When I became a wrestling fan as a kid one of the first things I wanted was a video game were I could play as my favorite wrestlers and beat up the heels who were against them. In those preview kiosks that Nintendo had in the 90s I was able to preview two different games; WWF Attitude and WWF Wrestlemania 2000 both for the Nintendo 64. I debated for days as to which one to get based on the videos and screen shots I had seen. I eventually decided to wait for Wrestlemanis 2000 and boy did I make the correct decision as the Acclaim game is not seen in a favorable way while AKI wrestling games are still highly regarded even today.

The gameplay was great and while many features that the Playstation version of the games that I really wanted were missing from the Nintendo 64 versions like the full titantrons and special gimmick matches like Hell in a Cell, I did not care. The storylines of the game instead of featuring a fun or creative one mostly botched up the main wrestling storyline of the year which I never liked that didn’t stop me from finishing story mode. The grappling system was just so much fun and even though you could cheat the AI by spamming the taunt button you can argue the AI cheated on the more difficult settings. It didnt matter the game was a lot of fun and I spent hours playing them. I’m not here to review a game however but I’ll talk about the introductions their WWE games had since they’re definitely memorable.

Continue reading WWF Wrestlemania 2000 & WWF No Mercy intros on the Nintendo 64 →

I discovered ECW Wrestling on TNN shortly after it started airing by pure chance and I was completely fascinated, unlike WCW which used to bore me to tears, here we had a show that actually offered something different and yet still entertaining even if the production was a much lower quality. You could tell that this was something unique that couldn’t be replicated and so I watched. A large part of it was indeed the intro which is legendary in its own right and any fan can easily recognize it as the ECW theme.

The intro just oozed of awesome as it felt dark, extreme, dirty and not your typical wrestling promotion. Even if it was indeed on a cable channel you felt like this was underground stuff. The music set up the mood perfectly as did the logo with barbed wire. It’s odd that the music is rather slow yet it feels really heavy and unlike say WWF intros which have quick cuts of action scenes here many of them were rather slow things and yet you could feel that they meant more as you actually felt the impact of the moves or events they tried to show off.

Continue reading Remembering ECW on TNN →