When you ask long-time wrestling fans what their favorite wrestling video games are, you’ll usually get a wide variety of answers. Some enjoy the classic arcade games, others go for the AKI Corporation games like WWF No Mercy and WCW vs. NWO: Revenge. But in recent years the wrestling game genre has been dominated by the WWE 2K series, which has produced some mixed results and is hardly ever brought up in the “best wrestling game” conversation.
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Over the past year All Elite Wrestling has been teasing its own involvement in wrestling video games, going so far as to tease reviving the AKI gaming engine with their own roster. While they weren’t able to give details on their own game, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks sat down with ComicBook.com this weekend to discuss what modern wrestling games are lacking compared to the classics.
For Omega, the difference comes fro how the moves are represented onscreen.
“For me it’s a feeling of actually performing a match,” Omega said. “It’s a feeling of impact with each maneuver. I also feel that, a big thing with No Mercy was that when you did a maneuver by a particular wrestler, the way it was performed and the way it the opponent received the move looked perfect in every single animation. That’s because the artists back then, they weren’t using green screens, they weren’t using MoCap they were actually manipulating joints frame by frame by frame by frame while watching tape of said performer doing that maneuver to an actual opponent.
“There’s a big difference,” he added. “I know there’s a lot of good athletes out there and I’m sure that there are a lot of people that do and can do a V-Trigger, but if it doesn’t quite look like the way I do mine the way that I did the Kotaro Crusher, when I do the One Winged Angel it shows. Even if it’s similar, it still doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t feel right. I think that is what’s missing in games, you just don’t actually feel like you are the superstar, that you’ve chosen to control.”
Meanwhile the Bucks feel the new games lack the simplicity the old games had, making it harder for non-gamers to pick up and play.
“For me, the simplicity of a great game engine, that’s easy functioning and easy to use,” Matt Jackson said. “Like, some of the stuff nowadays, to me, it seems like it’s almost too overly elaborate. I’m just not into it.
“Honestly, I’ve played a few of the new ones, they’re too hard,” he added. “I don’t know if that just makes me seem like I’m an old dinosaur now and it’s like, “Oh, I like the games how they used to be,” but God, I don’t know, man. I don’t know if it’s me romanticizing and being nostalgic about the games I played when I was a kid.”
“We’ll be watching [Kenny] play these new games and I’m like, ‘I don’t even understand. How do you even get it?’” Nick jackson added. “And then he’ll try to explain it and we’re like, ‘I don’t know. Maybe we’re just old school.’”
AEW returns to pay-per-view this Saturday with the AEW Revolution event at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago.
