Total Extreme Wrestling
Extreme Warfare is a series of professional wrestling management text simulators created by British programmer Adam Ryland for the PC since 1995. The latest in the series is Total Extreme Wrestling 2020, which was released on May 15, 2020. Extreme Warfare Revenge 4.0 was released in 2002 on computer text simulator.
Total Extreme Wrestling
Adam Ryland originally developed Extreme Warfare as a collectible card game with a wrestling theme. Due to complexity and set up time it was decided a computer format would be more suitable. The first Extreme Warfare on the PC (now called Extreme Warfare 1) was programmed in 1995 in QBasic. This game was a simple simulator, where one could decide what matches were to take place and who was going to win them but also involved some simple financial elements, such as the wages of wrestlers. Due to limitations in QBasic, Ryland moved the series over to Turbo Pascal where further incarnations of the game were created, including: Extreme Warfare 2, Extreme Warfare 2000, Extreme Warfare 2001, Extreme Warfare 2002, Extreme Warfare 5000, Extreme Warfare 6000, Extreme Warfare 7500, and Extreme Warfare 9000.
Each version of the game was an upgrade of the previous and continually built on the ideas of booking matches and running the business side of a professional wrestling promotion. After release of EW 9000, a game called Promotion Wars was released by fellow British programmer Adam Jennings, taking some inspiration from both Extreme Warfare 9000 and Championship Manager. After the game's release, some of Extreme Warfare's fan base shifted their interest over to this game when released in October 2000.
Extreme Warfare Revenge (EWR) was released on June 15, 2002. Now programmed in Visual Basic, the series now took a Windows style interface. One of the most significant changes this game took to the series was the fact that everything on a wrestling event is under the control of the user. In previous games in the series, angles, finishes and (in EWD) interviews were randomly created. This also coincided with the new feud system that was to count the matches, angles and interview victories between the workers involved. The match reports also took a slight change, featuring reviews of the matches from such Internet columnists as Scott Keith instead of a straight play-by-play style. However, the report style would revert to its old style in TEW 2004.
Along with a new professional layout, the game had more features. While the previous games only focused on the wrestling scene of North America (Japan was featured in later versions of EWR but not playable), TEW 2004 expanded the world to include such areas as Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Australia. With this, each worker's overness was now expanded from EWR's single value to a series of values depending on areas in the world. The AI was changed in that now the user could now see what matches other promotions have booked, other promotions' financial details and what deals they have made. More contract clauses such as medical coverage and travel expenditure being included, contracts deal decisions were now made over time rather than immediate. Inspired by some fans playing against each other using WWE brands by sending files to each other through the Internet, a multi-player feature was added to make users play against each other with different promotions. Booking was also improved in that not only could the user edit the card more easily, the booking was now time-based, meaning such anomalies as booking 11-hour-long Iron Man matches on a two-hour shows would no longer be possible. The game was also more customisable than before with new editing modes as Create-A-Match and Create-A-Gimmick.
Due to the problem of copyright issues by going commercial, the series turned from using stats of the real wrestling world to a fictitious wrestling world called the CornellVerse. This world is named after the character of Tommy Cornell, one of the most influential people and best wrestlers in the CornellVerse, based on a character Ryland had created a few years earlier while participating in e-federations.
The sequel to TEW 2004, Total Extreme Wrestling 2005 (TEW 2005) was released on October 6, 2005 under Grey Dog Software.[1] A demo was also released in advance on September 29, 2005, allowing the user to play one game month just like previous demos. TEW 2005 included some more new features. Advance booking was one example which helped to promote upcoming big events. Televised shows also improved, bringing both competition to the shows with non-wrestling shows along with multiple television deals around the world for one show. The pay-per-view feature was now very similar to television in that there's now a list of pay-per-view providers which the user must make a deal with to get their pay-per-view provided. A momentum meter was also added to the wrestlers to bring in more realism in that if they give great matches, cut good interviews and participate in angles, it will increase and thus gain more overness. This helped to prevent the user from booking the same over people all the time and expect good ratings. The booking also improved in that the match purpose feature from EWR has returned and enhanced. The user must now talk to road agents about how the match has to be set up, including ways of putting people over, burying a worker and the way an actual match needs to be performed. TEW 2005 also made more features customizable with its new editable statistics for angles, storylines, locations and injuries. Its angle editor consisted of many different types such as interviews to beatdowns to celebrations and uses up to six people to participate in various roles. The storyline editor takes these angles and places them in an order the booker will need to comply to. The storyline editor was created by Phil Parent, using Georges Polti's book The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations as an inspiration. Also included was the "grades" feature. Instead of having an exact view of the stats each wrestler has along with changes, a more realistic grade feature was instead added to make the user rely on instinct for crucial decisions.
Due to copyright issues by going commercial, the series could no longer use things from the real world. Instead, a fictitious wrestling world known as the CornellVerse was created. This world was named after Tommy Cornell, one of the best workers in the game. Cornell was based on a character Ryland had used in E-Feds.
For those not au fait with the series, TEW takes the form of a professional wrestling management simulator, whereby you take the creative reigns of a wrestling company and aim to make the company a success by putting on good events to create stars of your roster of wrestlers. Along the way you will need to maintain the morale of the locker room, keep the owner of the company happy by meeting certain targets and also please the fans by tailoring a product that meets their expectations. It has been compared with the Football Manager series over the years, and I can understand the comparison.
Each event/TV show will have a set timeframe that you will need to fill and, depending on the promotion you work for, you will need to fill it with relevant matches and angles. A match is exactly what it sounds like, in that it is a wrestling match that you will add to the show. There are a big list of match types for you to choose from, and you will need to select the wrestlers who will take part in the bout along with what the length will be and who is scheduled to win. Ideally, each match will serve a certain purpose on the show, which will again come back to the sort of product you are trying to present.
Angles are non-wrestling segments that take place on the show as well, the most basic example being one wrestler attacking another outside the ring or someone delivering an interview in front of the live crowd. Angles are often done to either further storylines or give a wrestler something to do on the show without having them actually wrestle, which will allow them to further develop their character and entertain the crowd. The game gives you the chance to create your own angles on the fly, along with what attributes you want the game to grade them on. For instance, if you want to have one wrestler debut a new, bigger wrestler as their bodyguard, you could create your own angle where the first wrestler was rated on microphone skills whilst the other was rated on how menacingly they can present themselves.
Each wrestler has their own in-ring style that they like to do, along with their own set of skills and attributes. Some will be tall and heavy monsters who are poor in the ring but make up for it due to their impressive looks, whilst some will be much more talented in the ring but will lack marketability due to being too short or having an unimpressive physique. Some wrestlers will be in their 40s, and their bodies will have started to fail them, but they will retain great knowledge from all their years of wrestling that will allow them to still have good matches, whilst younger and fitter wrestlers might have a lot of talent, but their inexperience will count against them. Some wrestlers will be supremely entertaining when it comes to doing skits and angles, whilst others will be terrible at it and will need someone else to do their talking for them.
The biggest critique I could give for a game like TEW 2020 is that it is probably the sort of game that would confound non-wrestling fans, especially at first. If you think of Football Manager as a somewhat niche game of a popular mainstream sport, TEW is a niche game of an already niche form of entertainment. Even as someone who has watched wrestling for two decades and has experience playing other games in the series, I still needed to sit down and have a good read of the help notes now and then because the game is so gargantuan that it can be tricky to work things out sometimes. 041b061a72