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Patreon Preview: Ranking the Greatest Wrestling Video Games Of All Time image

Patreon Preview: Ranking the Greatest Wrestling Video Games Of All Time

The Chick Foley Show
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26 Plays6 years ago
Well Phil is on vacation so instead of skipping a week we figured we would give the masses a little preview of our monthly patreon content. Our twitter followers voted for this one so be sure to give it a listen! Phil and Sheena welcome the heel husband to countdown the best wrestling video games of all time! If you like what you hear and want to become a patreon subscriber click the link to sign up! patreon.com/chickfoleyshow
Transcript

Introduction and Host Presentation

00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome Patreon subscribers to a special episode and a special co-host with me here. This is Phil Gentile in the Jimmy's Famous Seafood Studios at the Old School Brawl intro song playing. We're going to be doing our top five favorite wrestling video games of all time. And not only is Sheena Phelps with me, but also Seth Phelps. What's going on, guys? Hey, what's up, Chick Foley fam? Not a whole lot, man. The Hill Husband. He's making his Chick Foley show debut, you guys. So get excited.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yes, I thought it was just going to be me and Seth. I've literally never talked to Seth before, but I'm sure we have a lot of the same hobbies and interests and comments. I'm sure it would have been fine. I was going to make a little joke that Seth's in my top three favorite Phelps family members.
00:00:59
Speaker
Oh, man. We're a good company anyway. Yeah, you are. You are. I haven't met the fourth one yet, but neither

Seth's Gaming Journey

00:01:04
Speaker
of you guys. But Seth and I are going to go back and forth here and go through our top five favorite video games of all time wrestling wise. And we've both submitted our list to each other. Sheena is going to kind of guide the ship here. But I wanted to start with you, Seth. I think you were about the same age, late 30s. And I want to go more specific than that because it's depressing.
00:01:24
Speaker
But what kind of video game player were you growing up? Have you kind of changed? I know you guys are big into the WWE 2K games, but has it always been like your main go-to? I mean, I was a big Call of Duty fan. I was a huge Madden fan. I don't know if you guys are kind of on that same path as well, or if you're just strictly wrestling video game folks, or what? Yeah, so I've been a hardcore gamer pretty much for life.
00:01:49
Speaker
Like I said, I was born in the mid 80s, so I came up starting off on NES. One of the highlights of my childhood, I think I was maybe four years old, and my dad beat Super Mario Brothers, and they knew I'd be so excited about it, they actually videotaped it so I could watch it the next morning when I woke up. Then I went to Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, N64, PlayStation, all the way up now. Now I'm a hardcore Xbox guy. I'm definitely Team Xbox over PlayStation, so I know that's something me and you disagree on. Yes, yeah, for sure.
00:02:18
Speaker
But yeah, so as far as wrestling games go, though, I've always had a lot of fun with them, but I really been more of a Madden player. You know, so I was I used to be super competitive going to like different tournaments, playing online. I was in like the top 100 on Xbox Live in Madden for a couple of years there. And then, you know, life got in the way. So I don't get to play as much as I used to. But that's really my that was my biggest passion in video games was playing Madden and NCAA football. You know, thoughts and prayers to that series.
00:02:45
Speaker
I, uh, oh man, I wish they would bring that back, but that's a show for a story for a different show. But I knew I was in like dad mode when I bought, I think I bought two additions of Madden and never played them once. And, uh, you know, I used to play hardcore like you online with buddies and going over a friend's house. And then, you know, life just.
00:03:02
Speaker
Changed and have enough, you know hours

Phil's Gaming Journey

00:03:04
Speaker
in the day to play video games, but I always seem to find time for wrestling video games So my console lineup is a little different than yours. I started with Nintendo like you Sega Somewhere in there had Dreamcast. I think Dreamcast is right after Genesis, which was a highly underrated system. You had a Dreamcast too? Okay, it was pretty good Had Nintendo 64 PlayStation. I switched back to the original Xbox. I mean, I remember the day it came out It was like I think it was like
00:03:30
Speaker
2000 2001 and I was so pumped for it and then I switched back to you know, play say I've had all the playstations up to now so Hopefully they come down the line where they can make it kind of compatible where we can play online against folks I know I've heard rumors of that for years, but I'm PlayStation your Xbox, you know, we can we can get along I think for the next hour But I think she knew you're gonna you're gonna steer the ship here. Where where do we want to start here with our top five lists? I
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah.

Honorable Mentions in Wrestling Games

00:03:56
Speaker
So, you know, um, I know you, both of you guys submitted your top five, uh, wrestling games and we kind of just did the average, right? So we wanted to just have a complete top five. Um, but you know, you guys, there was some honorable mentions that both of you guys, um, talked about and I wanted to see like what held these guys back from making the top five. So both you and the heel husband mentioned wrestle fest. So I'll start with the heel husband. Like, what was it about wrestle fest that made it honorable mention and not worthy of the top five?
00:04:23
Speaker
So for me, WrestleFest is kind of all about nostalgia. You know, we, during the time it came out, the only video games we had for wrestling were the crappy NES games, which didn't simulate the action in the ring at all. It didn't even really look like you were actually, you know, give them a professional wrestling game. But WrestleFest had awesome graphics. You know, it was a beautiful cabinet. You know, I really wish they would, uh, I think one ups the company that's been re-released in the arcade cabinets.
00:04:47
Speaker
And I wish they'd bring it back. So just, it always caught my eye anytime I came in there. Cause I was already a big wrestling fan. So I just remember pumping the quarters in that thing. And, uh, it was just an awesome game, awesome lineup. You know, it had that 1990, 91, uh, WWE roster on there or WWF at the time roster.
00:05:03
Speaker
And it was just excellent. And shit, you're right in the nostalgia feel spot. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, what about you, Phil? What made it honorable mention for you? Yeah, man. Because I didn't own it. I don't even know what came out for a system. I don't believe it did. I probably later on down the line, it was like a downloadable game for PlayStation or something. But you had to go to the arcade to play it. But yeah, Seth hits it right on the head. It had just caught your eye. I mean, the colors were super bright. And it really felt like 80s wrestling. And it felt like nothing you've ever seen before. The Nintendo video games back in the day were just kind of
00:05:32
Speaker
two blobs of colors just kind of smashing against each other and this was very detailed I mean the roster wasn't huge so when you had a Royal Rumble there was you know Hulk Hogan would come in like four times but it was a damn good game man it's I wanted to put in the top five but it was tough it's a tough list
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. What do you think that held Wrestle Fest back, Seth? So I actually got a personal story on why Wrestle Fest is not in the top five. So me and my little brother and one of my best friends when we were a kid, we went and stayed at Disney World for a week. My best friend's family was really rich. And on New Year's Eve, I thought it was really cool. We got to hang out at this place. It was basically like a glorified daycare, but they had free arcade games. So at the time I thought this was awesome. Now looking back, I see it was just something so.
00:06:16
Speaker
My best friend's parents could go out and have a good time. But they had they had Wrestle Fest there for free. So I got to play Wrestle Fest for like three hours. And what I realized is that the gameplay is extremely limited. You know, it really wasn't a whole lot to it and ended up just getting frustrated with it. So I think, you know, I see people clamoring for a Wrestle Fest re-release. I think it'll be one of those things. It's cool for like a week. And then people realize like, you know, we've evolved since then.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, fun to have a handful of quarters and go to the arcade and play it. But if you had it at home, are you going to play it for more than, you know, a couple matches before you get bored? That's a good point. Yeah. Right. Um, so there was a, our second honorable mention is, uh, this was actually, so this was on SES honorable mention list and this actually made Phil's number five. So it barely made Phil's top five. Um, but it was, uh, the WrestleMania, uh, arcade game. So what, what made this,
00:07:11
Speaker
hit the honorable mention list and not make the top five for you, Seth? For me, it's like a Mortal Kombat clone. That's really what it was. This came out right after Mortal Kombat. It was made by Acclaim. The same guys did Mortal Kombat. And that's really what it was. It was WWF meets Mortal Kombat. It had those digital graphics.
00:07:30
Speaker
It was a fighting game. It really wasn't even a wrestling game. It was a fighting game that just so happened to take place in the ring. But that being said, it was really cool because in the mid-90s, there was nothing bigger than Mortal Kombat. So if I get to play Mortal Kombat with my favorite wrestlers, awesome.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, I had it on my list and it was, you know, that between that and Wrestle Fest. They're kind of similar games. I mean, I love the arcade, you know, WrestleMania the arcade game because you know, Bret Hart pulls out different things and you know, you got the whoopee cushion from Doink and, and there's just different like kitschy things. I'm a huge, as you know, new generation Mark and it, you know, I'd still look on it finally now. I mean, only had eight characters. So it was pretty limited as far as how many people you could be and you know, the matches and stuff. But,
00:08:11
Speaker
It was it was fun. It was like you said I was I was a huge mortal mortal combat fan So it was kind of that same style so I was a you know I look back on the fondly so and I do want to touch on that You know as we go into this top five list there might be a game on here that one of us or both of us well obviously won't be both of us, but I
00:08:27
Speaker
One of us didn't play. I'm not going to say I've played every single wrestling video game of all time. I took a little, you know, lapster in the Ruthless Aggression era, but I think we got both the bases covered here and I really wish I could go back and play some of these games, man. I don't know. I don't own a 64 anymore, but I kind of wish I did with some of these games that came out for that.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, we have some old consoles too. And I'm really, you know, uh, he'll husband and I used to, used to play them and like, I'm really excited to get the baby face once he gets old enough started on like Nintendo and you know, super Nintendo and things like that, because obviously the controls are super easy. So I'm excited to go back and get a lot of those cartridges and, um, get him started on some of those old school games and getting to relive a lot of those things. So maybe we'll get to go back and, you know, relive the glory days. Um, but the third honorable mention on the list. So this one, this made sess honorable mention list was WWE all stars. So.
00:09:14
Speaker
What, um, what put this on honorable mention instead of being in a top five? So this was another one kind of in the same vein as Russell Fest and WrestleMania, the arcade game. It was a simpler game. It came out in 2011 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation three.
00:09:30
Speaker
And it was just another arcade style wrestling game. I think it was kind of, it kind of split the difference between Wrestle Fest and then, um, the wrestling games from the late nineties, like WCW and WO revenge and no mercy. It had just, you know, striking grapple with your two controls.
00:09:45
Speaker
And it just had an awesome roster. It had a mix of legends and current guys, and it was just a ton of fun. And one thing I like about it is that it was a different kind of wrestling game. With the 2K games now and really going back to the SmackDown series starting in the late 2000s, it's been almost like a wrestling simulation. I think there's room for a more arcade type approach to wrestling gaming. So I'd love to see 2K bring something like that back out.
00:10:10
Speaker
Did you ever play this, Phil? No, I was doing a little research before we started recording and it was a game. This is another during that time period where I was not into wrestling as much. So I missed this game completely. It looks cool. I mean, it has a cool mix of kind of old school guys and, you know, you know, early to late 2000 guys or whatever.
00:10:27
Speaker
But it looked pretty cool. I mean, you had Macho Man and Andre the Giant, Hogan. Then you had current guys like, you know, Seamus and Triple H. And it was a little more kitschy where, you know, he did the rock bottom and he threw the guy like 50 feet in the air. But I mean, at least it sounded like it was more of a wrestling game than it was like a Mortal Kombat type game. So it seems like, yeah, I think there is a market out there. I think kids would probably want to play a game like this more than they'd want to play 2K sometimes, maybe just because it's a little more cartoonish, you know? Yeah, a little more simplistic, too. Yeah.
00:10:57
Speaker
Absolutely. Um, and our last honorable mention, so this was actually, um, Seth's number four pick, but because of the averages, uh, for the top five, it didn't make, it didn't make the list. So this was says number four, but it's WWF Royal Rumble.

Nostalgic Wrestling Games: WWF Royal Rumble

00:11:10
Speaker
So tell us a little bit about WWF Royal Rumble. So Royal Rumble was, um, the middle game and a three game series that came out on Sega Genesis and super Nintendo. There was a WWF, super WrestleMania.
00:11:22
Speaker
WWF for rumble and then WWF for all is war. These were really at the time game changers as far as wrestling games go. Cause like we mentioned that the NES wrestling games, I mean, they, they got the job done. They looked cool. You know, you could, you could play as Hulk Hogan, but they really weren't that much fun. It wasn't, it was hard to tell what was going on. Uh, it's just super limited. Whereas.
00:11:44
Speaker
The series of games on the 16-bit systems, they had, it was a bright, colorful guys, like Phil mentioned, with the new generation, those guys were all just made to be in video games with all their bright, colorful attires. And the gameplay was really fun. It was the first time you could really hit signature moves and you really felt like you were using the wrestlers that you were playing as, as opposed to just some generic sprite on the screen. And the cool thing about World Rumble that really hits me in my sweet spot was that
00:12:10
Speaker
there was different rosters for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. So I could always top my friend RC because he had the one on Super Nintendo and they didn't have Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan was exclusively on Sega Genesis. Wow. Yeah, I got to talk a ton of trash on him. Anytime we play at his house like, you know, where's the Hulkster at? Because this is 92, 93. And you really can have a WWE video game without Hulkamania running wild. Dude, that is that is a heel move to make.
00:12:36
Speaker
to make Hulk Hogan an exclusive character to one system. Like, yeah, I wonder if that was and it must have been on purpose, right? I mean, I'm not sure what to do. I don't know if it was licensing this. I think the game came out in sometime in 93. So maybe the Sega Genesis version released earlier or something. And that's why Hulk wasn't on there. But but yeah, Hulk was on Sega and he wasn't on Super Nintendo. So I have to do some deep research to figure out exactly why. But
00:13:03
Speaker
Is this a game that you ever played? I played this game a shitload on the genesis my god And I get this one confused with the raw game because they're basically the same game the Royal Rumble was more like that WrestleMania 9, you know, you still have the narcissist and you have Shawn Michaels before he was kind of who he was I remember I got pissed off because Shawn Michaels finishing move is like a belly to back suplex I'm like, what the hell is this? Like I've never seen Shawn Michaels do this before. Yeah
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, when he had the teardrop suplex as his finisher for like four months before the the super kick took over. So yeah, that shows you what it just really captured that that moment in time, like right, right as the new generation was taken off.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yep. I remember these, both these games were out, you know, kind of in the beginning of my video game playing time and I played them a lot, but they're not super memorable to me. That's why they didn't make my list. Um, I just, I don't remember anything that they probably didn't have like create a wrestler mode or probably couldn't do any kind of, it was just kind of just playing, you know, two to two or three different, you could probably do a tag team match and a Royal Rumble and that's about it. So it was kind of limited.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah. And for me, these were Royal Rumble and Raw. That was the games I played as a kid. You know, the, the, the WWF war zone and attitude, I was really, that was kind of more of my teenage years. You know, it's kind of the attitude era myself. Then when I think of myself as a kid playing video games, it was that series of games on Sega and super Nintendo.
00:14:24
Speaker
I did want to say something because I figured you'd have one of these SmackDown vs. Raw games, and that was, again, when I wasn't playing too much. I remember playing a couple of them. I don't remember which ones they were, but neither of us have any of those games on our list. Do you remember any of those games? Did you ever play any

Why No SmackDown vs. Raw?

00:14:40
Speaker
of those games? Yeah, so I played all of them, the first three especially. I was really into those, playing them a lot.
00:14:48
Speaker
the problem with those games, there was nothing super memorable about them. You know, I almost put them like Madden, like trying to pick a favorite one of those games would be like trying to pick your favorite. You're a Madden because they were all really great games, but they were all just kind of had hit that level of, you know, like competence or whatever, where they were good, but there was nothing really super memorable about any individual one. So I thought about that because, you know, it is such a good, good series and really,
00:15:13
Speaker
the SmackDown series is kind of what we still have going on now with the WWE2K series. It's really all one line of games, but yeah, those first few SmackDowns and then with SmackDown versus Raw for a while, none of those really stuck out to me when I'm thinking of my favorite video games in the world of wrestling. Cool.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to ask you guys why there was no SmackDown series on either the top five or any of your honorable mentions. So yeah, you went ahead and knock that question out of the park. But let's go ahead and break into the top five because we're going to talk about the best things about these games and what held them back, if anything. So we're going to get right into it with number five.
00:15:52
Speaker
This is the number five overall. This was on Phil's list, it was number four. And on Seth's list, it was number five. So this is WWF attitude.

WWF Attitude: A Playable Classic

00:16:02
Speaker
So Phil, tell me a little bit about this game and why you put it number four.
00:16:06
Speaker
This was a very playable game, and it was super fun to go back and think about it. I did some YouTube searches, and it was the last game that claimed it before THQ took over. It was like 99, I believe. I had it for PlayStation. And it was the first game I remember, Seth, we were having a really good creator wrestler mode where you could make yourself or make guys that weren't in the game. And I'm sure it happened before this in some of the other games, but this one was really
00:16:34
Speaker
That was it for me. I mean, I remember just spending hours like building guys and just making things up and stuff like that. Yeah, I agree. This this game was a ton of fun. It was if so, it was the sequel to the war zone also by a claim. And those two games really kind of brought us out of the dark ages because it was about a three, four year period there where the only wrestling games we got were some
00:16:58
Speaker
some kind of less than stellar WCW games came out for PlayStation like Nitro and Thunder and then we had the WrestleMania the arcade game in your house we had a good simulation type wrestling game especially for the WWF so attitude was awesome it had that like you said the awesome creative player set and then
00:17:17
Speaker
It also had the season mode on. If you remember, there was like the season where we started off on the house shows and then kind of worked our way up to like Sunday night heat and then raw and then eventually get on the pay reviews and fire for the belts. And that was really the first time there was a really fleshed out career mode like that.
00:17:31
Speaker
I remember how to create a pay-per-view mode, too, which I don't know if that was a first for this game, too. But yeah, this kind of, like you said, this brought us into kind of a new generation. Obviously, it's the attitude era, so it was like, you know, the pulse of everything. You had, you know, the Rock and Stone Cold Undertaker and everybody, and it was just, you know, a great, great game. I was Googling it today, and the game was dedicated to Owen Hart, which I found was pretty cool. He died this year. Yeah, I remember seeing that in the credits. Yeah.
00:17:57
Speaker
Yeah. So it was, it was a great game. And I think this is a game that I would go back and play for sure. So number four is, um, this was Phil. This was actually Phil's number two pick. Um, and I want Phil to talk about it a little bit because it landed number four on the overall list. So this is WWE 13. So Phil, talk about this and why, um, why you put it in number two, and then we'll talk about maybe why it kind of fell at number four on the, on the overall rankings.

WWE 13: Praises and Preferences

00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, this is when I just got back into playing wrestling video games. I remember, I remember CM Punk was on the cover. It was, I think the second year after like the Smackdown versus Raw games where they went to just the WWE 12 and 13 and they went by the years kind of like Madden does.
00:18:39
Speaker
And they had a really great attitude era mode where you could relive the top 20 matches from the attitude era. And unlike the attitude era game, which didn't have the best graphics, this was 10 years later or something or whatever, and we had just better graphics on a better system and it just was a game.
00:18:59
Speaker
Kind of like the other games we've talked about, some of these WW2K games kind of run together for me, and not that any of them are bad or good, and we have one more on our list here. But this is the one that just stuck out to me when I did some research, and I remember being really into that attitude era mode, and just kind of loving this game and being addicted to it. So, Heal Husband, this didn't even make your list or honorable mention, so what was it, you know, what about this game was totally unremarkable to you?
00:19:26
Speaker
Well, it is a great game, but I'll talk a little bit more on unwide and included when we get to the next game. The one thing I will say for WWE 13, it's probably got, it's probably between this one and WWE 14 for what I think is the best roster ever in a WWE video game. Cause it just had so many, not just the legends, but it also had a lot of the midcard guys from the attitude era. So that's, there's a lot of guys that that's really the only game they've been featured in in the last nine or 10 years or so.
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah, it had Essay Rios and Godfather Hoe too. Godfather Hoe? Was it the one that won the hardcore championship? I don't know. It doesn't have a picture of her on the internet, but there were 74 playable characters, according to Google. So yeah, pretty stacked roster.
00:20:13
Speaker
Nice. Oh, so we'll get right into number three. Um, and I'll let heal has been talking about this because this was heel has been number one pick. Um, again, it landed at number three on our top five list and it is none other than WWE 2k 19.

WWE 2K19: Seth's Favorite

00:20:26
Speaker
So Seth, why don't you talk about this and why you love this game so much and why you play it so much?
00:20:30
Speaker
So it was hard for me to put this one over 2k18 because I'm like the biggest Seth Rollins fan ever but And I know this a little bit of a hot take but I really think you know if you throw the nostalgia out the window WWE 2k19 is the single best video game representation We've had of the greatest sport on God's green earth in the history, you know, it's awesome. There's literally nothing you can't do it's got the best creative player we've ever seen and
00:20:56
Speaker
The gameplay is incredible. I've been playing this game hardcore since it came out in October and I'm still seeing new stuff. The only games I play right now are Madden, NBA 2K, Red Dead Redemption, and WWE. And I can tell you, nothing gets me more excited than when the baby face is down to go to sleep. I got some cold beer in the fridge, I got nothing else going on, and I got an hour and a half, two hours to sit down.
00:21:24
Speaker
Just sink into some WWE 2K19. I got an awesome universe mode going. Sheena shares a lot of stuff I have going on in the universe on her IG. It's just awesome. I love it. What it really does, the universe mode on there takes me back to when I had my fig fed as a kid because that's how extensive it is. How I plan out all the cards and stuff.
00:21:44
Speaker
I don't know. I go on all day. I love that game. Let me just, let me just break in here real quick. I've talked about this before on the podcast, but like this is like very intense. You guys, I mean, as much, I mean, he'll husband's been doing it like this for a long time. Granted, when he had his fake Federation, when he was a kid, it was all done with like notebooks and whatnot. But nowadays he has like WWE 2k 19 spreadsheets.
00:22:04
Speaker
in, in his computer, like that are like meticulously organized and like, you know, like he can't play, you know, 2k 19 without his computer because he does all of the, all of his like organizing and like, you know, the champions and figuring out who's been the champion for how many days and all of these things. And so yeah, guys, it's like that.
00:22:23
Speaker
It's pretty ridiculous. I didn't have it on my list and I guess it's just like the opposite of recency bias. I play this game every day with my son. When I pick him up from daycare, it's the first thing. Daddy, today I'm going to be Samoa Joe, Sin Cara, and Calista or whatever. We're like, okay, cool, dude. You had a good day, so we get to play the game. He doesn't even say hi to me anymore. That's the first thing he says. Like, can we play the video game when we get home? I'm like, okay, cool.
00:22:50
Speaker
and it is a great game and it's always fun. I always see something different. I love playing with Ali and doing the Hurricane Rana moves off the top rope and Rey Mysterio. All the add-ons you can do, all the new additions to the game. I happily pay money for that stuff. I don't know why I didn't put it on my list. I think it's because it's just so new. I haven't had a chance to really step back and
00:23:13
Speaker
like I don't know that just it yeah I guess I guess digest it because I'm in a minute right now playing it so I don't know if I put it as a top five but maybe you know we do this show five years from now and I would probably have it in my tough I have nothing to complain about it one thing I don't like sometimes when you're
00:23:31
Speaker
I just feel like when your opponent's on the ground and you're trying to stop him or kick him or drop an elbow, I always hit like air. I don't know if it's just an error on the PlayStation side of things or... User error. Yeah. I mean, it's probably user error. Maybe I'm like 10 feet away from the guy. But I definitely want to get into what you guys do with the universe and just building paper views. And it looks super fun. And I wish I had the time to do that when I get home and the wife falls asleep.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, you just have to have a psycho brain like Seth. I couldn't even do that kind of stuff, you know what I mean? I would be embarrassed to explain it to anybody because it's really so detailed how I run it. I think I'd give Vince McMahon a run for his money on how involved he is with WWE on my universe mode.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah. It's so funny because when I started sharing, um, he'll husband's universe mode on the Instagram stories and on the Instagram and stuff, it kills me because people are so into it. Like they're not even playing, but they're so into the results and the outcomes of, uh, of heel husband's universe. I'll be like, Oh my God, Bret Hart lost the championship. No way. He's been the champion for X amount of days. You know, and I'm like, how do you know this? You know, they've been keeping up with heel husband's universe. So people complain about who gets pushed and who doesn't.
00:24:43
Speaker
Oh my god. Like you have any control over that, right? I mean, you don't have any control over that. Oh man. Jesus. Yeah. It's pretty freaking hilarious how into it, not only Seth is, but the Chick-fil-E fam who follow the universe. And we love it. So if you guys are out there and you're listening and you comment and all those things, we do love all the feedback. It makes it more fun for us when we post those types of things. But we will leave WWE 2K behind right now. And we're going to talk about the number two pick in our top five.
00:25:13
Speaker
Um, this was pretty close for you and Seth both. So I'm excited to see your, both your takes on this,

WWF No Mercy: A Timeless Favorite

00:25:18
Speaker
on this game. So this is WWF, no mercy. Phil had this as his number three pick and he'll husband had this as his number two pick. And it ended up in the rankings as number two. So, um, I'll let Phil take the lead on this and talk about, uh, WWF, uh, no mercy and why, why you picked it as your number three pick.
00:25:36
Speaker
I mean, it's just, it was a perfect storm of the, these THQ games were so easy. Like I didn't, I didn't like the thing I don't like about video games is when I have to do like a move set and it's like back, back, left, right, AB or something that that was how like the mortal combat games were back in the day. And some of the older wrestling games were like that too, but no mercy took all the idiot proofing out of it. And basically it was just fun. And you had everybody from this awesome era of like, I think this is what 2000, 2001, Seth, I feel like.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, 2001, right? 2000. Okay. It was 2000. Okay, WrestleMania 2000 came out in 99. Yep. Yep. So yeah, I mean, it was just like, you know, I love the WCW games, as you'll see in a minute, but I loved it even more because I was more of a WWF fan. So them getting the license for this and switching over to this platform, it was just, you know, it's a perfect
00:26:30
Speaker
When you have friends over, after the pay-per-view ends, after backlash ends, and you're full of pizza and Mountain Dew, you just pop on WWF No Mercy, and four of your friends are playing for six hours straight, and it's just, you talk about hitting me in the feels, man. This game brings me back to sophomore year of high school hardcore.
00:26:50
Speaker
What console were you playing this on? It was N64. It was N64 exclusive. Okay, awesome. And so, Seth, Miele has been his number two pick. So, talk about what this game means to you. Yeah, I think Phil pretty much nailed it. It was a toss-up for me between this one and the game that's number one on our list. They're both so much fun. I think a big part of it was the N64 console and controller. You know, the N64 console was the first one that had
00:27:17
Speaker
four controller ports on it, so you didn't need any kind of multi-tab adapter or whatever to get four of your friends on there. So super easy for multi-player stuff. And then the N64 controller was just perfect for wrestling. With that game engine that was used on that series of WCW, WWF games, you really just needed the control stick and two buttons with A and B, and you could have a ton of fun with it. The control scheme was simple. So people that hadn't even played it before, they could pick up a controller, and then five minutes they could be having fun with it.
00:27:45
Speaker
It hit WWF. That game came out like right at kind of the peak of the attitude era. You know, it was about six months before WrestleMania 17, which is kind of the end of the attitude era. And it was just perfect. You know, it's probably the best game engine we've ever had for a wrestling game as far as fun factor goes. And it had an amazing roster and it was just kind of the peak of that THQ series of games.
00:28:08
Speaker
And you knew that WDF must have wanted this bad because they saw the success of the WCW games and they probably jumped all over them to make their games, you know, it would happen pretty quick. So yeah, it was, it was a great game and you got a little pizza grease on your fingers, you know, hold that controller, right. You know, I did love those super Nintendo controllers, man. They were, they were great. I mean, sorry, sorry, sorry. The other thing I'd say for no mercy was that, um, it wasn't the first, but it definitely had,
00:28:35
Speaker
by far the best creative player features like at the time. Like I remember going through and spending hours editing people's move sets and stuff. It had a really awesome creative player set. And that was a ton of fun too about that game. Remember you could go outside too. They had the storylines kind of out in the parking lot and stuff. And I remember the, you know, video games really did that too much before this, but so yeah, it was a great game. Definitely. Awesome. Well, that brings us to our number one video game wrestling video game on the list and
00:29:05
Speaker
So Phil had this as his number one pick and it failed to heal husband's number three, but it landed in the number one spot on our top five.

WCW vs NWO Revenge: Phil's Top Choice

00:29:13
Speaker
And this game is WCW versus NWO revenge. So Phil, since this is your number one, tell me what you love so much about this game, what it means to you and why it is your top wrestling video game of all time.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was the first. I mean, these, these games came before this WF no mercy game. So everything I said about that, you can multiply it by two for this WCW game and just made me, and it was perfect. I mean, even if you weren't a WCW fan, you wanted to play this game and you, I'm sure they probably got a lot of.
00:29:44
Speaker
You know additional fans and listeners and watchers to the product after this game came in October 1998 64 Nintendo 64 first time that you could use actual arenas in the game so you could pick like Nitro or Halloween Havoc and all that kind of stuff
00:30:01
Speaker
Uh, 63 wrestlers. So at this time in 98, I mean, some of these games, Seth had, you know, 20, 30 guys. So to have 63 wrestlers, uh, only minus was, was no Ric Flair. He'd gotten like fired for no showing an event. And then he'd get rehired later in the year, some bullshit. And so he wasn't like.
00:30:19
Speaker
when they made the game he just wasn't in it but everyone else you could think of from this time when WCW was kicking WWE's ass you know bottom line and it was more fun to watch you know right before this attitude era really started getting get it going and man it was it was a fun fucking game dude and I would play if I had it I would play it right now because this talking about it makes me just want to play it all over again
00:30:42
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah, I had this one behind WWF No Mercy on my list. I was really kind of torn between them. I ended up putting WWF No Mercy a little bit ahead just because, you know, it was kind of the last game in the series. It was kind of the peak as far as the technical aspects and all the features go. But I definitely played
00:30:59
Speaker
uh, revenge a hell of a lot more. You know, I, I said, when, when I was a kid, um, the game I think about playing was, was WWE for a rumble. When I was a teen, it was definitely WCW versus NWO revenge. Like you said, 63 wrestlers, it was a huge roster. And at the time that the roster that WCW had and that 97, 98, that was definitely one of the all time, most talented rosters that we've ever seen.
00:31:24
Speaker
In wrestling, so it was so much fun. Um, I think you could do like a 50 man battle royal or whatever It was kind of like war about that too. Yeah, I felt it. That's yeah And there's no telling how many hours me and my brother and my friend rc that I mentioned earlier We would all have a controller and we just play the battle royal because remember if you got eliminated just the next wrestler out That's how you get so, you know, we'd all start off picking, you know, kevin nash Goldberg sting And then it was just luckily draw once you got eliminated that first time who you're going to get next You know, sometimes you might get scott hall sometimes you'd get
00:31:53
Speaker
you know, like La Parka or somebody like that. But it was just so, so much fun. I can still see that the intro video clearly in my head. I don't know if you remember the little cinematic that they had before the game started with like the N.W.O. The big truck like 18-wheeler pulling up or something. Yeah, it was it was just so cool. And it was it was just so far ahead of any wrestling game we've seen before that. You know, it just it really captured the essence of W.C.W. at the time.
00:32:23
Speaker
And yeah, I have no problem calling this the best wrestling video game of all time. Yeah, another good thing about it is you could change the wrestler's look like the guys in the actual game. You could go in and change, like if Hogan stopped wearing black and white or something, you could go in and change his name or his outfit. And that's how he would look for the, whenever you played with him. And you can't do that nowadays. If Dean Ambrose stops wearing jeans to the ring,
00:32:48
Speaker
he's going to wear jeans in the video game for the rest of time. So that was a cool feature that I'm surprised they don't allow you to do that in WWE 2K now. I mean, it'd be cool to have Seth Rollins. We can download all these characters and different players. I'm sure you can download different Seth Rollins and stuff, but it'd be cool to be. You can download them, but it's not a super user. No. Yeah.
00:33:09
Speaker
So yeah, that's the one downfall to some of the newer games that just kind of overthink it a little bit. But yeah, I'd love to be able to just change, you know, I can't even think it off the top of my head, but when someone changes their outfit or changes their name or goes by, you know, we could put Rowan in instead of the Bludgeon Brothers, you could throw him into the eco-friendly outfits and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, this was a little ahead of its time for sure. And man, many and many nights playing with the boys after pay-per-views and stuff. And yeah, it was a super fun game. Wow. Well.
00:33:39
Speaker
Gentlemen that brings us to the end of our list. Thank you guys so much for for putting these lists together It was a lot of fun for me to hear these stories that you and you and heal has been shared because uh, you know Like I said, I was more of a Mario
00:33:53
Speaker
mario gal myself growing up she is a beast on mario basically mario selling any kind of platform game shina is amazing at it so she's got some gamer cred yeah i got some gamer cred i used to we used to have um a franchise mode me and the heel husband i played quarterback he played by receiver we we've done that she played and then um you know we had our gears of war phase where we played on xbox live with all of our friends and cousins and everything we played uh so i mean yeah i got some gamer cred um haven't been as into it lately just because
00:34:20
Speaker
you know, being a mom and all that kind of stuff. But it was fun to kind of like relive all those old consoles and everything. And, you know, just think about all the all the fun times we had, like, just like you said, I mean, nowadays, kids
00:34:32
Speaker
They have so many options, you know, watch YouTube. They go, you know, they do all these other things. And like we sat at home and played video games with our friends, like actually there, you know, you had to have your friends over. There was no like integrated internet system where you could like play, like, you know, you had to invite your friend over to your house to play video games. So anyway, thank you guys so much for putting these lists together. It was a lot of fun.

Listener Engagement and Feedback

00:34:55
Speaker
want to know what our listeners. One, what was your console history? Give us the rundown and what console you prefer today. Are you Team Xbox or are you Team PlayStation? Give us feedback on the top five. If you have any that you agree with or disagree with or any that you would have added, please let us know. You can always hit us up in the DMs or comment on
00:35:14
Speaker
Below where we post is in the patreon page, but guys thank you so much. Thank you for your support Thank you for being part of our chick Foley fam and that pretty much wraps it up for this special episode And thank you heal husband for making your chick Foley show debut. Yeah, dude. You killed it man
00:35:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Follow Seth on Twitter, Seth Phelps. Add Seth Phelps on Twitter, man. He needs some more followers. He's got some good stuff, man. He's the unsung hero of this show, man. You do a lot of behind-the-scenes work for us, so we appreciate it, man. For sure.
00:35:47
Speaker
I keep it easy. SF Phelps at Twitter and Instagram. Yeah, so you can follow in both those places. Yeah, I would be totally lost. He keeps me organized. The Chick-Fully show would not happen week to week without the heel husband being the push behind getting me on track and organized. So thanks again, guys. I hope you all have a great evening. Like I said, let us know what you think of the show and take it easy, Marks. Yep. Stay classy, Marks. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, Patreon listeners. This will be posted pretty soon. See you.