Wrestling games which are better than WWE2K20

So you are a huge wrestling fan?? You’ve seen the flashy advertisements for WWE 2K20 with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan?

You can’t wait for its release, then release day comes and you go out and buy it with your hard-earned cash, you put it on your system, only to find out that it’s a broken piece of shit.

Well, that’s what happened to many of the poor bastards who’ve been robbed by 2K Sports. I’m sure by the time you read this, you will be well aware of the furore over this game. The gaming community being the spiritly bunch they are, have produced loads of videos of them laughing at the piss poor quality product they've purchased, so at least that’s some consolation and I’ve just heard that Sony are offering refunds for anyone who doesn’t want to wait a few weeks until they say they are going to patch the game.

Which begs the question, what the fucking hell as happened to Sony and Microsoft’s quality assurance that let them release a game for their system in such a shitty state?

I’ve have worked within the games industry and I can tell you shit for sure, that if this game had been sent to either Sony or Microsoft during my time, it would have been flat out rejected. Who at Sony or Microsoft passed this game? Because I would have laughed in the publisher’s face if they had the audacity to submit this game. Even if they promised to fix it with day one patches, there is no way on gods earth would I have even allowed this game on any system in the state it is. 2K Sports should be embarrassed but most of all Sony and Microsoft should be even more so.

When you buy a game on Sony or Microsofts system, you expect that when you put the game in the system, it works. People pay a premium for games on these systems over a PC because of the quality assurances that it supposed to give them. Has Sony and Microsoft gone soft to publishers at the expense of their customer base?

What on earth possessed them. I do not know but what I do know is that because of this and other messes like Fallout 76, I’ll never buy a game on release date straight away ever again, no matter how eager I am to play it. My hard drive is full already and I have to keep deleting shit and loading shit, might as well game on PC these days without having to download a 30 odd gig patch.

I’m not really a wrestling fan anymore, I used to be a huge wrestling fan in the early days of the WWF, so while all this shite is going on, it got me thinking about the wrestling games that I used to love.

Exiting Hour (Mat Mania) is one of the first wrestling games I came across in an arcade in Skegness that looked and played superbly. You played as The Dynamite Kid (I think it might be a nod to Thomas Billington, The Dynamite Kid although I’m not 100% sure!) equipped with an array of versatile wrestling moves like a body slam, a piledriver, a suplex and an elbow smash to beat your opponent with. You could climb the turnbuckle and slam down on your opponent and throw them out of the ring. Shitloads of fun!

With a colourful roster of characters to fight, some strangely addictive music which would change when you were at the risk of being weak enough to be pinned (As there was no health bar) plus the game had speech, I spent a couple of pounds playing it and manage to get my way up The Masked Fighter. I never really played this again as none of the arcades in Nottingham had this game.

So yesterday, after reading about the WWE2K20 debacle, I decided to get my Raspberry Pi out and track the game down and play on it. You know what? I'm so glad I did! You can laugh at the graphics and sound by today's standards but this game is over 30 years old and it probably uses less memory than the word document I wrote this article on but you know what, its still a charm to play and still fun.

It’s tough but arcade games were supposed to be tough as they wanted your 10p's. It's tough as in it’s not for generation snowflake but I like tough games and it truly is a great wrestling game. I hadn’t thought much about this game for years but I’m glad I did.

Once I’ve finished off the Golden Hulk (Another nod but no license!) on Mat Mania, I’m going to go and play on the best WWF wrestling game as far as I’m concerned. WWF Superstar, an arcade wrestling game featuring classic but less well-known WWF wrestlers like the Honky Tonk Man, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Big Boss Man.

And why not, it's probably better than WWE2K20 that’s for sure.

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