I was at max momentum and yellow body damage but got pinned with a chop, this game is fucked. ALSO STOP DOING BUTTON MASH FOR PINS IT ALWAYS SUCKED

No other game is brave enough to give New Jack a chainsaw or let John Zandig powerbomb a pornstar through a doghouse

Tell somebody playing wcw/nwo revenge in 1999 that in less than 4 years AKI was going to make a wrestling game but they're all rappers.

The only game where out of the box you can make totally not Bret Hart fight for his goddamn life against Kensuke Sasaki in an exploding barbed wire deathmatch

I'm glad that a lot of New Japan fans got somewhat of a modern official NJPW game complete with Fire Pro's signature incredibly versatile creation modes, but strangely I find myself missing the charm of having a bunch of guys that are clearly wrestlers from all over the world packed in with some legally distinct names to get away with it.

For a wrestling game you'd be surprised that the number of characters with piercing weapons is closer to 10 than it is to 0

You haven't lived wresting until you spend 2 minutes spamming quick grapple chokeslams with Sid Viscious on Killer Kowalski while Superstar by Saliva plays in the background

I'll admit Lucha Libre is one of my biggest blind spots in wrestling right up there with Joshi but I doubt luchadores are this goddamn slow.

I ran this game through a youtube search to see what I would find and I got an old commercial where a guy lies to a woman to start a catfight in a lingerie store and they kick each other's asses while the Hardy Boyz theme plays in the background.

This is the buggiest wrestling game I've ever played, and that's counting WWE 2k20. I still don't hate it though.

If Jeff Jarrett hired LAX to beat my face into bean paste in an alley outside the Impact Zone I would stay the hell home and out of his way forever but I guess that's why my name isn't Suicide.

Regular people used the Gameboy link cable for Pokemon, I however, am a mark so I used it for Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy - The Path of the Superhero versus mode.

Who the hell is Van Hammer

I wonder if I can steal the name "Wu Fang" as a pseudonym without repercussions...I do feel I should mention that Fire Pro style this has a bunch of wrestlers clearly supposed to be real people just with legally distinct names, they are top notch names though.

Why do I keep buying MDickie wrestling games, I do not like them.

Why do I keep buying MDickie wrestling games, I do not like them.

I believe "Predator Technology" is just a fancy way of saying if Brock Lesnar suplexes some poor soul into the corner of a table they'll collapse in on themselves and have to learn how to live with a forcibly imposed 45-degree angle in their spine

I remember when this first launched, seeing the roster so nearly evenly split between modern and classic superstars was a strange sight. Strange in execution too since it forced Drew McIntyre, someone who was heavily involved in WWE 12's singleplayer content into the DLC roster.

This is another of the handful of wrestling titles I'd figure you can label as "legendary" in the fanbase. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still people keeping a universe mode alive in this one.

This one has a super negative image both now and when it launched, the generational transition was far from smooth. For me though I didn't have a ps4 yet so it was more like another year of just playing 2k14 again with a different roster. They kept them going on the previous generation until 2k17, it's kind've a trip watching the footage of 2k16 and 17 on ps3/360.

This is likely the only wrestling game where you can officially play as Superstar Steve Austin from ECW but they wouldn't license Jesus Christ Superstar for his entrance...

Austin Aries might be the wildest one-and-done appearance in a yearly WWE title that I can think of

Wrestling games on handheld systems has been such a big part of my life, it was devastating to see the state of the Nintendo Switch version. Not as devastating as it would have been if I actually bought it though.

People were kinda just okay with this game for the year of it's cycle, until 2k20 happened and everybody flocked back. This game is legendary to a lot of people now because of it. Also it had The Kanellis' theme in it and that shit bangs peeps HERE'S TO THE GREATEST (greatest) LOVE I'VE EVER KNOWN

I actually kinda liked all of the goofy alternate world stuff they attempted with the dlc in this one, thought it was a nice change of pace instead of just the usual slate of regular dlc stars. Who would you rather want, Dominik Dijakovic? or Cyberpunk Freedom Fighter Johnny Gargano?

In the future this game could be held in similar esteem to 2k19, too bad universe mode has been busted for years and this one didn't really even try to fix it. And bring back the wheel minigame for submissions, it was fine you're all just bad at it.

There's been this prevailing complaint among people on the internet whenever a yearly WWE title comes out that "it's so out of date" in terms of who is on the roster and what they look like. Stuff like that never bothered me for two reasons; One is I never took these games as trying to be as completely up to date because it really isn't possible in some cases as a character on WWE television can change in the blink of an eye (think Edge, who had a heel run in 2022 that lasted all of maybe 3 months or Andre Chase who one week was a regular guy in boots and trunks and the next was the professor of his own wrestling university complete with varsity sweaters and speeches about "teachable moments"). And two, I'd rather have at least one game where these versions of wrestlers are playable like Cora Jade who's been a heel for maybe over half a year at this point but is still in this game as her babyface self and I'm glad to have at least one game with her like that. What I can't get behind is these weird sort of mashup versions I'm seeing in 2K23 like Giovanni Vinci in his stylish Italian NXT gimmick but with Imperium music and trons, or Sami Zayn who's attire is so up to date he's wearing a Tshirt that's existed for only maybe a few weeks since his babyface turn but is otherwise fully portrayed in the game as his heel persona.

This is another "I got a bone to pick with the fans of these games" and I'm sorry if that's annoying to read. I think everyone settled for a compromise before they even tried to get the most favorable result. We're in the early days of 2K trying to shoehorn in a MyTeam style mode into the WWE games and it's sucked both because those modes sucked and it's something I still think is antithetical to what people play wrestling games for and so as it gets pushed more and more it's gonna make the games worse even quicker than it did MLB, NBA, FIFA and any other sports games. For two years now they've been adding wrestlers you could only play in MyFaction as the sole draw of the mode, only leading to backlash that those wrestlers couldn't be used outside of it. Now here's my problem, the popular position immediately became "if we unlock these MyFaction cards we should be allowed to use them in other modes" and now that's exactly what's happening in this game. But I think that's bullshit and everybody should have taken the unwavering position of "No, don't force us to grind this shitty mode. If you have already made these wrestlers in the game they should be available to everyone immediately". So now we're all stuck having to grind a bunk ass Ultimate Team mode to unlock wrestlers to play outside the mode but I know, and everybody else should realize, it's gonna take so long to grind out for these guys that we're not even gonna have the time to use them anyway! Wrestling fans are just too quick to settle for the compromise in any realm it seems...

This might as well be man's greatest creation if you ask me, but the DLC selection is goofy. I doubt anybody wouldn't think Chris Jericho is an industry legend, but Ted DiBiase Jr? Shout-outs to R-Truth though.

I always liked the lack of inhibition you could force wrestlers to have in a WWE game. I don't think you could get Hillbilly Jim to consider doing a shooting star press off a Times Square billboard in our plane of existence.

This is such an odd experience, it plays like Just Bring It but looks like Here Comes The Pain

I could not tell you a single fact about Joy Giovanni.

When it comes to the "best" SVR game, people only really consider this one or 2011. If you were to ask me, I'd likely be partial to 2011, because this one has Mr. Kennedy in it.

The ECW revival this game coincided with created for my money one of the wackiest rosters in SVR history

"Smackdown vs Raw 2009 DLC Superstar Charlie Haas" is a real thing you can say and be correct about

I have, like, pretty clear pictures in my head of the Road to Wrestlemania storylines in SVR 2009 and 2011 and as I'm sitting here now I'm wondering why don't I have a single memory of the ones in this game...guess I should get on doing a retrospective of them like I did for 2009.

I think this is the only WWE game to feature a Time Machine...please, correct me if I'm wrong though

I never understood how this game worked as a kid so the few times I played it was all top wristlocks and the wrestlers making weird moaning sounds.

It actually rules that multiple people can play a season mode together in this game, but it's a ps1 so I hope you have another game to play during the loading screens.

Sorry if you've heard this before, I only mention it to every person I've talked to but imagine you're putting this disc in your ps2 for the first time and that intro blows your socks off. You think "Holy shit is that what the PS2 is capable of?", then you load up a match with two of your favorites, Perry Saturn and Edge because you are extremely cool in this hypothetical scenario, only for it to load in and see not Perry Saturn, but a bipedal piece of peanut brittle while Tazz in stiff, double spaced speech relays that "EDGE has a great The Downward Spiral!"