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HEY!!!! How'd you like to Get Powerbombed? (02/17/03) --
Summers in Leonard are always a very good time. This is a time when the Leonardites see each other on a daily basis, which didn’t always happen in high school due to the age difference, and certainly doesn’t happen today. Many exciting pastimes, or at least worthwhile pastimes emerge during this time, although their nature seems to vary from year-to-year. I’ll highlight some of these as time goes on, but today I’m going to hit on just one specific thing.

Outdoor activity usually is the big thing in the summertime. We are finally released from our snow-encrusted capsules and free to partake in homerun derbies, basketball, or all-day golfing at the local golf course. But as any true American youth knows, one simply cannot give up his videogames during this time either.

The year was 1998. The hottest thing on cable television, literally, was professionally wrestling. With WCW and the WWF occupying the two highest-rated slots for TV at the time, pro wrestling was all the rage. And naturally, we got great enjoyment watching it (to be fair, we still do.) But what we enjoyed nearly as much was a little title known as WCW Nitro released by THQ for the original Sony Playstation.


Das Wunderkind in vintage losing form.
You might know THQ from their stellar Smackdown! series of wrestling video games on the Playstation 2. Well, back in 1998, they were still taking remedial programming courses and trying to learn exactly what it would take to make a good wrestling game. Sadly, it wasn’t until many years after Nitro that they finally learned how to do this.

Looking back, this game is pretty terrible. First of all, the wrestlers don’t walk, they shuffle. Instead of walking to your opponent, you shuffle over to make sure you don't trip or something. The moves, too, were very poorly thought out. Instead of a grapple system that we are all used to, you had to memorize and execute a series of button pushes to do a move. Powerbomb was "box, x" (That’s right, box. The rest of the world calls it “square” but if you play Playstation in Leonard, you damn well better call it “box.”) This was an extremely inefficient way to wrestle. Other shortcomings included the lack of character entrances, a laughably weak tournament system, and a questionable roster of grapplers.

But you know what? We played this game to death and loved every second of it.

Sure, once WWF War Zone came out we realized the mediocrity we had been playing with, but we were oblivious up to that point. Who couldn’t love the audible “WOO!” that Flair would let out when he would do his taunt in the ring? For as slow as the wrestlers plodded along, they were still chess matches between all of us, as we became ridiculously adept at playing it. I complained about the menial task of punching in the button sequence for moves, but I can guarantee out of pure nostalgia that none us will forever forget that "down, box, x, box" executes Sting’s deadly Scorpion Deathlock.

And speaking of Sting, the rant (always pronounced “raunt” when dealing with this game. I have no idea why) videos for the characters were downright hysterical. From Flair's classic, “..walk that aisle, style, and profile! WOOOOO!” to Booker T’s, “This is Booker T! From Harlem Heat! Hardcore O.T. Brotha, from 110th Street!” to Sting’s legendary, “You really think you’re ready for the Stinger?” speech, we still remember far too many words from those diatribes and are always good for a laugh when busted out at the right time.


Yo, Chico. You pick Scott Hall? Big trouble for you.
Yes, we played this game to death. We spent so much time winning tournaments and unlocking worthless characters like the snowman and the programmers that it makes my head spin. But to see sights like the door jammed on the toilet in the winners’ video (Again, don’t ask if you haven’t played it) and Superfan doing a frogsplash, well, it was all worth it.

The one-on-one contests will always be fondly remembered, for their “make sure you get to your finisher first” nature and the way you had to strategically use your surprise attack at the right time (If for no other reason than to hear Bobby Heenan desperately yell, “IT’S A SURPRISE ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!” to the delight of everybody.) Of course the frame rate was horrible when four men were in the ring, but we overlooked it because it was too much fun.

Yes, WCW Nitro was a terrible game that by our mere influence alone, we made great. WCW Thunder came along and was essentially the same game, although we didn’t play it nearly as much as its predecessor (Although it should be noted that I am still undefeated all-time in man vs. man contests in Thunder.) Then the cool WWF/E games came along and Nitro faded into obscurity. But it still doesn’t tarnish its legacy as a great gaming experience or as a title that has Alex Wright ranting in both English and German. That alone had to be worth the price of the game.

The Leonardite
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