WCW Backstage Assault is the Worst WCW Video Game

This is one of those games for which I would like the publisher to apologize. I can’t fault the developers because they were just doing their jobs. No one wants to make a bad game. WCW Backstage Assault would’ve been one of the many regrettable weekend rentals if I had known the game existed in 2000.

I would love to know what the creative process for WCW Backstage Assault was like. Was this supposed to be a different game? Why is there no ring? Was the development rushed? What happened to this game?

Inland Productions is gone, and now we have Kodiak Interactive as the development team. EA published the game, and it was released a few months before WCW was shut down. I don’t remember seeing any advertisements for the game.

TLDR: This is a bad game. WCW Backstage Assault doesn’t have much going for it and is more of a morbid curiosity than anything else.

Gameplay

The gameplay is odd, but I should’ve expected this, given the title. You fight backstage, everything is a hardcore match, and the game modes are limited. This isn’t something I would’ve wanted to play back when I was a kid.

There is no ring in this game. Every match is one-on-one and takes place in the backstage area. All of the matches are also hardcore matches. There is no option to have a regular match in a wrestling ring. I have so many questions about this.

I was wrong. There is a two-player mode in the exhibition section. I’m guessing that after playing this with a friend, they won’t want to be friends with you anymore. That is just a theory, as I don’t want to risk losing a friend over this game.

There are three game modes. It’s really disappointing.

• Exhibition
• Hardcore Challenge
• Hardcore Gauntlet

You can win a match by pinfall, submission, first blood, or knockout. Because these matches are all hardcore rules, there is no countout or disqualification. I found it easier to win by knockout or pinfall.

Surprisingly, the controls aren’t terrible. They aren’t great, but I was able to get a hang of the controls after a short time. There are a bunch of moves, and each wrestler has a different move set. The controls are the same, but the moves will be different. On the other hand, it is easy to pull off a finisher in this game, much like in Smackdown.

The weird part of the finishers is when you can do them. It felt like they would come out randomly, and it didn’t matter what the opponent’s condition was. It was very strange.

Like WCW Mayhem, Backstage Assault has a momentum meter. I don’t like this, and I would rather have a life bar. Some other notifications pop up about where the momentum meter is. The game tries to tell you when to go for a knockout or when you have the momentum. It’s crap, and I hate it.

There are a lot of wrestlers, moves, and locations to unlock in the game. To do this, you have to play through the two hardcore modes. Is it worth it? Probably not. To start, the game has a weak roster, and it seems like you need to go through the sages to unlock your favorite wrestler.

This is a good time to mention the abysmal character select screen. While this seems like a good idea to get the player to try the other game modes, I would’ve liked to see who I can wrestle as! I do not know why I couldn’t see a screen like the ones in every other wrestling game I’ve played.

I will say that this game does reflect the quality of what WCW was putting out at this time. There are some good things, but they get overshadowed by all the awful ideas. There has to be more of a story to this game and why it was made the way it was.

Visuals

The graphics are hit-and-miss. Like Thunder, I like the intros for the wrestlers. The developers used parts of the wrestlers and factions intros. After that, things go downhill.

Why does everyone look like that? They did make the character models look different for the wrestlers, so everyone looks a little different, but this is an ugly-looking wrestling game. Some PS1 games have dated graphics, and the games from the mid-1990s don’t look good.

While those games have the excuse of being early 3D games, those games from the early 2000s don’t have that excuse. I look at Backstage Assault, and I think it looks horrid. I know it is a PS1 game, and the stages look pretty good; unfortunately, the character models don’t look or move well.

The cameral is awful at times. Most of the time, it stays in a side view, similar to a fighting game. However, it sometimes freaks out for no reason and changes your perspective. I wish it had a better camera, but I don’t think that would change things much.

I like some things about the graphics. The character models and animations look ridiculous at times, and some character models are bizarre-looking. I do like the use of TV footage and how the stages look.

4/10. This is one of the worst things I’ve played.

Pros

• Big Roster
• It’s Playable
• The Stages look nice.
• Destructible environments

Cons

• Few Game Modes
• Only Hardcore Matches
• Too many things to unlock

Conclusion

It is surprising to see how the quality of WCW video games plummeted as the 1990s went on. I remember liking the NES, SNES, and some of the early PS1 games, but the games released from 1998 to 2000 have been mostly terrible. At the time of this writing, I haven’t played the N64 games yet.

This closes out the WCW games on the PS1. I have three games left before I can rank the wrestling games on the PS1, and I feel like I was way too harsh on The Simpsons Wrestling. These WCW games have been pretty awful.

There are so many little things in Backstage Assault that annoy me. Simple things that should have been standard in a game like this don’t exist or need to be unlocked, which adds a lot of frustration to the game.

I like the idea of having these backstage areas in the game, but I don’t think they should’ve been the whole game. If you told me this was supposed to be a different game, I would’ve believed you. They took a chance on this game, and it didn’t work out.