ECW Hardcore Revolution
System: Nintendo 64
Publisher: Acclaim
Developer: Acclaim Studios Austin
Released: 2000
Genre: Wrestling
Capabilities: Controller Pak & Rumble Pak Compatible

The Game

ECW finally gets there own video game! This game is brought to you by Acclaim, the same people who gave us WWF Warzone and Attitude to the N64. This game also uses the same exact engine that was used in Attitude also. Will this game offer anything new, or is it just like last year's Attitude game with an ECW roster? Well, lets read the review and find out.

Graphics

The graphics are great for this game, like in Acclaim's previous N64 wrestling games, they use real life textures, and the wrestlers look just the way they do in real life, super detailed and everything. The arena looks great, a lot like the ones in Attitude, but with ECW logos plastered everywhere, and just about everything is well done in this game because the menus are easy to manage and understand, but this type of graphics engine is starting to show it's age, and some problems keep occurring like way off hit detection with the classic elbow drops from the turnbuckles that appear to miss the wrestler by about 5-10 feet, but still manage to do the damage.

Sound

Sound is perfected in this title. Paul E. Dangerously offers loads of color commentary in the game, and even though he fits a tremendous amount of commentary in the game, his comments do get repetitive right away just like the commentary in Warzone and Attitude(But hey, at least the commentary is their, and besides Mayhem, it seems only Acclaims wrestling games are the only ones to have commentary). All the wrestlers have there own entrance music, and it sounds great and way better than Wrestlemania 2000 pretty darn close to cd quality I have to say. All the sound effects are great, and each wrestler has there own set of pain reactions to moves applied to them.

Game play

All right let me just get this straight, the game play is the exact same as in WWF Attitude except for the following: There's a new ECW roster for the game, Create-a-Wrestler features all the ECW costumes, moves, theme music, etc. instead of the WWF's stuff, the only new game play mode is a barbed wire match, and even though it looks great, its basically the same as a regular match, but your body gets messed up pretty fast, and all bloody right away. That's about it for what's new, the game still uses the annoying button sequence system for moves, and so you can get frustrated all over again trying to figure out how to do all the moves all over again, and it requires even longer button sequences to pull off in order to do finishing moves.

But to get to the good side about the game, there is a lot of game modes, there's career mode, where you go competing in various territories all over the country, until you make it onto an ECW television taping, and then on a PPV, there's all your usual modes such as Singles, Cage, Tag Team, and all, plus specialty matches like Barbwire, Gauntlet, Battle Royal and so on. There's the Create-a-PPV mode again, and the Acclaim's famous, Create-a-wrestler is back as well, and goes into the same depth as Attitude C-A-W where you can edit nose, eyes, and even add text on your costume. And the move list is much easier to edit then the move list in Wrestlemania 2000. You got a nice number of wrestlers in the game, over 40 ECW(now several that are in WCW and WWF) wrestlers/personalities such as Raven, Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Mike Awesome(Now in WCW), and Spike Dudley. But the game does kinda confuse me on the wrestlers they choose to put in as there hidden wrestlers like Taz, who has made his last ECW appearances in October ‘‘99, 4 months before the game was released, and Louie Spicolli, who has been dead since February 1998.

Replay Value

Well, most of the modes are fun to play like Career mode and Barbwire, and most of the modes are multi player so you can have a blast playing this game with your friends too, but you better hope that your friends didn't play any of the N64 THQ wrestling games before(with WCW Nitro the exception) or they'll just stop playing this game instantly because they'll be whining why these controls suck so much.

In Brief

+: Probably one of the best create-a-wrestler and PPV modes to date, wrestlers look pretty darn real, lots of ways to play

-: Same old, frustrating, button sequence engine used to do moves, the game is basically Attitude with and ECW Roster and Barbwire match

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 8.3
Sound: 7.5
Game play: 5.7
Replay Value: 6.3

Overall: 6.9

Rounded to fit GameFAQs score: 7

Final Analysis

Another decent effort from Acclaim, but I really thought Acclaim would've used a new wrestling engine for there next wrestling game, instead of using the complicated and dated one featured in Warzone and Attitude. But if you liked any of Acclaim's previous wrestling games and you're an ECW fan you might wanna give this game at least a rent, maybe even a buy if you’re a really big ECW fan.