10 Insane Wrestling Game Spin-Offs

Before Magic The Gathering and Pokemon became popular as online card games, the then WWF negotiated a deal with a small company with a big vision. Genetic Anomalies; which had created it's own online card game way back in 2000 devised a Wrestling TCG that was purely online. With no physical cards, this early FIFA Ultimate Team came out with several expansion packs over it's short time frame, naming their sets after WWE PPV's.

It's too complicated to explain in a small paragraph but suffice to say it was a compelling card game where each superstar had unique abilities with different HP. Closer your opponent's health is to 0, the better chance of winning the match via a pin. Submission, count outs and DQ's were also available with the latter being more luck based than anything else for the most part (though there was one lovely strategy using a steel chair with Shane McMahon).

It was certainly ahead of it's time and with internet still being at dial-up and perception of internet buying still being hesitant and rare, it didn't gain momentum. Think WWE Supercard but with actual skill. But like most card games, buying more boosters gave a competitive edge over someone with one basic starter set so for a lot of people who didn't have the money to keep up, they never stood a chance at winning actual prizes, including signed WWF/E World Title Belts. After only 18 months, THQ pulled the plug, which for a card game is too short a time scale to consider it to be a flop as it wasn't given the proper chance, but the learning curve was steep and retaining customers became more and more challenging. More recently a company tried to bring back the format calling it Ring Veteran, however the technology they were using was too slow and dated to make it popular. That didn't stop them trying to advertise on wrestling dirt sheets though. It's a shame it didn't succeed.