Ringside Seats: The History of the Create-A-Wrestler Mode - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 10 January 2010 / 5,627 Views
When it looked like THQ and its WCW (That’s the former World Championship Wrestling) branded games were going to rule the virtual squared circle, all it took was one simple game mode to throw the whole wrestling game world on its head. A little thought of mode called “create-a-superstar” took the wrestling game genre for the ride of its life and made the genre what it is today. Before that time most wrestling games were just like any other fighting game. Take, for instance, the game WWF In Your House, a game that was basically Mortal Kombat with pro wrestlers.
While a few early pro wrestling games allowed you to do things like change colors, the first true game that lead to fully fledged “create-a-wrestlers” (or CAWs as I will now refer to them) was a Japanese game called Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3. From then on the Firepro wrestling series carried a similar method of editing characters, but this proto-CAW system did have a few setbacks. These games allowed you to store a number of wrestlers into the system memory all created from parts of existing wrestlers. Later on the series allowed you to do things like create custom ring graphics and entire federations, but these were just the baby steps.
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The forefathers of the CAW mode
For an example of what the later Fire Pro Wrestling games looked like check out our review of the latest, and unfortunately last game in the series:
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns Review for PS2 on VGChartz.com
Another series that helped move the CAW movement along was the aforementioned THQ WCW games. WCW vs. NWO World Tour allowed you to change the appearance of the main roster wrestlers and even change names. This was because the roster had a few wrestlers such as The Great Muta hidden within them under false names and color schemes. All it took was a bit of creative editing and you had a game with a bunch of unlicensed wrestlers from other federations. This was also prevalent in their previous PS1 game WCW vs. the World, except you could not change the falsely name characters. This copyright skirting became a huge selling point of the Fire Pro Wrestling games, as many of the 16 and 32 bit incarnations did the exact same thing.
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The Innovators
The first true CAW mode came from one of the last truly good games that Acclaim produced in WWF Warzone, and an updated Version with more options was in place for WWF Attitude, the sequel. This mode allowed the player to pick body parts on a step by step basis, change colors, and even theme music for a truly scratch built CAW. I remember being a huge fan of WCW during the “Monday Night Wars” a time from 1996 to 2001 where WWF and WCW went head to head. Because of this I made mostly WCW Caws on my WWF games, a trend I still carry making TNA CAWS on my WWE games. These caws never exactly looked quite right, but the idea was there, all that needed to happen was a system with a better processor to come around, which we will get to later.
These CAW modes got rave reviews from pretty much everyone in the gaming media, here is but a taste of what folks had to say:
CNN article about upcoming games:
“In addition to the basic career and versus modes, there are 14 other single player modes to choose from. Multiplayer mode adds another six gameplay options. If that's not enough, the create-a-player mode has been changed so now you can even change the wrestler's eyes and facial expressions. And yes, there are tons of tattoos to choose from as well.”
IGN review on WWF attitude:
“No one does it better than Acclaim when it comes to Create a Player modes. This year's model is so much more meaty than Warzone's, it's stunning. There are five types of bodies to choose from, and changes in eyes, head shape, mouths, noses, hair types, mid riff areas, legs, and clothes on every part of the body. Now players can actually write anything they want on their sleeves, legs, backs, and chests of their new wrestlers. Another new feature is the Edit Move Set. Gamers can create a player and then create a set of moves or mix a set of moves from two different wrestlers. This adds to the already huge Create A Player mode that no other game can touch.”
Gamespot on WWF Attitude:
“But wait! There's more! The create-a-wrestler mode is back in a big way, with a lot more options than last year's model. My personal favorite is the ability to put text on various parts of your grappler's body, enabling you to fill his shirt full of all sorts of rude words that even Steve Austin wouldn't have the guts to utter on Pay-Per-View. Call it a guilty pleasure, I guess. Aside from the curse fest, you can also select your wrestler's move set, right down to the taunts.”
For an example of these early CAWS, here is someone making a CAW of Vader, former WWF and WCW wrestler of the 1990’s in the game WWF Attitude.
After the Success of these games, all wrestling games were seen to need some sort of CAW mode into order to be a hot ticket item. This unfortunately has lead to a few games like WCW Mayhem. Mayhem had an incredibly vapid and sub-par CAW mode, which seemed like a total afterthought. Another game WCW/NWO Thunder decided to add something like 60 staff members (such as referees), monsters, and aliens as hidden characters to flesh out the roster. This made the game look somewhat ridiculous as most people wanted a simple CAW mode rather than characters like a mummy or frankenstein.
Acclaim would perfect its CAW creation tools in its last two wrestling games - ECW Hardcore Revolution and ECW Anarchy Rulz. These two ECW games had good ideas, but were lost to many fans due to the name recognition of ECW being lower than that of the other two big companies. Combine that with the now dated gameplay, and you can see why they did less than stellar. Even the CAW modes were dated, as they seemed to be the same ones as the WWF games, only with more stuff. These older games still have a dedicated following despite being over a decade old, and hackers add things to the game all the time.
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Quite possibly the best wrestling games ever
Once the first baby steps for this mode were out of the way all it took were the fine folks over at THQ to perfect the system even more. More customization was added to the genre with games like WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and its sequel WWF No Mercy. All of the sudden you could shape body parts, change height and weight of characters, and store multiple costume choices under one profile. This added detail made it to where folks could pretty much make a character look almost exactly like a real-to-life wrestler and not a semi-realistic stunt double. I found another example of some good CAWs on Youtube:
The next big stumbling block for wrestling games to overcome in regards to CAWs existed in the form of the elaborate entrances that any big-time pro wrestler has. In some games these entrances were skimped on, like in WWF No Mercy, Or The first WWF Smackdown game, which took a huge step back in terms of CAW quality. Even in the second Smackdown game WWF Smackdown: Know your role, the CAWs were shown jumping around in front of their entrance video much like in a green screened effect, rather than legitimately having an entrance.
It was not until the first Playstation 2 game in the series - Just Bring It, that the series featured authentic, complete ring entrances. In the later Smackdown games this was elaborated on to include customizable lighting, taunts, finishing moves, and now entrance videos and music with the advent of the hard drive on consoles.
What could possibly happen to make the experience better, and what do I feel the next step is? I for one would love to play a game where the name could be picked up by some sort of recognition software. This would require far too much work by the voice actors involved, but I would love to hear the announcers say my characters name rather than a generic word picked from a list. Another innovation that could really make the genre pretty awesome would be a way to allow custom textures and scans. I know that this is available to people that hack the newer Smackdown games, but a legitimate way to get an exact shirt or face would be awesome. Granted you would suddenly see a ton of wrestlers with testicles for faces, but thats another argument.
As you can see the invention of the Create a wrestler mode, and its evolution has really made wrestling games the style that they are today. Long gone are the days of the arcade fighter wrestling games, and the reign of the wrestling simulator is upon us. Love it or hate it, fans can’t get enough of the features found in any CAW mode and it has been popular enough to spring up CAW federations online, and tons of message boards. So the real question is: what kind of updates do you think created wrestlers should be elaborated upon in the future?
Ringside Seats is a regular editorial piece on VGC that talks about pro wrestling games. As the resident wrestling fan on staff, I always try to keep folks up to date with any news on wrestling related videogames. What I hope to do with Ringside Seats is keep folks up to date in an editorial manner and hopefully entertain at the same time.
If you missed the last edition, check it out!
Ringside Seats: A Look At Pro Wrestling Gaming
Ringside Seats: A Look At Pro Wrestling Gaming - THQ / WWE Deal
Now I’d like to leave you with a terrible moment in pro wrestling history:
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LOL Attitude was somehow worse than War Zone in the gameplay department.
I really miss WWF No Mercy, I use to play it all day, everyday when I was in high school. Those were the good ol' days.
CAW are fun to play with. Though I wish the modern WWE based wrestling games would take a page out of Fire Pro Wrestling and get the wrestling simulator as solid as the PS2 version. Though I haven't played much WWE/WCW Wrestling since playing FirePro. I would sooo love the Thehamtrics of WWE and the the simulation of Fire Pro. Heaven.
I have a couple of these games but I've tired myself out on wrestling. The show, Creating yourself and the same characters every year gets tiring. Or should I say trying to create. I am bad at creating characters from memory so i'd search for pics stick next to the tv lol or get guides of other peoples CAW's and try them out until I found one I liked.
Your two requested features is exactly what i've been waiting for, for the longest. Word recognition software to hear the name I give my character and Face picture scanning for the game to make a close render. Also character animations need to be a little more fluid. Clothing still hugs the body and hair and belts still clip.
I remember watching WCW and the NWO. Good times until shane appeared on the show and you knew it was over.
Smackdown 2 was great and really has an excellent roster. It's been so many years so I can't recall exactly which I liked best but I will say that part of what got me down on the games were the constantly yearly unnecessary control scheme changes when after a few games they already had it perfected. When they changed the types of moves I can and the number of slots I could use when creating a move set it just annoyed me.
Anyway good article. Needed more smackdown love but still good. I've never played No Mercy though.
When i get wrestling game i create myself. I get a photorealistic result, you dont need a camera to scan you, you just need some skill. I can prove it with pictures
no mercy is still my favourite wrestling game to this date
Thanks for that walk down memory lane. It's amazing how far we've come. I've downloaded some characters that other people have made in WWE SvR 2010. Some people can make 100% flawless versions of TNA, WCW, and old WWE wrestlers. I even downloaded Spongebob!
Natal-enhanced wrestling game sil vous plait! Let you scan in a character that looks exctly like you, then you can buff him up however you want XD
