Gaming off the Beaten Path

You can call THIS, the New World Order of Wrestling, brother Let’s go back to July 7, 1996. It’s time for WCW’s Bash at the Beach, an annual pay-per-view that will be headlined by the biggest match in the company’s history.  Sting, Lex Luger and the Macho Man Randy Savage are set to defend the company’s honor against the unlikeliest of invaders.  WWF stars Razor Ramon and Diesel, now going by their real names, Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, have been terrorizing WCW for months (remember, there was barely an internet, we had no idea these two were under contract to WCW when Hall jumped the barricade unannounced on Monday Nitro, especially those of us who had just turned 8).  Now called “the Outsiders,” the duo had been teasing a mystery partner for weeks.  Those of us who watched both promotions speculated on which WWF-er would show up next: Brett Hart? Mr. Perfect? The Undertaker?  Who knew? The match looked like it was going to go the way of the good guys at ...

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”   How many times have you heard that in your life?  What I’m sure was once sage advice has become a hackneyed platitude repeated ad naueseum by those looking to appear more open minded than they turn out to be.  That being said, throughout my life I have found that statement to be demonstrably true for the most part. Sometimes though, what you see is what you get.  Take one look at a PS2/XBox game from 2003 based on MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch and the first thing that will most likely pop into your mind is “wow, that game is going to suck.”  I wish I could say I found a hidden gem, or that this was shockingly good or something of that nature.  Hell, I would have been okay with “passable.”  But that most certainly wasn’t the case here. For those of you unfamiliar with Celebrity Deathmatch, it was an MTV show from the late 90’s/early 00’s where claymation versions of famous people ba...