10 Reasons WWE's Worst Era Is Secretly Its BEST Era

Taking the badass WWF Superstars and WWF WrestleFest out of the conversation, the New Generation was the period that served up the first truly 'good' WWF games. Of course, Superstars and WrestleFest were also solely arcades releases, so those beautiful bastards never made it to home consoles at that time.

The WrestleMania series of console releases was just about passable in the late '80s and into the early '90s, but those games largely had the exact same moveset in place for each playable character. Whether you were Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man or Sgt. Slaughter, you'd hit the exact same moves on your opponent.

As the New Generation came along, it brought with it WWF Royal Rumble, WWF Raw, and WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game for SNES and SEGA Genesis/Mega-Drive. These games not only included expanded rosters, but Royal Rumble and Raw introduced more varied movesets, more vibrant characters designs, and had far smoother gameplay than anything seen before.

In the case of WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, that didn't quite hit the heights of those other two releases due it being more of a Mortal Kombat-esque fighting game. Still, 1997 saw the development of WWF War Zone for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, with that game being a nice time capsule of the New Generation developing into the Attitude Era - as highlighted by Steve Austin on the cover, but also the inclusion of the Hart Foundation. Introducing 3D models and a Create-A-Wrestler mode, this truly was revolutionary.

Clearly, there have been better wrestling games in the years since the New Generation, but this corner of the gaming industry came on leaps and bounds during that period.