour feels like a promise made and delivered upon, a snapshot of professional wrestling around the globe, with a broad range of talent to choose from.

A game can include a hundred different wrestlers and it won't matter if the actual wrestling doesn't play well, but if anything, World Tour excels in that department. Developed by Japanese studio AKI, creator of the Virtual Pro Wrestling series, World Tour presents pro wrestling as a matter of momentum, giving each character an on-screen Spirit meter that expands as they land successful blows or appeal to the crowd with poses and taunts. Taking hits or flubbing moves lowers Spirit in turn, but unlike a life bar in a fighting game, it never permanently empties. This means the possibility for a complete reversal of fortune always remains on the table, allowing for longer matches where the lead changes hands more than once.

WCW vs nWo: World Tour takes full advantage of the Nintendo 64's 3D graphics potential, presenting each wrestler as a polygonal puppet rather than a single animated sprite. This affords the inclusion of a wide variety of holds and maneuvers, and as combatants take damage, they can change their posture to nurse a sore elbow or hang their head due to an injured neck. By swapping in different textures, players can even choose between four different outfits for each wrestler. This means that yes, you can have a dream four-way title match starring four distinct Hulk/Hollywood Hogans—though I think the only human who dreams about this scenario is Hogan himself.

By 1997 my interest in professional wrestling had long since withered away; I had not watched any programming in years and generally viewed the concept as old-fashioned, something I had enjoyed as a child because I didn't know any better. Yet WCW vs nWo: World Tour proved so entertaining, it convinced me and my friends to tune into WCW Monday Nitro, and our timing couldn't have been better. While familiar faces like Hogan and Savage and other stars from our youth lured us in, we became regular viewers thanks to the presence of younger, more exciting talent like Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, and Goldberg, the latter two being such new faces that they hadn't even made the cut to appear in the game.

In that regard, WCW vs nWo: World Tour looks quite odd when viewed through modern eyes as it lacks many notable features wrestling games now consider standard. The arenas feature no giant screen or ramps leading to the ring, meaning that every match simply begins with the participants standing in each corner. As any fan can tell you, how a wrestler enters the ring makes a huge difference; their music and entrance attire conveys much of their personality. Their absence in World Tour robs much of the roster of what makes them distinct.

While every wrestler includes four selectable looks, players cannot alter their attire in any way, to say nothing of the now-essential mode of creating original characters. This meant that even as we grew enamored with WCW programming in the late 90s, we could do nothing to expand or alter the video game to keep up with the action on television.

Fortunately, WCW vs nWo: World Tour became a massive hit, and AKI would not rest on their laurels but instead outdid themselves with each subsequent wrestling game they made for the Nintendo 64. WCW/nWo Revenge, which debuted the following November, greatly expanded on the original release with more wrestlers, more gameplay modes, and included actual theme songs from WCW programming. Things got even better once WWF lured AKI to make games featuring their talent instead of WCW's, leading to the grand finale of WWF No Mercy, a wrestling game so beloved there are fans modding it and playing it two decades later.

The same cannot be said of WCW, as the company struggled to compete with a resurgent WWF at the end of the 90s. Ironically, WCW's strategy of looting the competition of top stars led to its downfall, as TV programming remained centered on said aging faces rather than embracing new performers—many of whom would depart for more exposure in the WWF. As Raw trounced Monday Nitro in the ratings war, WCW fell into disarray, and in the ultimate insult, the WWF eventually bought the entire brand from Ted Turner, canceling Nitro outright in 2001. Legacy WCW matches and broadcasts remain in circulation but only in the context of how the current ownership wishes to present it. Since history books are written by the victors, anyone looking to celebrate WCW's success today must accept the versions that the McMahon family are willing to share.

My wrestling fandom has lapsed again, both as a viewer and as a video game player, so I couldn't tell you what the state of the genre is at present. Just like that Spirit meter in WCW vs nWo: World Tour however, I know my interest can never truly expire. All it will take is one electric performer or perhaps a new release to get me fixated on the sport all over again. Should that happen, I'll still have World Tour to thank for convincing me as an adult to revisit something I loved as a child, a gambit that doesn't always payoff but when it does, it can be magical.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.