I Wish Wrestling Was Still Cool Enough To Get Games

There's a common sentiment within the wrestling community that we need to “bring back the Attitude Era,” the era of WWE from 1997 to 2001 filled with blood, nudity, and profanity when the company was in a fierce rivalry with WCW. While it's a popular opinion, less so now as the product steadily improved during the 2010s, if these people actually went back and watched the Attitude Era's week-to-week episodes of Raw, they probably wouldn't want that dreck back.

No, what I think people really want back is wrestling being hot. We're probably the closest it's been since then, thanks to WWE's ousting of its former CEO and the rise of AEW, but wrestling in the late 90s was another beast. The stacked roster of Stone Cold, The Rock, Mankind, and Kurt Angle were household names; references and cameos in mainstream shows were aplenty, while WCW was giving fierce competition for a good part of it with the NWO breathing new life into the sport.

The overwhelming popularity of wrestling during this era would manifest itself in different ways, namely, games. You look at things now, and we get one wrestling game a year – WWE 2KXX – with the occasional second drop like AEW Fight Forever or Fire Pro Wrestling World. However, back in the late 90s, not only did you get WCW and WWF games, but you got ones for each specific console. The N64 had the beloved WCW vs NWO games and WWF No Mercy/Wrestlemania 2000, while the PS1 got WCW's Nitro and Thunder, as well as Smackdown – which would eventually morph into the current WWE games.

This continued into the 2000s. Xbox had Raw, GameCube got Wrestlemania X8/19 and the Day of Reckoning games – there were even Game Boy exclusive WWF games. Not to mention, things were so big that they even made WWE Crush Hour, because car combat and the 90s go hand in hand.

And sure, the Raw and WrestleMania games were pretty bad, but there were options. After that though, there was only one. WCW had folded, and by 2006, THQ decided to turn the SmackDown vs Raw series into a multiplatform game – wrestling's massive popularity had died out.

The varied multiplatform releases weren't the only casualty of this. Like I said, wrestling was hot. Not only were the big three wrestling companies all releasing multiple games (oh yeah, ECW made a couple of crap games I forgot to mention), but there were also non-affiliated wrestling games coming out.

Now, I understand starting a sermon about how I wish we had more wrestling games while simultaneously citing one of the worst games ever made is a bit of a weird choice. That said, before the franchise took to riffing on Crazy Taxi, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, or Grand Theft Auto, we got The Simpsons Wrestling. Outside of the beloved 'Itchy & Scratchy in Miniature Golf Madness,' a game I totally knew existed before now, this was the first Simpsons sports game. I'd hazard to call it the first Simpsons spin-off game, but what genre is Simpsons?

When it comes to weird licensed wrestling games that are actually good, you have to look no further than famed hip-hop label Def Jam. After Aki was shoved off of the WCW and WWE licenses following WWF No Mercy, the studio didn't want to stop with the grappling, so it continued. Rather than try and strike a deal with the recently formed NWA/TNA promotion or something similar, though, Def Jam stepped into the ring.

First to the plate was Def Jam Vendetta, which – in the grand scheme of things – is a pretty standard wrestling game. You pick a pre-made fighter to battle in an underground wrestling circuit, except it happens to have DMX and Method Man in there. You do this to take down the leader D-Mob (voiced by Christopher Judge in his first video game role – there's no reboot Kratos without D-Mob).

The game that followed Vendetta is what really took things to the next level. Def Jam: Fight for New York is legendary. Now working for D-Mob, you're embroiled in a blood feud between crews, with Crow (played by Snoop Dogg) as the antagonist. Wrestling remains a core facet of the sequel, but there are numerous environments to take the combat into. Underground clubs, the train station, scrapyards, scaffolding, and all the warriors. All wrapped up in a story mode that doesn't once acknowledge the absurdity of having a scrap with Sticky Fingaz in a burning building to save Carmen Electra.

This type of game doesn't get made anymore. Since Def Jam, there really hasn't been a notable wrestling game spinoff. There are not even weird offshoot games like Rumble Roses or Backyard Wrestling. Wrestling games are a one-horse genre right now, and it's a damn shame. Think about how good a Mario wrestling game in the vein of Power Tennis would be; why has nobody ever tried to make Video Game Championship Wrestling a real thing?

I just want the real Graps back, ones that involve Homer Simpson or Fat Joe.