WCW/NWO Revenge
System: Nintendo 64
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Asmik/AKI Corporation
Released: 1998
Capabilities: Rumble Pak Compatible

You can easily the how Asmik improve the graphics in Revenge,
which are way more detailed and less blocky than the ones in World Tour.
Picture Credit(nintendosports.com)

The Game

This THQ’s sequel to the million selling, award winning, WCW vs. NWO: World Tour, which debuted some of the best wrestling gaming seen in ages. It won the best fighting game for home console by the Interactive Arts and Sciences, and was an instant hit. WCW/NWO Revenge uses the exact same engine with improvements, but will it be a brand new experience, or feel like a World Tour rehash? Let’s get onto the review to find out.

Graphics

I gotta say, I like these graphics way more than the kind in Attitude. It improves over just about every flaw that World Tour had in the graphics department. For example, World Tour didn’t use face mapping, so most of the wrestler’s faces looked nothing like there real life counterparts(like Ric Flair, for example), but in Revenge, that’s all change, because all the wrestler’s faces are hand drawn from real life photos, and are much improved in the one’s we saw in World Tour. Also, another complaint about World Tour, was that it’s arena looked awkward, with many different angles of fans sitting in the crowd, but in here, the aisles are easier laid out, and now there’s an aisle leading to the entrance of the arena that you can fight on. Also there are several different arena’s to wrestle in, and there entrance sets just look spectacular.

There’s really nothing bad at all to say about the graphics in the game. Some new additions is the ref that appears in the corner of the screen in single player matches, that does pin counts and count outs. Plus there’s a new cool replay option that appears after a major move is done in a match, and also shows the last moments of every match. But if you want to get on the nit picky side, the wrestler’s bodies do look kind of blocky and weird, but nothing noticeable.

Sound

The sound effects are well done, you can easily tell when a wrestler connects with a drop kick, or gets nailed with a chair, or even gets cut wide open. The music played on the game menus is pretty good, and the tunes played during game play are pretty good, but get annoying right away, but thankfully you can turn off the music. There was one big flaw that World Tour had, and it’s still not in here, and that is that there was no entrance music for the game. That really disappointed me, and all you got here is just 2 tunes played for the entrances, and those are the old Nitro theme, and some other generic theme which reminds me of the Big Boss Man’s current theme. Overall, I’d have to say that sound’s the weakest part of this game.

Game play

This game has the easiest to learn game enginge ever! No more button mashing grapple meters! No stupid button combinations to pull off moves. Instead it's whoever gets the grapple first(There's a weak grapple and a strong grapple for various types of damage) automatically gets control of the grapple and once you push A or B and a direction on the control pad you pull off move. Plus reversals are frequent so there’s no sense of getting your but whooped throughout the entire match. There are lots of weapons to clobber your opponents with, plus you can bring weapons into the ring. You can also fight along the entranceway. There are lots of different types of game play modes like Singles, Tag Team, Handicap Match, And a new from 4 to 40 man Battle Royal! Plus there's Tag Team, Cruiserweight, TV, US, and World championship modes where you can unlock secret characters in the game, plus if you have a game shark you can unlock Wrath and the game saves him into the game's battery and he'll stay in there forever just like in beating the game to get a secret character. Revenge improved on a couple of flaws that Revenge had like no you don’t lose a weapon when you run with it.

There's also a new high scores mode for each game play mode in the game. The new Instant Replay option makes the game a lot of fun too. World Tour had a lot of slowdown in 4-player mode, but Revenge now has only a little and even no slowdown in 4-player mode. Another complaint that World Tour had was that there was only about 22 real WCW wrestlers and about 30 fake ones, Well now Revenge has about 52 real wrestlers and only 15 fake ones. All the wrestlers are here from the popular ones like Hogan, Nash, Hall, Diamond Dallas Page, Goldberg, Bret Hart, and Randy Savage to the awesome cruiserweights like Jericho, Rey Mysterio Jr., and Juventud Gurrerra to the jobbers like Scotty Riggs, Van Hammer, Jim Neidhart, and Lodi! Plus you can sort of create your own wrestlers in the brand new Costume Edit mode where you can change any type of wrestler's name and costume too.

Replay Value

You’ll be playing this game forever with 4 people. The Battle Royal mode is just so fun to play with your friends. And the new added features like the ref, the instant replays, and high score make this seem a lot more like the real thing. The single player mode, is really simple, but still fun to play because by beating it you unlock the hidden wrestlers. Either way, you’ll be playing this game a lot.

In Brief

+: Improved Graphics, Big Roster, Easy to learn game engine

-: No wrestler entrance themes, the fake wrestlers in the game are stupid, yet perfect for editing over

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 8.9
Sound: 7.4
Game play: 9.5
Replay Value: 9.7

Overall: 8.8

Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 9

Final Analysis

This is the WCW game to own on the N64. It’s far better than Mayhem. The controls are easy to learn, plus the game is just a blast to play in multi player. This game also went on to win the fighting game of 1998 award. So if you are unwilling to shell out the bucks for Wrestlemania 2000, than pick up Revenge, because there aren’t much differences from it, and you can probably pick it up brand new for about $30.