Highlights
- WWE 2K Battlegrounds introduced a unique arcade-style gameplay with power-ups and supernatural moves, making it stand out from traditional wrestling games.
- Hulk Hogan's Main Event , a Kinect-based game, suffered from unreliable movement detection and poor performance, making it difficult to play.
- Def Jam Vendetta surprised players with its successful wrestling gameplay featuring popular hip-hop artists, and its sequel, Def Jam: Fight for NY , veered away from wrestling altogether.
Wrestling has always been very popular within the gaming community, ever since the early '90s. Over the decades, there have been countless wrestling titles, some based on a specific company (mostly WWE-related games) and some based on the discipline itself, without a particular branding. Even if today wrestling games' releases have slowed down quite a bit, there were times were multiple titles would be released within the same year.
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However, there have been some very out-of-the-ordinary wrestling games as well. While some of these were still reminiscent of a "real" wrestling game with submissions and the like, others felt like something completely different. It's a good time to look at the weirdest wrestling games of all time and rank them just on how strange they can get.
6 WWE 2K Battlegrounds
Starting things off, there's WWE 2K Battlegrounds. This title was born as a last-minute replacement for the would-have-been WWE 2K21, which was outright canceled due to his predecessor's failure at sales and at being a good game in general (though it did have a few redeeming qualities).
WWE 2K Battlegrounds ditched the series' typical wrestling simulation for a very arcade-style gameplay. It still felt and played like a wrestling game (probably the only one in this list), but the introduction of power-ups and supernatural moves made the game something entirely different at the same time. While it may be different from the game fans expected, this game can still be a good time, especially in multiplayer.
5 Hulk Hogan's Main Event
Platforms: Xbox 360
While Hulk Hogan's Main Event might look like a wrestling game, it's more of a generic fighting game, heavily relying on the Kinect peripheric for the Xbox 360. Like most of the Kinect games for the platform, the game suffered from very unreliable movement detection, which made the experience borderline unplayable (motion-controlled games were doing much better on the Wii at the time). Slappy performance and poor graphics surely did not help its case either at the time.
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If the concept of a pseudo-wrestling game based on Kinect isn't weird enough, the developers chose to market the game around Hulk Hogan. While Hulkamania will surely be running wild forever, the Superstar was already in the fading years of his career, making the whole existence of the game something difficult to grasp.
4 Def Jam Vendetta
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Gamecube
Def Jam Vendetta being a good wrestling game comes as a total surprise, given that it stars popular hip-hop artists of the early '00s instead of wrestlers. The game is developed by the WWF: No Mercy team and it features the same basic gameplay that made WWF: No Mercy an all-time classic (that still holds up today).
Where this game becomes really weird it's in its plot, as could be expected. Instead of living the everyday life of a wrestler, the game pitches the player as an unnamed street fighter, making his way in the suburbs of the city. Even if this premise might seem totally unattractive nowadays, the game was successful enough to warrant a sequel, Def Jam: Fight for NY, which abandoned the wrestling-oriented gameplay of its predecessor (but it had even more popular artists).
3 The Simpsons Wrestling
Platforms: PlayStation
The Simpsons Wrestling is probably infamous for allegedly being one of the worst games of all time. And while there are arguments to be made for that case, what can be said for sure is that this is one of the strangest wrestling video games of all time.
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The first reason is, of course, that this game features Simpsons characters instead of wrestlers, but even the gameplay shakes up the classic formula by adding into the mix power-ups like bowling pins, bubble gum, and more. Regardless of its faults (which surely don't make it the best Simpsons game), the game still deserves a shot at trying something completely unique with its brand.
2 WWF Betrayal
Platforms: Game Boy Color
WWF Betrayal is an obscure game released in the last year of the Game Boy Color's lifespan. The game was based on a storyline happening almost concurrently in WWF programming. Stephanie McMahon has been kidnapped, and her father Vince promises the player a title shot if he's able to bring her back.
The player can play as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, or The Undertaker, battling his way through a series of side-scrolling stages in typical beat 'em-up fashion. While the game is forgettable at best (there are far better games in the genre), it still makes the case for one of the strangest wrestling games of all time, and it is a nice little time capsule from the beloved Attitude Era.
1 WWE Crush Hour
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Gamecube
Wrestling games will probably never get any weirder than WWE: Crush Hour. Instead of being a wrestling game or even a fighting game whatsoever, WWE Crush Hour is a vehicular combat game, where every wrestler has his own unique vehicle. This might be a very baffling choice nowadays, but at the time vehicular combat games were still pretty popular.
The game features more than 30 superstars, with more characters that can be unlocked during gameplay, and commentary from the legendary Jim Ross. While it's far from being a good game, this is undoubtedly the weirdest concept that has even been used when it comes to wrestling in video games, and it still has some value because of that.