WCW Mayhem

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• 1-4 Players
• Multi Tap Adaptable
• Vibration Function
• Over 50 WCW Superstars
• 12 Backstage Areas

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002R28O
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: September 21, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,030 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

The companies in the business of making wrestling games recently played a high-stakes game of musical chairs. Longtime WCW collaborator THQ managed to get hold of the WWF license, leaving Acclaim to sit around and talk about its secret plans for a new wrestling game. Electronic Arts stepped in and grabbed the WCW license. The company is taking the same approach to the WCW license as it has taken with most of its sports titles. The development team aimed to be as faithful to the source material as it could. The resulting game, WCW Mayhem, is a great first effort, but it still feels like a first-year title.

Mayhem contains loads of different rings, all based on WCW television and pay-per-view events, ranging from your basic Monday Nitro set all the way up to Souled Out and Bash at the Beach. EA has provided an entire slew of WCW wrestlers to fight in these rings. Most of the popular wrestlers are featured, including Kevin Nash, Sting, and Goldberg. The game also features a slew of midcard wrestlers, like La Parka, Rey Mysterio Jr., and Disco Inferno. As in most other wrestling games, the roster isn't entirely accurate (Chris Jericho and Raven are still in the game, Hogan appears in his old NWO gear, etc.) but this doesn't really get in the way of the game at all.

The main emphasis of the game is the ability it gives you to get out of the ring and fight your way to the backstage area, which is filled with chairs, tables, tasers, and other objects that you can use to bash your opponent's skull in. As a result, the game defaults to no-count out, pin-anywhere matches.

WCW Mayhem's gameplay is much more arcade-like than most of the wrestling games that came before it. There's still plenty of strategy involved, but it's more of the "step out of the way of that drop kick" variety than of the "what move should I do next" type. Reversals are easy to perform, but very tough to master. If your opponent hits a button to execute a move, and you hit the same button shortly after, you'll reverse his attack. But reversals aside, the game really boils down to who can do a move first. There aren't any fancy fighting-game moves here, either. Each of the four main buttons is capable of three moves, depending on which direction you're pressing on the controller at the time.

The arcade-style gameplay is a nice change of pace from the other games on the market, but it's not without its flaws. Rather than focus too greatly on health, the game relies on a momentum meter that tells you how well you're doing at any point in the match. The meter moves back and forth, and it will move toward your side when you execute impressive moves or find the time to taunt. If all the wrestlers in the match are fairly inactive, the meter will center. The more momentum you get, the harder it will be for your opponent to stop you. When your momentum meter is full, you can perform your finishing move. This allows for some good back-and-forth swings, but in actual use, it really just makes coming back from a deficit much tougher. Also, the emphasis on momentum rather than health allows for some pretty unrealistic gameplay. For instance, I can't imagine that Stevie Ray would be able to kick out of a pin after receiving eight consecutive Diamond Cutters. Once you and your friends have all gotten good at dodging attacks, it becomes very hard to pull off a string of moves, and the result is a stalemate match that takes forever and ends on a lucky pin after a weak move.

The computer player doesn't fall prey to that problem, though, because it's got problems all its own: It lacks the ability to put together a decent offense. The computer will get off a few kicks and punches from time to time, and it may even reverse a move or two if you've got it set to the hardest difficulty setting. There's no one move you have to do - any move or hold will work. All you need to do is get off a few quick attacks at the beginning of the match. Then, after you've worn the enemy wrestler down a bit, just start grappling and pulling off moves at will. It's possible to hit a finisher within the first 30 seconds of the match, though you won't be able to complete a pin until much later. The difficulty setting has less to do with how aggressive the computer plays and more to do with how long it takes to damage the other wrestler enough to successfully pin him. The PlayStation version has slightly more aggressive AI than the N64 version, but it still can't put up a decent fight. The computer is also very shy about getting out of the ring. If the computer player doesn't think it's close enough to attack you once you're both outside the ring, it will simply climb back into the ring and taunt a few times. Since one of the main points of the game is getting out of the ring and wrestling in the backstage area, this is extremely annoying.

The create-a-wrestler feature is nice, but it doesn't really touch WWF Attitude in terms of depth and choice. The textures provided are a bit more realistic than some of Attitude's clothing, so most of the wrestlers you create will look as though they actually belong in a ring. There's even a set of clothes that look a bit like Kane's. --Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Product Description

Awesome wrestling game for Playstation One. Rated "T".

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth playing five years later, May 23, 2004

By 

Kp Roegele "The Baron" (Somewhere) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: WCW Mayhem (Video Game)

WCW Mayhem is a relatively old game (the 'WCW' should give that away) it was initially released in 1999. Yet it still has enough entertainment value to be worth a play even today.

1. Sound. The best sound effects I've ever heard on a wrestling game. I've played many titles in this genre, including Wrestlemania XIX and Legends of Wrestling II, and Mayhem is superior to both. The crowds roars and jeers, the thuds and slams, go together to make a fantastic atmosphere. Even better is the two man commentary, and it's like you're watching it on TV.

2. The wrestlers. Coming from the late 90's WCW era, this has got some of the biggest superstars in wrestlin history gruped together. Hollywood Hogan (as he was then), Macho Man Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Sting, Bret Hart, Lex Luger, Goldberg, Curt Henning, Scott Steiner, Rick Steiner.....it's a great line-up. I'd say it's the best line-up in any wrestling game until this years Showdown: Legends of Wrestling. There's 50 wrestlers all together.

3. The wrestling itself. Don't expect super-fast gameplay. Don't even expect the pace of the latest wrestling games. Expect the methodical, paced action of late 80's wrestling. It's spot-on. I haven't seen such an accurate representation of the speed of wrestling in any other game.

4. It's for PS1, so it's incredibly cheap now. I picked up a secondhand copy from this very site for a mere £1.99. Two pounds, and to think it used to cost about £34.99 originally. As far as value for money goes, it's a five star purchase.

Now the negatives. The graphics are weird and not especially attractive - the crowd is just a flat block of coloured blobs. The weak collision detection means your punches will often miss at point blank range. There's no season mode, you just fight for titles and defend them. The Create A Wrestler mode is so basic you won't be able to make any of your favourite wrestlers not in the game already. You can, however, make a knight in armour...

To sum up, WCW Mayhem is not the greatest wrestling game on the market. No matter what console you have, there is atleast two better games avaliable. For the PSX/PS1, WWF Smackdown and Smackdown 2: Just Bring It. For the PS2, four Smackdown games, and three Legends of Wrestling games. For the XBox, WWE Raw & Raw 2, and three Legends of Wrestling games. And for the GameCube, Wrestlemania X8 and XIX, and two Legends of Wrestling games.

Nevertheless, I'm still playing Mayhem today and I have both Wrestlmania XIX and Legends of Wrestling II on my shelf. The commentary, the wrestlers avaliable and the accurate pace of real wrestling make this unique and enjoyable. Add to that the fact that it's ridiculously cheap (even if you only played it for one night, you'd still get value for money), and you're looking at a worthwile purchase.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Awkward controls make for limited mayhem, September 21, 2003

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: WCW Mayhem (Video Game)

WCW Mayhem seems like a pretty fun game at first. You have over 50 WCW wrestlers at your disposal, the ability to take the fight backstage to one of twelve different areas, ring entrances for each wrestler, a choice of six different types of match, a smattering of weapons lying about such as bats, chairs, and - my favorite - tasers, the ability to wrestle (in all of the historical rings from important WCW events) in exhibition and pay per view matches as well as go in quest of titles leading up to the coveted heavyweight championship belt, and the option to create your own wrestler. Another important aspect of the game is the color commentary provided by Tony Schiavone and Bobby the Brain Heenan. It doesn't take long for some of these plusses to start feeling like minuses, however.

I am not a big fan of the new manner of controlling your wrestler built into this game; it is much less intuitive than older WCW-based wrestling games, and I often find myself able to come up with only a very limited number of moves; still worse, I constantly find myself repeating moves I had no intention of repeating. The announcers do at least have fun with this, talking about move repetition in disparaging terms as it is going on. Their overall banter, though, while quite funny at times becomes repetitive itself after a short while. Even the overexcited shouts of Schiavone declaring a victory in the ring grow stale, as do his constant calls for someone to stop the bloodbath and call for help. I never get tired of the Brain, though; he is always hilarious.

I don't think the graphics here are much of an improvement over older games, either. There's really not a lot of difference in audio and visual between WCW Mayhem and earlier WCW games for the Playstation. You can fight backstage now, which is cool, but the graphics are largely unimproved and the gameplay is awkward and sometimes annoying. I would much rather play the older WCW/NOW Thunder than I would WCW Mayhem, when it comes right down to it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Electronic Arts takes the series in the right direction, March 7, 2002

By 

Shaun O'Donnell "Shaun O'Donnell" (Fort Worth, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: WCW Mayhem (Video Game)

The second to last WCW game proved that it had what it took to compete with the WWF (if only the TV show did as well). Teh controls are very fluent, the matches (although needed variety) are fun. This also holds a huge amount of wrestlers, and an ok create a wrestler. The best part is that you can actually for the first time (in the WCW games) listen to the theme music before you made your guy (given up in WWF Smackdown) and they last longer than 5 seconds.

The only real problem here is the create a wrestler, it's preety shallow and the move list is that of where you must pick another guys moves (I generally used either Sting, Goldberg, Nash, or Chris Benoit) and stick with that.

I guess the real reason I love this game so much is the fact that it holds the best Theme Music to date. My favorite theme Music (even though I am not a WCW fan) is the four horsemen. That music is awsome.

Overall this gasme is worth checking into, just avoid Thunder and Backstage assault.