On October 26, 1998, one of the greatest professional wrestling video games ever made was released on the beloved Nintendo 64. Of course, I’m talking about WCW/nWo Revenge—a game that was not only one of the best of its genre but perfectly encapsulated the vibes of the 90s wrestling boom period.
Ask anyone alive in the late 90s, and they’ll tell you that the Monday Night Wars produced some of the best TV moments of the decade. And while the tides were certainly turning in favor of the WWF in 1998, WCW still had a lot of momentum—and a crazy loaded roster to prove it.
Top stars like Hollywood Hogan, Goldberg, and Kevin Nash are here, and even featured on the game’s cover. But it’s the rest of the roster—names like Raven (also on the cover), Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, DDP, Eddy Guerrero, Rey Mysterio Jr., and Sting—that made this game so incredible at the time.
If you had a few buddies at your house, you could spend hours playing some wild matchups with stars that never really faced off on TV. And when that got old, you could run back Hogan versus Sting, and do it correctly, with Sting clearly standing tall at the end.
We all had that one friend who always wanted to play as someone weird, like Glacier, which made gaming sessions all the more fun. I mean, what more could you want from a wrestling video game? Revenge really had everything.
Remembering WCW/nWo Revenge 26 Years Later
While a loaded roster made WCW/nWo Revenge a blast to play in 1998—and to look back on in 2025—the real star of the show was the engine that the game was built on.
Developer AKI first developed the engine for the 1997 title WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, a certified classic in its own right. But with Revenge, they further built on what they already had, adding more features to help create a more immersive experience.
We had, for the time, impressive superstar entrances, real-life arenas, and even pyro, all in the game. When you mix up the gameplay, the roster, and the features, it’s no surprise that Revenge was the highest-selling wrestling game on the N64.
In fact, it was the third-highest-selling Nintendo third-party game ever. People couldn’t get enough of pro wrestling in 1998, and Revenge gave people their fix whenever it wasn’t a Monday night.
Sadly, Revenge was also the end of WCW and AKI’s relationship. AKI would soon move over to WWF—a dead giveaway as to who was winning the war at that time—and would go on to create two more classics, WWF WrestleMania 2000 and WWF No Mercy.
Both of the WWF’s AKI titles are widely considered the greatest wrestling games ever made, regardless of console. In fact, AEW’s first foray into the gaming space, Fight Forever, was even intended to be a spiritual successor to the AKI wrestling games on the 64.
Whether or not they hit the mark is a story for another day…
Let’s be honest, in 2025, WCW/nWo Revenge is blocky to look at and clunky to play. Despite that, however, it’s a beautiful piece of nostalgia to look back on, if only to remember how good wrestling fans had it in 1998.
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