Feature By

Dale Weir

To look at the popularity of wrestling these days, it is hard to imagine that Vince McMahon's "sports entertainment" business went from being one of the most popular family-oriented venues in the 1980s to the most mocked in less than a decade. After audiences ceased being wowed by the sight of a fire-spitting Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat and geriatric wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and Randy "Macho Man" Savage, the media and public at large readily declared the former television mainstay fit for the glue factory. It was only after the inspiration hit McMahon—telling him that audiences wanted healthier servings of scantily clad women, blood and obscenities in their wrestling diet—that the WWF's fortunes changed. Toilet humor and risqué material helped propel the WWF into more homes than ever before, and the added attention—in the form of blistering outrage—from family and religious groups helped McMahon and company to not only regain, but surpass, their former glory.

THQ, the current owner of the WWF license, hasn't been taking any chances (evidenced by its plans to milk the fanatical obsession gamers hold for the WWF). No console platform has been spared this year. This summer saw an uninspiring arcade port of WWF Royal Rumble on the Sega Dreamcast; Nintendo 64 owners, who may only now be tiring of WWF Wrestlemania 2000, can look forward to WWF: No Mercy arriving on store shelves in November. Right along side these games will be a sequel to one of the most popular PlayStation games ever to hit the console. Dubbed WWF Smackdown 2: Know Your Role, it promises to pick up right where the original left off and provide the closest thing to a wrestling simulation that the industry has ever seen. As I'm sure Kevin Smith, known for the infamous Clerks sequel, MallRats, will tell you, it is not easy to repeat the success of a hit project that seemingly sneaked up on the public. Yukes and THQ, though, seem ready to do just that. WWF Smackdown 2 is packed with the kinds of new features and enhancements that are sure to recapture the hearts of WWF Smackdown’s fans when it's released this November.

To see how the game will look and for more insight into its many features, check out the following pages.