scotland wrote:NX17 wrote:Trying to change an opinion on wrestling is futile, but consider wrestling as theater. Highly athletic and dangerous theater. Its not sport, but more like a circus. Circus acts are choreographed too, but still exciting. The Harlem Globetrotters do the same with basketball. Actors swordfighting with lightsabers do it. Stuntmen do it. Magicians, clowns and acrobats do it. Appreciate it as performance art, not athletic competition.
Well said scotland. It irritates me when people throw out the inevitable "don't you know it's fake" garbage whenever they find out I used to watch it back in the day when they had good characters like the Rock, Stone Cold, Mankind, Eddie Guerrero, Too Hot, nWo, etc. I'm like "no really!? No **** sherlock." As if everyone over the age of eight didn't already know that it's fake. I guess pointing out to adults that pro wrestling is fake makes those people feel good about themselves but really it just portrays them as morons that just came to that realization themselves. They probably don't even know what the words kayfabe and shoot mean. Every teenager and adult that goes to wrestling events or watches wrestling knows that it is choreographed entertainment, yet they still enjoy watching it. I've been to a couple of Monday Night RAW events in person and they were a lot of fun, being in the crowd is a big part of the fun, and it's really awesome when you get ringside or ramp-side seats. That was one of the best shows I've been to. You can't appreciate how huge some of those wrestlers are until you're six-to-eight feet away from them. It is like the circus, and everyone has a good time. There is an element of danger involved for the wrestlers too, sometimes they make a mistake and suffer a legitimate injury. Wrestling fans remember when Sid Vicious broke his leg jumping off of the turnbuckle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOSYcM4AJ8k Then there was the incident where Owen Hart fell to his death from the rafters of the arena when the cable carrying him snapped and his chest impacted on the top of the turnbuckle.
Now about the video games, I agree with NX17 that the N64 WWF games were some of the best, that AKI Revenge engine was pretty awesome back in the day and it's still fun today, as long as you keep it to only two wrestlers at a time as the N64 exhibits massive slowdown in 4-player matches. The high water mark of that series was WWF No Mercy, it had the best graphics on the characters, best presentation, and the titantron videos/audio were slightly higher quality than Wrestlemania 2000. No Mercy also had more venues to choose from and more match types. Unfortunately, early versions of the cartridge of No Mercy also suffer from a terrible save game bug that will eventually erase your cartridge's save data, custom wrestlers, custom belts, unlocked items in the Smackdown Mall, everything, if you play through the story mode or even if you do title matches. I've owned two copies of the game and tossed both in the trash due to that save bug. Maybe for that reason Wrestlemania 2000 is the better game as it's largely very similar to No Mercy. The best part about all of those AKI N64 games that use that engine is the great controls. You basically have weak and strong grapples based on how long you press the button to engage a grapple, then moves based on which button you press and optionally which direction on the d-pad you press. Throwing opponents into the ropes is simply accomplished with one of the C buttons, you use the analog stick for taunts to regain health and to climb up onto the turnbuckles, it's just a very well thought out and easy to use control scheme and IMO is what made those games so fun. I also have Day of Reckoning for the Gamecube which was decent but I felt like it didn't have enough content/venues/wrestlers compared to other games. Also, the controls on the Gamecube feel very clunky, it was a big letdown compared to the tight controls of the N64 games. The only recent wrestling games I've played are Smackdown Vs. Raw 2006 and 2007 on the PS2. Those were pretty good as well with a great story mode, character creator, and presentation but I still prefer the N64 wrestling games overall. I also like the N64 games because they featured a great roster of characters back from the last time that pro wrestling was actually good (the Attitude era), when the WWF had real competition for viewers with other brands like WCW and ECW, before Vince bought them out and turned RAW into pretty much just three hours of trying to sell you crap interspersed with stupid dialog and little in-ring performing.