NOTE: I first posted this review in issue 6 of 2.5D

     I didn't start watching wrestling until 1999, so I really only caught the end of the now infamous Monday Night Wars. That however didn't stop me from picking up and playing wrestling video games of that era.

     WCW Nitro has the distinction of being the first 3D wrestling game I ever played, and even then I knew it was sum-par. What makes WCW Nitro generally bad you may ask? Where should I start?    

     Perhaps it's the lack of modes. Featuring a 1P tournament mode where you fight one wrestler after another until you finally get the belt, 1P/2P vs exibition, and 1P/2P vs tag team exibition, WCW Nitro is thin on the modes. This might be excusable due to Nitro's age, but the problems in the gameplay are not.

     The game's core gameplay comes down to just pummulling your opponent's with every move you can until their life bar drains enough for you to pin them.This wouldn't be a problem is the game had a fun play system, and competent controls.

     The controls are Nitro's most notable gameplay flaw. The developers saw fit to make them overly complicated, and finger straining. Forcing you to put in a bunch of complicated button combinations to pull off even the simplest moves, Nitro's controls are unnecessarily complicated. The same criticisms have been levied at WWF Warzone and Attitude, but atleast in those two respective games, you character would at least make a motion telling you that you even put the combination in right. In Nitro it feels like random guess work whether or not you're character will do the grapple move. Your character just stands there regardless of what button combination you put in. This makes it impossible to gauge an effective range of your attacks. Your only tell tail that you put in the right combination is when your character pulls off the move assuming you're standing close enough to your opponent to pull off the move in the first place. The striking moves in the game don't fair any better.

     In Nitro, your character has punch, kick, and chop as their striking moves, but it doesn't matter, because all the computer controlled opponents do is dodge backwards. In fact, the only time you'll be able to connect with your poorly animated repertoire of striking moves is when you back an opponent into the corner of ring. I realize that they're really pulling punches in the ring in real life, but that doesn't mean the developers need to imitate it with the striking moves in the game. The animation in Nitro is so poor that even when your opponent isn't backing up like a little scared little schoolgirl, you still have almost get face to face with them in order to connect with your strikes.

     Not only is the game badly animated, it's framerate dips quite noticeably at times. Especially when there's more than two wrestlers in the ring. This might not seem like a big deal, but there are run-ins in almost every match which bog the game down, and make it even harder to time your already hard to time moves. There's nothing like jamming down on the controller only to watch your character do nothing while getting his ass handed to him in slow-mo. It makes for a not so good time.

     Perhaps the most unforgivable aspect of WCW Nitro is that it hit the PS1 after WCW vs the World which despite being worlds more playable, was also the prequel to Asmik's stellar N64 wrestling efforts, and though being surpassed by it's sequels, is still the best, and most playable WCW game on the PS1. I'll still never know why THQ decided to release dreck like WCW Nitro, when they could have given PS1 fans WCW games of the same quality as WCW vs NWO World Tour, and WCW/Nwo Revenge.

Bottom Line: This game is only worth it to watch the FMV sequences, and even then you could just hunt down an old WCW pay per view instead. Other than the videos, WCW Nitro is almost the worse wrestling game on the PS1 (WWF In Your House has the crown of being the crappiest wrestling game on Sony's grey box), and quite frankly, despite selling millions of copies on name alone, was a huge mistake on THQ's part. They should have given PS1 gamers the Asmik wrestling games over this game. Instead, WCW fans looking for a great wrestling game to play, and reminisce about their past need to get themselves an N64 for WCW/nWo Revenge.