As I mentioned a few Wrestling Game Rundowns ago when I looked at EWR, I didn’t want to exclude its sequel series TEW when looking at my wrestling game history but I also didn’t want, at current count, eight reviews all being extremely similar to each other either. So I’ve compromised and will instead look at TEW 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2020 all at once right now as a “Special” edition of the Rundown. It obviously won’t be a deep dive into each game, but I will touch on improvements and memories / current thoughts of each iteration. So… let’s get started!
TEW 2004:
The last appearance of the EWR “Tweener” disposition…
You know I forgot the first game was actually called “Total Extreme Warfare” to follow on from Extreme Warfare Revenge, until it was changed to Total Extreme Wrestling in order to, well, better inform the general public what the game as about in passing. It was released by .400 Software Studios on March 31st 2004 and along with a wider screen the first TEW is also the first game to introduce the “CornellVerse”, a fictional wrestling world thanks to TEW being an actual for-sale game and therefore unable to feature actual companies and wrestlers. Now I’ll throw my hand up and say I’ve never gotten into the CornellVerse, beyond seeing my CGC logo remade so the company could be a big part of the database (so in a small, small way I added something to a long-running game franchise!) I never really touched it apart from during demo periods when a good real world database wasn’t available for obvious reasons. Once a database converter was added to later games I basically never played around with it. Still, it’s been evolving along with the games and I loved seeing the passion some have whenever a new TEW is announced and they start speculating over how the fictional world might have evolved.
I think the thing I was most excited about for the game was that it expanded to cover not just North America but all of Mexico, Japan was now playable and the UK, Europe and Australia thrown in too for good measure (though I could’ve sworn Australia wasn’t added until a future game. Maybe I’m thinking there wasn’t a CornellVerse promotion in Australia until the next game?). In 2004 I was still on a UK indies obsession so I was really looking forward to that part. The editor now allowed you to not only create your own promotions, wrestlers etc but also your own gimmicks and match types, which was fun to play around with. The core booking system was different as well, gone were the set amounts of segments you could have per-show and replaced with a time you have to fill per-show and therefore allowing you to book lots of quick matches or a few long ones with small angles in the middle, whatever you want so long as you don’t go under or too far over your limit. It was very refreshing. The other big deal was that the AI controlled promotions seemed more real as you could actually see their show results and how they impact the overness and skills of their workers. It made the game world feel more alive.
All that being said, as I wrote in my EWR review, I couldn’t stick with the first TEW. It had its moments but it just wasn’t anywhere near as fun as EWR was still, so I soon left it behind and went back to the previous Ryland sim.
TEW 2005:
A lot of these early screenshots come from online as I couldn’t be bothered to reinstall the older games to take one screenshot…
A year and a half later and TEW 2005 lands on … erm, the internet. Released on October 6, 2005 from Adam Ryland’s new home of Grey Dog Software Studios. The game was further polished and expanded upon, with the new “Momentum” stat probably being the biggest. Basically the better you book someone in matches and angles the more momentum they gain, and high momentum effects how high a rating certain matches get. It’s a good, and extremely logical (having two people lose for months and then have them face in a main event wouldn’t go down well!), it’s a system that still exists today. You could also book things in advance and try to build their hype up to get extra attendance and ratings, plus much like EWR you have a bit more control with Road Agent notes when creating matches but greatly expanded, specifying a purpose behind individual people’s roles in each match, like if certain people should be kept strong or if someone is only in the match to be buried. The editor got some nice new features too, like the ability to create your own angles and storylines, including writing what the match report says when the angle appears. It was a great laugh. Australia was taken out as a region, so that’s where I got confused, it was readded later, that must be what I was thinking of…
Sadly much like 04 it didn’t take long for me to grow bored of it and jump back to EWR for one last lengthy run, where I downloaded a new skin and stuff to make it feel more different…
TEW 2007:
I was hoping to find a screenshot of the CGC logo that was based on my EWR one, but alas…
TEW 2007 was released December 29th 2006 and thanks to being built on top of the TEW 2005 code more care and attention was put towards updating the core experience rather than making sure the game was stable (as it already was!) The main thing I remember loving after looking at the old Development Journal was the new contracts, most importantly the developmental contracts, finally bringing that side of things back into the game proper, as well as short term, touring and loans, so you could really open up the realism of the game world. You could also add in the full title histories of championships so they appear in wrestler’s bio screen, which had me excited due to the stats nerd I am (cagematch.de: activate!). You could now make your own Product rather than chose from a pre-set number of them and set owner’s personalities, all of which again helps with the realism side of things, as did a further expansion on the Japanese side of things with improvements to the country’s regions, Touring schedules, a Young Lion system and the addition of worker promotion loyalty and freelance status. The AI also randomly creates “indy shows” made up of unemployed workers, which was always fun to have a look at.
This is where TEW finally replaced EWR for me. Something finally clicked and I was both away with creating my own Real World database and just playing the game with multiple promotions, and once I got used to the TEW style of booking proper I couldn’t go back to EWR more than one show for a laugh. The era of TEW had properly begun and thanks to the ability to transfer databases across from one game to the next, as did my obsession with the TEW editor…
TEW 2008:
It’s funny seeing some of these screenshots as I very quickly made or downloaded new skins for them… especially the opening website given I never played with the Cornellverse.
TEW 2008 was released on June 7th 2008. It was once again built on top of the previous game’s code and featured well over 100 improvements based on people’s feedback from the 2007, plus other ideas that I assume came to him in the meantime. Greater control over wrestler’s personalities, Australia was readded back into the game, plus America, UK and Europe got new regions added to it as well, things like worker potential being able to be edited in advance, and ring rust when they’ve been inactive for a good length of time, developmental companies and worker contracts were further updated from the previous game, you could now set a show as a “B Show” so the lower ratings didn’t hurt your image, random incidents return from EWR, national and regional battles between promotions were expanded / featured properly, and AI booked shows now showed angles as well as matches. There were also improvements to editor things like promotions, TV Networks etc. could have a set opening and closing date, allowing for better historical mods, and this was the update where the opening screen of a game was designed to look like a website front page, with news and results, plus a Hall of Fame (or ”Hall of Immortals”) that you can edit / will be updated in game.
Looking back at the journal pretty much every area of the game got small or big improvements as well, even if its just visual or set out better. This was definitely the game I was most excited about reading the new Journal entries each weekday, I guess because I was fully into TEW07 so I knew I’d be properly playing this, unlike the other games. Once again TEW08 got played to absolute death, both the game and editor, until the next one came along…
TEW 2010:
Christian Faith, Rich Money and someone simply named “Vengeance”… it’s a varied lot at the top of this company!
Released on January 25th 2010 with the main focus being on user navigation by reducing the amount of clicks players have to do to get around and was the game that introduced the drag and drop mechanic into the booking screen, something that was extremely helpful. It also saw momentum being applied to promotions, overall locker room morale, the AI would actually seek out relationships with other promotions, User Preferences where you can change or turn off certain parts of the game, User Ability Points that you can set to your character and earn more over time, and more returning EWR features like asking people to take “Sick Bumps” in matches and bidding wars between yourself and the AI for a hot free agent (presuming your both at a level where you can sign people to written deals.) It also added even more to the editor, including the ability to set chemistry between people ahead of time, set “agers” so people change their picture as they get older and even set Eras to influence what’s popular or not in wrestling, so a lot of focus on historical mods (which makes sense, they are popular).
Not much else to add in terms of my experience with it, these TEWs all sort of blend together because even though each one is an improvement I just moved from one to the next, transferring my databases and having a great time…
TEW 2013:
Hooray, the first screenshot to feature one of the real world mods, complete with the “Kyky Background” that still hangs around today.
TEW 2013 was released on December 12th 2012. The big features included the return of auto-booker / assistant booker if you’re not bothered about booking certain TV shows / events (never appealed to me personally, even back in EWR), the ability to set Umbrella Promotions like how the NWA was set up in the territory days (or how certain promotions are set up in modern times, like when WWN comprised of Evolve, FIP and other promotions with a shared title), a “Fog of War” setting so you can’t see all the stats of a wrestler (again not to my personal taste), enhancements to the AI so they use Dark Matches and book feuds, lots of changes to contracts, randomly generated Tribute Shows to people who have passed (or ones can be set in the editor), A PWI 500 style yearly list (with the ability to add previous years in!), the ability to add “Free Pictures” that can be used by randomly generated stars, workers can now have employment history, Legacies so masked wrestlers can leave the game and a new worker carrying on his masked gimmick appears, and lots of little improvements to the playable game and the editor.
Again it was exciting leading up to the release, great fun updating my databases as soon as it was released, and then great fun play right up until the release of the next game!
TEW 2016:
A shot of the opening screen of my longest TEW 2016 game, with I think you’ll agree the most important headline of them all.
TEW 2016 was released on May 2nd 2016, and what more could he add? Well, lots of little really fun things but I will admit this was the first release where a reveal didn’t knock my socks off. Things like new Match Aims, regions of countries, broadcaster updates (including running your own WWE Network-style one), move botches causing negative relationships, lots of AI improvements including being more aggressive in hiring/firing, booking tournaments and rumble matches when they’re supposed to, actually changing gimmicks and disposition, booking Six Man tags and more, more random incidents including wrestlers pulling ribs on each other the possible consequences of that, and some “EWR Throwback” options including the ability to pretty much shut off every more complex or challenging part of the game in order to have a more relaxing experience. There was a lot added but they were mostly smaller things, still fun, but not game-changing.
TEW 2016 got played a lot though I think this was the first time I spent more time in the editor due to having a full time job (and eventually a blog!) so I was struggling to keep my Real World database playable to actually, well, play it. I did have a few games that lasted multiple real-time months though!
TEW 2020:
The first time since EWR that I really got into a game playing as an already-existing top company rather than building a smaller company up. That’s what having a fun TV product does, I guess!
TEW 2020 was the first game in the long-running franchise that was a bit of a flop when the demo landed. Leading up to release the fact that it was being rewritten from scratch gave plenty of people great hope for major improvements but what we got when the Demo dropped was something else entirely: a badly designed U.I. with buttons everywhere with no thought towards convenience and a really ugly colour scheme (plus it still didn’t take up the whole screen even though it was now 16:9), a new list system that meant you couldn’t use the mouse scroll wheel or up and down keys and the complete removal of being able to create your own promotion Product, instead having to pick between an admittedly long list of pre-set ones. It was pushed back a few weeks and eventually released on May 14th 2020, and to be fair everything other than the window size and the product options were fixed, and the Product changes were right there in the development journal leading up to the release anyway and works perfectly fine.
The big reveals were finally being able to play as developmental companies, the removal of sliders and buttons for wrestler’s attitude and abilities and replaced by selectable Attributes (which was frankly a god send for editing), gone are set card positions like “Main Eventer” and “Mid Card” and instead replaced with a clever system that tracks popularity and momentum and translates it into a stat that then decides how the workers are perceived by the audience and therefore if they’d buy them at the top of the card or as champion (hard to explain, but it works really well!), improvements to contracts including the ability to have someone written and exclusive but also working for smaller companies (ala AEW contracts), a complete overhaul to how broadcasters work, new regions including India and an expanded Mexico and Europe, a change to the stats so the various technical skills that all ostensibly meant the same thing are in just one stat, changes to Tag Teams and Stables, including Stable logos, types and the AI actually booking them, and in general lots of little improvements, especially a more conveniently laid-out and option-filled version of the Editor.
I’ll admit the poor initial version of TEW 2020 put me off for a while, and given the Attributes, Stat and Broadcaster changes converting databases required a hell of a lot more work to make them play well than previous versions. At this point I threw my hands up and accepted I wouldn’t be able to continue my Real World database and in general I just didn’t touch it until about mid-2021, when I downloaded a popular Real World database, one that had been fixed to work with TEW2020 proper, and then imported a few of the companies and workers I used to update so I only had a couple of small companies to keep up with, and I’ve been having a great time ever since. It’s a shame to leave my multiple-TEW-long database mostly behind, but it’s just something I have to accept now I’m a more busy man. I understand now why most of these databases have a small team / regular contributors!
So I’ll be playing TEW 2020 on-and-off until TEW 2025 or whatever comes out. Maybe not as much as 07-16 just due to having less free time, but it’ll always be there…
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