Taz and Raven were the two coolest people on earth after I discovered ECW at 4am on my local public access channel in 1996...

Another thing that always bothered me about the Acclaim games was how nobody had actual hands, they were more like paws. Every punch was an open-hand slap.

Rock Star would've been perfect to create ECW Video Game

It's pretty messed up that we never got an actual good ECW game. WCW had their runs, of course the WWE/F games are the staple, but ECW never had a great game...

After playing THQ's Smackdown!, the Acclaim games felt absolutely ancient. So clunky - the wrestlers moved like action figures

15:13 Lance Storm no-selling the table spot, the absolute mad lad.

A must-buy video game title. It's like saying Undertaker vs. Goldberg is a must-watch wrestling match.

Like the acclaim WWF games before them, the ECW games suffered the same fate and they didn't age well. They came out at a time when wrestling games were evolving and with WM 2000 on N64 and WWF Smackdown on PS1, the ECW games couldn't compete. It was also around the time when the promotion itself was gonna go bankrupt soon.

I may be wrong, but I just feel like with WWF being a national heading towards global brand and WCW being at their hottest and literally funded by a billionaire, any type of video game for ECW, which was as Indie as it gets(being silently aided by WWF aside) would be a miracle.

It's kinda sad to realize that Dawn Marie was in both ECW video games but only managed to appear in ONE WWE game (GC's WrestleMania XIX) despite being part of WWE's personnel for years and being pretty much Torrie Wilson's main rival.

All I can really remember is playing these back when I had them on the Playstation. During the time, I was a huge wrestling fan and I would buy every wrestling game that came out on the PS1. A lot of times after they had been out for a minute, but I would eventually get them. I really enjoyed Hardcore Revolution. And yeah, it was just the WWE War Zone and Attitude engine. But you have to remember what WCW was putting out at the time. Next to Nitro, Thunder, Mayhem, and Backstage Brawl, the War Zone engine was awesome. I had gotten Smackdown by this time and it was definitely superior. But just for a quick pick it up and unlock a character, Hardcore Revolution was passable. And I enjoyed the ECW roster. I didn't buy Anarchy Rulz until 2011 and boy was that disappointing! By that time, I hadn't messed with any of these games in a while, so I could really tell how clunky the engine was. And I just didn't feel like doing the grinds anymore. But I still have some good memories of playing the first one. Hardcore Revolution just felt like taking my "Build a Character" into a new company.

Wrestling games on handheld systems didn't really get good until the early to mid 2000's with Fire Pro on the GBA and Smackdown vs Raw on PSP.

I wanted Anarchy Rulz for what felt like months. I finally rented it. I was quite happy to return it

So, a few points as i admittedly am about to play the video. Warzone was so much worse than all of em, you couldnt even select your opponent and the finishers werent even in the pause menu. But we didnt know any better so we had a ton of fun. Attitude was an improvement but much of the same. By the time ecw came out 1.) it was cheap compared to other wrestling games. 2.) it helped fans who had no way of watching the product learn about ecw and the wrestlers/moves. 3.) Anarchy Rulz finally fixed the control scheme and made it as simplified as it always shouldve been

The new finishers they put in were pretty good. I have never seen the acid drop put into any other game yet. The Nutcracker Sweet, 5 star, Evenflow, and even the really weird cradle piledriver were good.

I actually had high hopes for Anarchy Rulz

That standing armbar animation gives me Nam flashbacks

I rented these once back then and never again.

I remember buying this as a youngin' and thinking how much better it looked on the cover than in-game 😅

These games were ass I'm glad your covering them!!!

I imagine Rockstar would have paid for the songs and more since they were including licensed music in games before GTA3 was a thing (see Thrasher: Skate & Destroy for one example).

I remember reading in gaming magazines at the time that Joey Styles had a Shooting Star Press because Styles himself allegedly did the motion capture for it himself. Not sure how true that ever was, though I guess if Styles was ever in any shape to actually perform an SSP it'd be around this time.

I still have my copy of Hardcore Revolution on the 64.......... I have not intentions on ever playing it again. 😂

4:15 not only that, in the SmackDown game, you could ACTUALLY do hard-core things in matches. In the ECW game, you couldn’t do anything fun. The ECW video game from acclaim played like WWE’s version of ECW on TV. 🤢🤮

Still an ECW fan

It's great that you've covered ECW console games to go alongside your excellent collection of all the other games you've looked at

I don't think I ever knew about the move list in this or War Zone/Attitude. I just bought the strategy guides because they had each wrestlers' move set.

Tomorrow is my birthday 🎉 thank you for your time and work Wrestling Bios

Paul Heyman has always been a crook and everytime I hear him saying anything business related, I feel like I need a shower afterwards

I've still got this game on the Dreamcast. Great video as always

It's sad that Fire Pro Wrestling World is still the best ECW game we ever got, and it isn't even a goddamn dedicated ECW game. WWF/E had No Mercy and Here Comes the Pain. And WCW had WCW/NWO Revenge (and maybe Mayhem to a degree). ECW had no such game made for them.

Got this for Christmas one year and probably played it twice

Shoulda been Rockstar

So many empty seats in the Acclaim wrestling games on Game Boy... Who knew Acclaim would predict AEW?

Man I was just looking for a review of these the other day, great timing.

ECW getting WWF's sloppy seconds lol

i forgot all about these games they just felt like WWF attitude with the ECW license awesome video.

The only fun I had with these games was the occasional break from WM2000/No Mercy to turn people into bloody messes in barbed wire matches. War Zone and Attitude were practically unplayable for me, so these were huge letdowns.

I love smackdown 1&2 the best, so easy to play

Elbows Pads|Knee Pads|Taped Wrists|MMA Style Gloves Past Present Future

One of my biggest complaints about Attitude/Hardcore Revolution is that they don't use the move set style that War Zone did. In War Zone pretty much any two directional buttons will result in a move. Presses like Up, Down, B or Left, Right, A would do a decent and sometimes signature move (Down, Down, B was a chokeslam for example) But when they releases Attitude they left A LOT of button commands blank so if you tried to guess at a combo then pretty much without fail you'd just end up doing an armbar or a wristlock... completely killed the flow of matches. The only time I ever had fun with Attitude and ECW games was when I made create-a-wrestlers with custom movesets based on War Zone's button inputs.

I had an ECW game it was funny i think it was hardcore i Liked it but damm it was really low level

Loved these games but preferred Anarchy Rulz. Spent a lot of time playing the WWF Acclaim games with my cousin so it was easy to pick up and play. I just couldn't get into the Smackdown engine until Know Your Role.

Cant wait for your review on WWF Crush Hour LOL

Acclaim love their warzone engine.

Oh no...lol. Two of the laziest wrestling games ever made.

Wonder why Sandman isn't on the Hardcore revolution rooster, was he already in WCW at the time?

Having worked in IT projects now for a while, my guess is the budget for this was so small that Acclaimed almost HAD to recreate Attitude and WarZone. If ECW had a bigger budget, they would have gotten Acclaimed to build on this even if it meant the game was delayed. I had both ECW games, they were OK. Nothing amazing as you say

please keep doing videos as often as you do . Its really helping me out in hard times.

I bought Anarchy and Medal of Honor the same time. I never thought the ww2 game would be less frustrating and challenging. Rubber band a.i. and I didn't hate it, I just wanted to use the guys. It was fun having all the promotions to be like a wrestling god controlling all 3 though. I feel like video games decided the Monday night wars more than the tv though. Wrestle mania 2000 Wcw mayhem Ecw hardcore. Then No mercy Backstage assault Anarchy Rulz. They were pretty reflective of the promotions of whose names they had.

ty for puting the effort for this video. it must hurt playing these. lol

ECW was also featured in SVR games But didn't catch the spirit of ECW.😂

Smack down came out I never looked back.

In a perfect world Thq/Aki woulda stayed making games, for wCw, Wwf AND Ecw 🔥

It probably would have been better for ECW to take a worse agreement to have Rockstar make the game. I expect there was a lot of overlap in their fanbases at the time.

This was one of my first games as a kid on 64. I wish I could find both right now as a adult

My cousin and I played WWF Attitude after playing Smackdown 1 and 2, and we were blown away by the blood in WWF Attitude. We spent all day playing hardcore handicapped matches and destroyed our opponent.

15:23 Oh my god that one venue in Anarchy Rulz having its TNN sign replaced with just a second ECW sign because Raw moved to that channel in 2000 is so sad

The best part about Acclaim's laziness is that the "New" match modes in Anarchy Rulz were literally matches meant for the next WWF game that never came. The Brimstone match was their attempt at Inferno Matches. The Dumpster Match was from WM 14. Rage In The Cage was the Lion's Den.

Man, on one hand, A Rockstar developed ECW game would have been interesting. On the other hand, anything Rockstar non-GTA (especially in the late 90s) wasn't really that great IMO (think State of Emergency). I guess it all becomes "be careful what you wish for" type of hypothetical.

I was a teenager when Warzone came out, and me and my friend bought one for each of us. Now that I think about it, it looks like a game that you can play on Newgrounds.

Bought the first ecw game on PS1 at Walmart 2 weeks after it came out, just wanted to play as RVD

Not sure about early 00's Rockstar producing an ECW game that'd be known through the ages.... I can only remember the first 2 GTA games, and thinking they were fun, but not what the franchise would become... but if ECW survived a few more years around the time that Rockstar started getting better at making great brawler-style games, that'd be an absolute dream team!

I’ve had Hardcore Revolution sat in a cupboard for about 10 years and never played it…it’s good to know that was the right choice.

I remember a mate if mine got Hardcore revolution and was so buzzed to play it, within 30 mins we went back to the wwf AKI games

The memory remains

I still have both these games, and I enjoyed them then and do still play today. I play on the original Playstation.

The best games to feature ECW was the WWE games svr 2008-2011 although as the WWE ECW brand there was good storylines you could create I did one where Tommy dreamer was WWE champion after cashing in MITB and then John cena wins the ECW championship at the royal rumble after beating my created wrestler who just defended the WWE title on the same night. Also rocks return on the ECW brand and JBL getting annoyed rock is payed more.

The 1998-2000 Rockstar Games would have been a good fit, but they didn't have an amazing track record just yet. They had a string of hits and misses at that time until GTA3 released in October 2001. Which practically catapulted them into the stratosphere overnight and the rest, as they say, is history.

Nice man, this was a great game. If you used ravens ddt as a regular move for your created character you could get a guaranteed pin fall when the health bar was at yellow 💪😂

The worst part is, these are bar none the best pro wrestling games on the Dreamcast.

Smack down on ps1 was the most played wrestling game by me 😅

I always was turned off by this game when seeing that it looked even worse than attitude when it came out after it

My two favorite things wrestling and comic books. JK Simmons aka Omni Man also J Jonah, Jameson vs WWE John Cena

I loved Hardcore Revolution! I played it so much on my Dreamcast!

Pretty cool that the first game has The Sheik in it. That’s gotta be the only video game he was ever in.

Huge shoutout for saying “Aki” and not “A-K-I.”

When I was a kid a friend brought over a copy of the first ECW game and I didn't know who the hell any of the characters were because we didn't get ECW in our area.

Reskinned and repetitive games

I had ecw hardcore revolution on dreamcast and i loved it as a kid 😂

It’s a shame they don’t use the ECW and WCW licenses to release a new game alongside the 2K titles. They could sign up all the old legends (minus AEW talent, so sadly no Tazz) and make a nostalgia title with a new game engine and maybe try some new ideas.

I remember owning Revolution. It was ok to a youngin' like me at the time. Played WCW Thunder much more and Smackdiwn until the disc died, but by the next one was out by then to be a fantastic replacement. I can smelllll the greatness cookin'!

I remember being so excited to get Anarchy Rulz. I didn’t have Revolution but I had WWF Raw Zone and when I realized it was the same game I was sooooo pissed. I wasted like 2 months of allowance and I hated War Zone for the controls and pausing to figure out the tough combos

I remember being excited with all the match types

4:16 Because we want to played as Booger, The Kid and William F 😄

I have fond memories of this game on Ps1 been on sale at a indie wrestling show that came to my hometown as Sabu was in the main event. (it was those weird PS1 not for sale ones with the plastic cases and b/w discs) come Sunday, they were all onsale down the local carboot. absolute grind of a game to get thru. looking back anarchy rulz was no better either. i think the only highlight was the unedited sweary rants some of the wrestlers had as their opening speeches, especially Rhino's lol

Wow, flashbacks to the grind! I was a huge ecw fan so certainly would have claimed to enjoy at the time. Only thing I remember truly enjoying was Dope - Debonaire from the Anarchy Rulez menu and having a CAW who had every available groin attack in his move set.

It's a shame that all three companies couldn't share the same developer and publisher. It would have been cool to have THQ /AKI release an ECW game along with their WCW and WWF games

I remember in the N64 version of Hardcore Revolution the mic still has the WWF logo on it.

They really just re-skinned their previous game, huh? If they'd at least tinkered with the engine, tried to innovate a little-that'd have been admirable, even if it sucked. What a bummer.

You're allowed to say that Attitude and War Zone sucked. It's okay. Because they do. lol

Brimstone match?! That definitely sounds like some garbage stipulation that WWE would make up now.😂

The first ECW game was just Warzone reskinned Edit: I typed this from personal experience before starting the video 😂. I was so upset when I popped that disc in

Id of loved to seen what rockstar woulda done with making a ECW game. Woulda been potentially thr best wrestling game bringing in extra fans to the company.

I know you probably want a break after finishing reliving the war. However a look back on ECW week by week from Shane Douglas throwing down the belt till closure would be interesting. As I think there is a big discrepancy on how it is remembered and how it actually was.

Had the Dreamcast version of what I think was the first game. Got Fire Pro D like 6 months later and never thought of it again. I might actually still have the disc somewhere.

I went to the NYC ECW signing at Gamestop or Electrics Boutique for the first game and met RVD and Dreamer. Have pics on my IG of it and some pics of them arriving This game was definitely a major disappointment but it was cause i was a huge ECW fan that i let it slide for a little

As a Raven fan I was sooo annoyed that it had a automatic pin after the Evenflow DDT. In any tag match it was almost guaranteed to have the pin interrupted

That Acclaim and ECW partnership just shows how desperate both companies were at that time before they were shutting down.

ECW would of benefited greatly having Yukes do a game for them. The fast paced arcade style would have suited them very well.