So, the other day, I got hit with a wave of nostalgia for the old N64 wrestling games. Specifically, WCW vs. nWo: World Tour popped into my head. I couldn’t quite remember everyone who was actually in that game. It’s been ages, right? My memory’s a bit fuzzy on the exact lineup.
I decided I needed to refresh my memory. Didn’t have my N64 handy, but I remembered the feel of that character select screen. The way it was split up. So, I started trying to piece it together from what I could recall, just sitting there thinking back.
Figuring Out Who Was Who
First thing that came back was the clear divide. You had the WCW guys on one side, and the nWo guys on the other. That was the whole point, the big conflict!
I started listing them out in my head, the obvious ones first:
- WCW: Hogan (before he turned, though maybe he was nWo here? Ah, wait, World Tour had Hollywood Hogan in nWo), Sting (crow Sting!), Lex Luger, The Giant, Ric Flair, Diamond Dallas Page… guys like Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero were definitely there too, the cruiserweights were awesome in that engine. Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner (though Scott turned nWo later, was he WCW here? Pretty sure he started WCW in this one).
- nWo: Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Syxx (X-Pac), Buff Bagwell… The Giant was also nWo for a bit, maybe he was duplicated or just nWo? Memory is tricky. Macho Man Randy Savage, definitely nWo by then.
Then I remembered there were those other factions, the kinda weird ones because the game was originally a Japanese release, right? They had wrestlers that weren’t strictly WCW or nWo.
The ‘Other’ Guys
Yeah, there were definitely fictional promotions or stand-ins for Japanese wrestlers. I think they called them DOA (Dead or Alive Wrestling?) and the Independent Union or something similar. This is where it got really hazy for me. I could picture some of the character models, but not the names they used in the US version.
Trying to recall them was tough. There were guys that were clearly based on Japanese legends, like Nagata, Chono, Muta (as the Great Muta maybe?), Tenzan… but they often had slightly different names in the game. That part really required me to actually look it up later to be sure, but initially, I just remembered a bunch of faces that weren’t the main WCW/nWo crew.
It was also a bit weird how some guys were represented. Like, Hogan was only Hollywood Hogan in the nWo, no WCW Hulk Hogan. Sting was the Crow version. It really captured that specific point in time during the Monday Night Wars.
Going through this mental exercise, just trying to rebuild the roster from memory, was pretty fun. It brought back the feel of playing the game, picking your guy, and getting ready for a match. The roster wasn’t massive by today’s standards, but man, it felt huge and important back then, especially with the WCW vs. nWo dynamic fully playable.
