WCW Nitro and WCW nWo Thunder

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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WCW Nitro and WCW nWo Thunder
Genre(s): Wrestling Platform(s): PlayStation Nintendo 64 Release Date: 1997-1998 Developer(s): Inland Productions Publisher(s): THQ

WCW Nitro and WCW nWo Thunder are professional wrestling games for the Sony PlayStation published by THQ and developed by Inland Productions released in late 1997 and late 1998 respectively, with PC and Nintendo 64 versions of WCW Nitro with Thunder roster released at the same time as Thunder. The games were the last WCW games by THQ before their shift towards the WWF/WWE to make WWF/WWE games from there until their bankruptcy in 2013 and their handover to Take-Two Interactive, while the rights to WCW were handed over to Electronic Arts with WCW Mayhem.

Why They Both Suck

1. Awful controls involving moves being performed via button combinations rather than directions and a button as most wrestling games, which are delayed and often do not work properly.
2. Mediocre graphics.
3. Camera is fixed and spins constantly causing motion sickness.
4. Lackluster commentary consisting only of lines that include of what type of move being peformed, on what condition the current wrestlers are in and who wins the match.
5. Only has 1-on-1 and Tag Team match types, plus lackluster Cage and Battle Royal matches seen in Thunder.
6. The Test of Strength ability seen in Thunder is cheap and redundant, where the player puts in the combination and has to repeatedly mash buttons to drain his/her opponent's energy while regaining his/her own which would allow the player to hit his/her opponent once and then pin him/her or perform a submission-based finishing move on him/her (only if his/her selected wrestler he/she is playing as has one), thus completely taking the challenge out of the game.
7. Playing the Battle Royal can cause severe framerate issues.
8. Laughable character animations and sounds.
9. Disappointing unlockables involving the player to beat the Tournament or Title modes each time to unlock one new wrestler per playthrough.
10. The Nintendo 64 and PC versions of Nitro lack the wacky characters seen in both Nitro and Thunder.
11. The Nintendo 64 version of Nitro lacks the rants and FMVs, which are due to space and technical limitations.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The rants for each of the starting 16 (Nitro) or 32 (Thunder) top-tier wrestlers are cool and fun to watch.
2. The cheat codes can unlock many crazy things such as wacky characters and stages, big heads etc.
3. WCW nWo Thunder runs at 60 FPS, a rarity for the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

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