Wrestlemania XIX...'s Revenge Mode

Being both a person who enjoys games, and is a fan of AEW, I got myself a copy of AEW Fight Forever back when it came out. My short review here: the game played extremely well when you were in the ring, but was very much lacking in terms of things like match types and customization. Overall, I enjoyed it, and wish that AEW would consider making another console game.

An idea that I have had for a new AEW game, and one that a number of people have also had, is for it to not be a wrestling game. AEW is meant to be an alternative, the thing that we all watch because we're sick of WWE's bullshit, having a game attempting to recreate the same yearly WWE 2k entries goes against that. The roster for AEW lends itself well to other genres; imagine an RPG about The Conglomeration, for example. Other wrestling promotions have done this in the past. Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling in Japan had a 1-on-1 fighting game for the Super Famicom, where some of the FMW roster fought against a cyborg that did Taekwondo and a sentient mushroom with boxing gloves. It's not nearly as good as it sounds.

WWE themselves have done this, making a game with their, big sigh, Superstars doing things that aren't wrestling, or Sports Entertaining. The first one that comes to mind is WWF Betrayal on the Game Boy Color, which is a side-scrolling brawler where you fight referees, security guards, and guys with guns shaped like briefcases, all to rescue a kidnapped Stephanie McMahon. Then there is the infamous WWE Crush Hour, a car combat game in the vein of Twisted Metal. Both of these games are fucking dogshit. They both commit the cardinal sin that no licensed game with a unique spin on its property should commit: being boring. Betrayal and Crush Hour are so dull. There's nothing good or bad about either of them. Thoroughly mediocre experiences that don't go far enough with their ideas. The most you can get is a quick chuckle at Triple H doing a shoot Pedigree on a cop armed with a billy club and a stun gun in Betrayal, or wondering if the developers of Crush Hour knew how fucking funny it was to release a game where Jeff Hardy drives a car.

Now we get to Wrestlemania XIX on the Gamecube. On the surface, it looks no different than the number of WWE games on the PS2, back when those games were still good. While it was developed by Yukes, the same company who did all those PS2, as well as AEW Fight Forever (and Hermie Hopperhead!), the game's DNA is more in line with the AKI-developed Nintendo 64 wrestling games, so it is a mechanically different experience here. It plays just fine, nothing really all that wrong with it. Any actual complains would be that the roster is pretty small, and that of everyone in WWE that could've been included, Al Snow is playable. Al Fucking Snow is a playable character in a 2003 video game, during a time when WWE had Shelton Benjamin and goddamn Ultimo Dragon on the payroll. Some crimes can never be forgiven.

Go beyond the surface of Wrestlemania XIX, and you find something unique and interesting. Rather than the usual Season or Story mode, where you get to digitally experience all of Paul Heyman's worst booking ideas in order to unlock a new shirt for Shawn Michaels to wear, there's something new: Revenge mode.

Revenge mode begins with your chosen WWE Superstar (or created character) getting fired by Vince McMahon, and being given your severance pay of getting your fucking ass kicked by his private security. You are then found by Stephanie McMahon who offers you a deal at the titular Revenge: sabotage the upcoming Wrestlemania pay-per-view, and you'll get paid a bunch of money. Unfortunately, you don't sabotage Wrestlemania Tommy Dreamer style, but what you do is good enough. Things like wrecking the construction site where the show will be held (very relevant given the recent Saudi Royal Rumble), destroying merchandise, and destroying the trucks or boats carrying the ring and the staging equipment. As someone who thinks WCW never should have died, how could I not take an opportunity to hurt Vince McMahon?

Revenge mode is something of a pseudo-brawler. You run around in malls and harbors and construction sites, beating up construction workers and rent-a-cops, working your way up to bodyguards and secret agents, all the way up to Vince's personal security, who look like someone's Grappler Baki OC. Of course, other WWE Superstars™️ will be in the mix, which can be funny when you see The Big Show standing side by side with a wild-haired martial artist in a Hannya mask. These characters can all become playable, by the way.

Yukes took a look at how they coded the Royal Rumble match, and came up with a mechanic that carries this entire mode: what if, instead of throwing a wrestling over the top rope, you instead threw off tall buildings to their death.

Throw people into chasms. Throw people into the river. Throw people into oncoming traffic. Throw people through real glass (go cry me a river). In order to defeat Vince McMahon, you have to have to have killed almost as many people as he has. It's such a basic thing, but it's compelling and interesting enough, and it's such a refreshing change of pace from the previously mentioned bad story modes that these games have. Granted, some of these levels have a difficulty curve that can best be described as completely unfair bullshit that requires luck and not spiking your Gamecube down the same deep pit you've sent so many others to die in to complete. Anything that involves climbing, or is set to a difficulty level of 4 or higher will drive you mad. I know this because it drove me mad. There is also a level where Goldberg is completely invincible. Fuck Goldberg, man.

I must also point out that the ending is pretty anticlimactic. You fuck over Wrestlemania, costing WWE millions of dollars. Stephanie McMahon swoops in, suddenly books her own Wrestlemania, where the main event is you versus Vince. You face Vince in a regular old wrestling match, and not a particularly difficult one. Not something cool where you throw him through or off of something. No situation where you kill Vince McMahon, something everyone that isn't a syncophant has wanted to do for decades. For his many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many faults as a disgraceful human being, Vince McMahon is also willing to do ridiculous risks and fuck his own body for the sake of a storyline. He's not so fragile as to say no to being killed in a storyline, especially given that this literally happened a few years later.

All that aside, this one mode is what I want out of wrestling games, and is why I ended up liking this one. Fuck giving me an accurate representation of what happens in the ring; Fire Pro exists for that. Both WWE and AEW have characters that lend themselves to outside ventures. More games that are only tangential to wrestling would be really cool, creative, and could really freshen up a stagnant scene. Come on Tony Khan, the producer of Scribblenauts is literally one of your referees, you're telling me you all can't think outside of the box?