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All Elite Wrestling is the newest mainstream wrestling organization trying to take on the juggernaut that is World Wrestling Entertainment. Boasting a roster of talented fresh faced performances with some beloved WWE veterans as well, AEW has quickly started carving out a name for itself.
The WWE has been around for decades and has outlasted all of its rivals but there may have been no better time for the organization and the sport, than when WWE was in direct competition with it’s rival World Championship Wrestling.
During that era every Monday night, there was a ratings war between the two entities. Each company was taking new risks and constantly innovating in an effort to get more viewership. For years there was a back and forth battle of one-upmanship and the biggest winners of it all, were the fans.
As an adolescent during this time, I was the perfect target for these brands. I got swept up in all the hype and circumstance of the company war. As much as I enjoyed watching the wrestlers perform on screen every night, the real battlefield where my loyalties were earned wound up being in the wrestling video games.
I wasn’t a new fan of wrestling video games at this time, they always had their appeal. I remember pumping quarters into WrestleMania the Arcade game and playing WWF Royal Rumble on my Sega Genesis.
Those were fun games for a kid who just wanted to control his favorite wrestlers and enjoyed aimlessly punching and kicking opponents into submission. But my universe changed in late 1997 when WCW vs NWO World Tour released on the Nintendo 64.
Here was a wrestling game that was a simulation of the sport. The graphics were incredible, the roster was impeccable, and the game play… that game play… superb. To be frank, I was in love and my interest in the WCW sky rocketed to unforeseen levels. World Tour turned me from a casual wrestling fan into a hardcore wrestling nut and WCW would have their hooks into me for the rest of that company’s life.
Why AEW having a great Wrestling game would be huge
There are myriad reasons as to why a great AEW game could be beneficial to the company. The biggest of which is that right now, the wrestling video game market is wide open.
There simply isn’t a lot of good competition on the market. Much like 1997 when WCW vs NWO World Tour released there weren’t a whole lot of great alternatives. Today we have the extremely successful and long standing WWE games, WWE 2K20 has recently released and continues to sell well.
That said, wrestling fans are not all pleased with these games recent outings. As time has gone on and year after year another WWE 2K game has released, little innovation has been had. The game series is getting stale, fans still buy it because it’s the only AAA wrestling game on the market but right now, WWE 2k is probably at it’s most vulnerable point ever and a well made competitor could really draw in some of 2K’s consumers.
Recent WWE 2K games with their Metacritic and user scores.
Metacrtic scores are based on a numeric scale of 1-100 and user scores are based a scale of 1-10 using decimals. For this graph I converted the the user score to a score based on 100 for comparison. These reviews are for the PlayStation 3 and 4 versions of the games.
Over the last decade, the WWE 2K games have started to fall off with critical and fan reception. The franchise still manages to sell well however because the WWE is the biggest name in professional wrestling and outside of some small, independent game competition like the really good Fire Pro Wrestling World, the WWE 2K series gets to be the big fish in a little pond and is essentially the only popular wrestling game around.
AEW is still a new company and they have only just hit the national tv scene. When they debuted, they had a really impressive viewership count but as the weeks have rolled on, that number has slowly dropped off.
AEW Dynamite’s television viewership has fallen 45% since its impressive debut audience of 1.409 million. In addition, the upstart promotion has also lost its dominant lead over WWE NXT in all younger demos while WWE NXT continues to maintain a sizable lead in the 50+ demo.
Alfred Konuwa of Forbes.com
It’s still early in the game and AEW will be hoping to build up an audience over months and hopefully years of being on air but a great wrestling video game could help accelerate this process. When a game based off of a sport or other ongoing property is released, it functions like the ultimate marketing platform.
What better way to get kids hooked on your wrestling superstars than to provide them with hours of entertainment while playing as them? What better way to get wrestling veterans who haven’t checked AEW out yet maybe give the program a look because they enjoy spending so much time with your brand in a game?
A well made wrestling game is the perfect compliment to your product on tv. Fans of wrestling games are also really thirsty for something new, something exceptional, AEW could be the panacea wrestling fans are dying for.
Give fans a game with a great engine, customization, and the ability to share those customizable features with others and you could have a bonafide hit on your hands.
How AEW could make a Great Wrestling game without breaking the bank
So there is obviously one major obstacle to AEW putting out a wrestling game that shames the next WWE 2K product. They likely don’t have the money or resources to fund a big budget game and they probably don’t have a contingent of top tier wrestling game developers beating their doors down to make an AEW game for them.
So how could they attempt to pull this off? My answer is that they need to look to the past. I mentioned WCW vs World and how in 1997 that game changed everything for me (and millions of other gamers) when it came to what a wrestling game could be.
Even still they may have to partner up with another company to get this done. Maybe they could work with a good AA game publisher like Private Division. Or maybe they could cut a deal with a company like Microsoft and have the game be published for release on Xbox Game Pass. All options are worth exploring!
The developers of that game, AKI went on to make many more critically acclaimed wrestling games over the years. Just look at some of the games they developed or at least provided the fighting engine for.
- WCW vs NWO World Tour
- WCW/NWO Revenge
- WWF WrestleMania 200
- WWF No Mercy
- Virtual Pro Wrestling Series
- Def Jam Vendetta
- Def Jam Fight for New York
I have played every single one of those games except for the Virtual Pro Wrestling series of games. Every one of those games is excellent and to this day, the most fun I have had in a wrestling game. I think if you were to ask most long time wrestling game fans, they would say the same.
So what should AEW do? They need to get that AKI wrestling engine in their game! This is where we hit our second problem however, AKI Corporation is not what it once was.
Today AKI is know as Syn Sophia. They have not made a game with their fighting engine since 2006 which was in a port of 2004’s Def Jam: Fight For New York on the PSP.
So sadly, I don’t know if they still have the skills and personal to make a wrestling game with that engine. I don’t even know if they have the original code to fire it back up again. If they do though, if there is some way to bring that engine back to life in it’s purest wresting form, I think AEW should absolutely try to make it happen.
Why the old AKI engine?
First and foremost, hardcore, old school, wrestling games fans know that having AKI (Syn Sophia) make your wrestling game means something. That engine at this point is legendary. It was intuitive, fast paced, fun, and simple to use while being complex.
Syn Sophia is also not a huge developer. They haven’t made a console game is many years and have been putting out arcade titles and 3DS games as of late. Their services would probably be cheaper than a bigger developer and I think they are capable of making a AA or indie budget wrestling game.
You really don’t need much. The graphics of their game can look like updated versions of the old Nintendo 64 wrestling games. Very high quality versions of those old blocky style wrestlers woudln’t require a lot of power to run.
Something that looks like some of the graphics mods produced for WWF No Mercy would be just fine. Heck pretty much just slapping a high definition skin on to the Def Jam: Fight For New York character models would be more than adequate.
With wrestling fans, graphics never really mattered that much. It’s the game play that shines through. It’s the ability for us to create our own wrestlers, our own worlds, and put on matches with our friends and share in the laughs.
If you Build it they will come
The best wrestling games have always been about more than just pure fighting or competition. They were a form of expression, a way to get creative, sometimes be silly, and make a game your own.
Every well played copy of WWF No Mercy was different than another. Each game had it’s own universe lovingly crafted by owner of that game and their friends, what a wholly unique and magical feature of a great wrestling game!
All AEW would need to do is make a game that uses the AKI engine, throw in a full fledged create a wrestler suite and as much customization options as possible. Have a few modes, including some kind of career mode. The career mode does not have to be deep. Doesn’t need any voice and a bare minimum story, this is a low budget first effort after all.
Allow us to put together our own wrestling cards. Allow us to have title matches. Include online play and customization sharing. The roster depth can be minimal, you can even get away with giving players just 10 total wrestlers if you want, as long as you allow for a huge number of create a wrestler slots. Give players that and the community will do the rest.
Producing the next Great Wrestling game is a win AEW can get over WWE right now
Even if AEW did exactly as I described it doesn’t mean they would have a hit franchise on their hands. It doesn’t mean that they would outsell WWE 2K21 or even come close. A game like this wouldn’t guarantee instant success but it would be a big win for wrestling fans and in return AEW.
Wrestling fans would be grateful to see the beloved AKI engine resurrected. If the game had the right features and implementation, there is no doubt in my mind it would catch on with the wrestling game community. A growing group of these people have become disenfranchised with the WWE 2K games. They want to play a wretling game with a fresh perspective and high quality game play.
Linking up with Syn Sophia would bring a level of word of mouth buzz that would instantly turn heads. Much like pro wrestling, you don’t need the massive production values, a huge tv contract, or even the biggest named wrestlers if you want to entertain hardcore wrestling fans.
To win wrestling fans over you really only need two things.
- Great technical and fundamental skills.
- The ability to connect with your audience.
AEW releasing the next great wrestling simulation by using the company that connected with so many wrestling fans for nearly a decade, would be them managing to accomplish exactly that
Are you a fan of wrestling games? Do you have any memories from those classic AKI developed wrestling games? Leave a comment and share with us below!
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