Cliff Hanger

At the time those Acclaim Iguana games came out on PS1, I had just started watching wrestling in earnest, was playing a lot of mediocre fighting games in the campus arcade, and so they were great first wrestling games for me at the time. I had no fucking taste, of course, they're basically unplayable. But until I was able to get an N64 and play WM2K, they were what I thought I wanted: WCW Vs the World, which I came around on later, just felt so slow (I hated having to hold down the grapple button for seconds at a time) and didn't have any of the presentation flourishes I wanted. So I played probably hundreds of hours of Attitude, then got really into WM2K and Fire Pro (first thru a copy of X Premium obtained thru Nefarious Means, then a legit copy of G) and so when Hardcore Revolution came out i bought it and hated it. I am aware that the PS1 owners got by far the best versions of these; the N64 ones were missing most of the presentation stuff and the Dreamcast ones (which may have just been the ECW games) sucked because of the lack of enough buttons for the controls the games were meant to have. I have a lot fewer memories of WCW Nitro and Thunder, for whatever reason those absolutely did not work for me. I do remember cheating to unlock the deeper hidden characters; there was a disco-themed arena where if you hit the taunt button, both wrestlers would freeze and do the YMCA. So you could throw somebody out of the ring and just taunt a few times in a row and guarantee a count out win.

I'm not quite sure what I expected for X-Men '97, but the first two eps are pretty damn good.

Not sure if it's on sale or not, but Stardew just got its first patch in years so it's got people coming back after being away for a long time.

Kick ass. Also, hey, daily wrestling podcast that I didn't know about and isn't run by "wrestling journalists"

So, 2 things. 1) thank God for the "END RIVALRY" button in Universe mode. In 2k23 I was still doing an NXT match against Wes Lee every week even after beating Roman. 2) for the third year in a row, I've tried to start GM mode, gotten choice paralysis, and bailed during the draft. Is there a guide (preferably text, but I will hold my nose and watch a video) that will help me ease into it and maybe see why people love it?

I'm really hoping we get a Wolf Dogs v Axiom/Frazer rematch, because they had a really good TV match and they are going to burn the house down on the big stage. Last year's SAD was "where I came in" after a decade of not paying attention, and NXT has been my favorite WWE show since (in part because its stupid parts are 90s Wrestling Stupid and not Modern WWE Stupid), so I have high hopes. Trick v Melo should be emotionally satisfying, all the title matches should be good and fun, Perez as heel champ is gonna be delightful if they go there. I will be sad to see the inevitable dissolution of the Wolf Dogs, because those guys are MAGIC together. How the fuck did Corbin flop so hard on the touring roster when he's so good in Orlando?

Slowly working my way thru Triangle Superman, and while it has its ups and downs it feels like a perfect response to "Superman is boring because he's too kind" weirdos both within and without the Snyder Cult.

That was so incredibly stupid but it was an homage to one of the greatest boss fights ever (vs Kuze in Yakuza 0), so it gets a pass. Really, the whole Sotenbori Street Fight is so full of silly homages to the games as to be charmingly dumb and then you get Takeshita just absolutely fucking up Kenny by hitting him so hard with the bike that the big gear leaves bloody marks on his back.

Eddie is like the last guy left who can make me go full little-kid mark, angry when he loses no matter how good a match is even as I approach 50. That was a phenomenal match, Okada/Pac is going to be a phenomenal match. But the King better get his win back.

How the fuck was the tombstone->Blue Thunder not the finish for Takeshita/Romero? It would have been perfect, and having Romero kick out only to lose to something less impressive was silly. That's something you should either lose to or kick out of on the way to winning. There are at least 13 people furiously cranking the weasel over the close up of Statlander's back full of tacks, and I hope I never meet any of them.

They killed my man the King of Diamonds, but it was every bit as gorgeous as I expected. The main was fuckin fantastic too.

But for like 4 months she was doing the exact same backstage shit she is now, just working face in the ring. It felt like they wanted to turn her but kept not doing it until the V-day build. I just think that build should have been finished and the turn complete before Deadline, maybe even No Mercy.

That's a fair point about Cora. And I don't want to cast shade on Perez herself; if they had followed thru on this turn in Sept when they first teased it, it'd be fantastic, I just think they should have done it then instead of now.

Also, the closer we get to SAD, the more I think Roxanne should have either gone heel last summer right after the Blair feud, when they were teasing it but kept pulling back, or not at all. The months of having her pop somebody in the mouth over a falsely-perceived slight and then beat that person while working babyface have made her ACTUAL heel turn mean a lot less. It feels like the epitome of "we need her to have a heel run before she goes to a touring roster" but done far too late. Kind of dig the heel remix of her song, though.

I really hope Axiom and Frazer end up as the Wolf Dogs' SAD opponents, partly because I got back into wrestling games before wrestling and Axiom was part of the bridge, partly because no other opponent currently on the table can guarantee a great match, but those two can.

I picked Infinite Wealth back up today despite not finishing the WWE2K24 story modes yet. God damn, the RGG crew are so good at manipulating players' emotions. Not every game should be like this; I do not want to think about my knight's physical and mental health when I play Joust. But I'm glad that if this actually is Kiryu's last ride they're gonna put his self-sacrifice and its ffailings front-and-center.

When he's on, Booker is fucking fantastic. When he's off, silence would be better. Tonight was entirely the latter. (Roxy trying to break Lyra's arm a couple weeks back was the best of both worlds--I hate his "shucky ducky quack quack" shit, but when he said it in that incredibly solemn voice it was perfect)

What was with that City of Heroes-ass bodysuit Lash was wearing? She normally has the least weird outfit among Meta-Four but tonight was an exception

Man, Backstage Brawl. (Shudder) Mayhem wasn't what I'd call a good game but it felt like it could have been one if the studio had taken time to study other games in the genre and knuckled down. And so of course they gave us...that. Women's 2k24 Rise story got a good deal more serious for a while, then very silly again when I was given a branch and chose to "go Hollywood." I will say that it's still probably better booking than anything done with the NXT women's title picture since like two weeks after Lyra beat Becky.

I think it's because they're paying him enough to be available for these things that they want to get as much as they can for it

Breaks my heart that even with the recent agreements DYRL getting a 40th anniversary run in the US remains a legal impossibility

I presume it's all Doombots just like the teachers at Latveria's superhero school, and they're locked out of the World Cup which Doom sees as a deliberate insult directed at him.

When I started watching in 97, the Headbangers were working indies every other week. I'm not sure exactly when the E stopped letting people work them, but I think this is good, and I hope it becomes a norm again.

The Llamasoft Gold Master Collection isn't as cool as the Karateka one, but it's still fascinating. I wasn't really aware of Minter til Tempest 2000 and the DOS version of Llamatron 2112, so I'm learning a LOT. I hope DE gets to keep making these for the rest of my life because I'm gonna buy every single one.

I think from here on out, I'm just gonna buy anything Digital Eclipse produces. They put out the first commercial package of emulated games nearly 30 years ago, and even for stuff like the new Llamasoft pack where I have a pre-existing affection for exactly one game that I already had in the Atari 50 collection, I know I'm gonna get my money's worth when I buy their shit.