WCW Vs. nWo World Tour

Developer: Asmik Ace, AKI Corp. Publisher: THQ

Released: November 30, 1997 Rated: K-A 7/10

Fresh off of debuting their original wrestling engine with the original Virtual Pro Wrestling for the PlayStation (localized in the west as WCW Vs. The World), AKI Corp. and Asmik Ace transitioned to the N64 for their next collaboration with the red hot WCW and their Japanese associates in All-Japan and other promotions. Predicated on the exciting feud between the two marquee groups, World Tour follows a similar pattern to vs. The World with a roster filled out in large part by that globally oriented approach. Broken down into WCW, nWo, “DOA,” and “Independent Union” wrestlers, there’s about a 60/40 split between names recognizable to the American audience and ones that would have been presented as if they were just extra bodies to your average fan back in the day. But through that 60%, World Tour is off to a good start on one of its most important missions: portraying the on-screen product, something which WCW had not really done very often or with as much effort prior to 1997, and certainly not in the way the rival WWF ever had.

The stalwarts of World Championship Wrestling are all represented for the time, including “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, The Outsiders, Sting, Ric Flair, The Giant, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, and Diamond Dallas Page. The latter two are included as unlockables, along with four other wrestlers, with the total number coming out to 43. Cruiserweights, technical wizards, and workers with international appeal fill out the remainder, which further highlights AKI’s sensibilities as a Japanese company with intentions of releasing a subsequent version in their home country. Scott Norton and Ultimo Dragon easily carry more weight in the Asian market than even prolific mid-card fodder like Alex Wright or Perry Saturn.

With cover star The Giant already having defected by the time the game reached store shelves, WCW fans are forced to turn to the Total Pack-eege for salvation.

Where World Tour really gets off and running, though, is that watching and playing these characters feels like them in a way that most wrestling games had rarely ever conveyed. Between the grapple-based move system, varied attire options for each character, and focus on replicating animations and movesets accurately, AKI Corp. and their brilliant engine essentially revolutionize the genre from the moment they arrive. While Fire Pro Wrestling had been standing tall in Japanese markets for years with its timing-based approach, AKI delivers an incredibly accessible but still deep and fluid system that convincingly upsets the Western hierarchy dominated by unintuitive Acclaim-published titles that only persisted due to their lucrative WWF license. Assigning full moves to different situations such as front or rear grapples, against the turnbuckle, and on the ground facing up or down creates variety, and coupling that with straightforward inputs of one button and one direction at a time makes for gameplay that feels unique to each matchup and each player, and doesn’t hold back the access to execute moves and, well, just do cool stuff without having to learn and practice each wrestler individually.

This may sound like a recipe for low-autonomy and low-engagement gameplay – “press A to do the thing” surely doesn’t sound like a riveting experience, I know – but what it does is shift the focus from memorization of laundry lists of combos to situational awareness and timing. Which is sort of just appropriate for a wrestling game to do in a way that a fighting game wouldn’t. Timing and an ebb and flow of momentum are crucial to a wrestling match in a way that a real fight doesn’t care about, so even when presented as legitimate and being a test of skill via its gameplay, it’s still equally important in order to recreate the product at hand.

On that note, it’s the ways in which WCW vs. nWo World Tour doesn’t quite cover all its bases in representing the product that account for its main shortcomings. As mentioned, a short development time in which World Tour releases in the West only a few months after WCW Vs. The World, itself a reskin of Virtual Pro Wrestling, which was first released in Japan. This cuts short a lot of the time that AKI would have had to cover a lot of the presentation differences between the more sports-style Japanese and more theatrical American wrestling styles. This would be remedied in quite thorough fashion in WCW/nWo Revenge, but in World Tour there’s very little outside of the roster itself to help recreate the actual TV product WCW was putting out. This is certainly the correct move, but like a lot of what you’ll see in the four AKI engine games on N64, the issue is simply that each subsequent title goes so much further in its content than just the foundation of World Tour.

A keen-eyed look through the alternate attires can help identify the non-American characters without the help of real names or detailed models, such as obscure Bret Hart rival Hakushi, better known as Jinsei Shinzaki

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty to spend your time on, of course. While the most heavily branded game mode, the titular WCW vs. nWo mode is little more than a separately presented five-on-five elimination match, the League and Tournament modes offer a sports-style approach to put various matchups together. League Challenge, meanwhile, is the main single-player mode, offering a championship ladder approach to earn titles and unlock hidden characters with your favorite wrestler. Match types and customization may not be particularly extensive at this point, but the strong gameplay provides a lot of mileage nonetheless.

AKI’s character models and overall graphical style still have a long way to go in this early release, particularly without the baseline of WCW television graphics, the varied attire provides an early look at its successors’ depth in character creation and editing. On that same note, there isn’t any licensed music or audio to be found here, but there is an excellent generic soundtrack that provides a lot of gravitas and adrenaline to the proceedings. Perhaps not something that will have much impact if not for some nostalgic value, but as a MIDI-based soundtrack that manages to rock pretty hard without any licensing involved in that department, credit where it’s due. It serves nicely as the bow to what is, through a modern lens, a rather generic package because of what it lacks for fans of its license. But as far as its foundational importance to the genre, WCW vs. nWo World Tour has a monstrous legacy and can really only be discredited in comparison to its successors.