WWF Attitude Had The Worst Controls But The Best Features

Wrestling games involving the WWE (formerly the WWF) have been around since 1987, when MicroLeague Wrestling was released for the Commodore 64 and the Atari ST. In 1999 WWF Attitude was released as the sequel to WWF War Zone across all the major platforms of the time. However, that year proved to be a sour one for publisher Acclaim Entertainment as that would be the final WWF licensed game they would make. To rub a barbed-wire bat over Acclaim’s open wound, rival wrestling game publisher THQ took over the company’s license, and released Wrestlemania 2000 that same year.

So WWF Attitude has been lost to time, but it still contained some incredible features and ideas that helped shape the wrestling genre.

When entering a match in the game, Attitude immediately resembled its predecessor’s aesthetic. The fingers on the wrestlers’ hands weren’t individually separated and so when you threw a punch, it looks like they’re punching with their fingers (ouch) and not their fists. But its developer Acclaim Salt Lake West (formally known as Iguana Entertainment) also decided to carry the move set and controls of War Zone over to Attitude, which to this day was not a smart move. Particularly because it resembled something you would see in a fighting game like Mortal Kombat rather than a simpler layout in the style of THQ.

In THQ’s early wrestling games, if you wanted to do a more powerful grapple move like a powerbomb you would simply hold the grapple button down longer to perform a hard grapple, and just use the D-pad and A-Button to execute it. To do a basic hip toss in Attitude you had to press sequences (in this case left, left, kick). But if your opponent did a move in the meantime or followed a grapple your movement and button commands would come second – for example, grapple, right, punch. To deliver Stone Cold Steve Austin’s trademark finisher, the Stone Cold Stunner, you had to press up, down, up and hit the tie-up button.

So, like a casual player trying to perform a fatality in Mortal Kombat, you would constantly have to pause the game and open the move list – each wrestler’s trademark moves and finishers were different so that meant different button inputs. It became increasingly frustrating because you would try to do a certain type of suplex on an opponent, and mid-execution they would just punch or grapple you. Or they would recover from a stun as you hurriedly bashed in the button sequence to put them away with a finishing move – all because you couldn’t hit that second ‘up’ or press the kick button fast enough.

THQ’s games perfected the use of finishers because they were only one button press. In their SmackDown series you could stack about five of them, unleashing high levels of pain over and over again on your opponent to the point where you would literally beat them into a KO. It was immensely satisfying, and its simplicity meant that you stayed seamlessly in the flow of a match rather than leaving it to look stuff up.

While WWF Attitude’s controls were horrendous, its new features added some nice substance to the game.

WWF Attitude implemented full entrances before each match including pyrotechnics. So if you decided to play as Kane, you would hear his theme song and see the wall of flames that lined the stage during his entrance in the company’s famed Attitude Era. This era defined by its no-holds-barred style of sports entertainment and storylines, and that was well represented in the game. When you switched the audio to ‘Teen,’ it enabled the correct, more adult theme songs for some of the superstars. Actual superstar voices were used in the game too, and they would talk-trash to each other before the bell rang.

Attitude game had a decent-sized roster of superstars and introduced match modes like ‘I Quit’ and ‘First Blood’ – which could be activated via the in-game modifier – 4-way Elimination Matches listed as War matches, Battle Royales, and standard and elimination triple threat matches where three wrestlers would faceoff at once. It was really bloody too, and was the first WWF/WWE game to include weapons like televisions, ladders, guitar cases, briefcases, and more – all scattered around the ring during certain types of matches.

Not only would wrestlers bleed from their faces, but if they took massive damage, their blood would also appear on their forearms, chest, and back giving a sense of realism amidst its early generation graphics. While its controls were unevolved, WWF Attitude had attitude in spades.