WCW Nitro

This wrestling game feels like it’s trying to be more of an arcade style fighter than a wrestling game. That said, you still need to finish the fight with a pin or ring-out, just after you deplete their health bar. It’s not a terrible idea in theory, but WCW Nitro is just an incredibly shoddy product.

Outside of the incredibly ugly graphics, the biggest issue is the controls. They’re incredibly unresponsive, where pressing a button is a gamble as to if your fighter is doing to do it, and the combinations are even worse. Most of the fights ended in a ringout because, no matter how much I tried, my character would ignore my requests of getting back into the ring.

The game starts with very few wrestlers unlocked, with over 50 in the total, unlocked by repeatedly doing tournaments. This seems fairly poor for such a multiplayer focused game, as people want to play as their favourite wrestlers.

The PS version was praised for having a live action cutscene for wrestler introductions (made specifically for the game), but the N64 lacks this one redeeming feature. There was one interesting ring that looked like a stretched pool table with the wrestlers looking tiny, but that’s about it I can come up with for praise for WCW Nitro.

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It’s hard to know where to start picking faults. Should we mention the suspiciously well-choreographed nature of certain moves? In some instances, you perform a throw and actually see your opponent shuffle apologetically into position so that it works. Now that is feeble.

James Price, N64 Magazine #27

Remake or Remaster?

The idea could work if tried again, but there’s nothing remarkable about the actual game.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play WCW Nitro

N64 Sports wrestling