3. "WWF Attitude" (Game Boy Color/Nintendo 64/PlayStation/Dreamcast) 1999
Next came WWF Attitude, which would end up being the last WWF game produced by Acclaim, who thankfully went out on a high note. They retained the major gameplay elements and fighting style employed by Warzone and built upon that great framework with some tweaks that made the series even better. Its biggest gameplay change came with the abolition of multiple health bars and instead used only one, which had to be lowered from green to red to empty over the course of a match. The opening FMV was brilliant, perfectly capturing the style of the WWF at the time. Challenge Mode was replaced by a new "Career Mode," which was a lot longer than in Warzone and more fun to play through. Players could choose to play as a created or existing wrestler, starting at non televised house shows and making their way up the card collecting titles and eventually becoming WWF Champion. It allowed you to wrestle on all the major TV shows and PPVs of the time, bringing realism and a sense of accomplishment as you graduated from Heat to Raw and eventually onto King of the Ring and Wrestlemania. First Blood and I Quit matches made their first appearances in WWF Attitude, along with the ability to create a stable. Most impressively however came "Create a PPV" mode, which as it says on the tin, allowed you to create a brand new Pay Per View. In a move ahead of its time, users could create a show with custom names, arena, lights, aprons, ramp style and ropes. A mode that would not feature heavily again until many years later. Create a Wrestler was also built upon by adding new original wrestler names which would be mentioned on commentary and chanted by the fans. Entrances were now a full walk to the ring and were very good, with the lighting effects, fireworks and licensed music letting the game capture the stars really well. Triple H has his own specially recorded voiceover of his Michael Buffer influenced entrance, in which he even referenced being in a video game. These small details added to the overall feel and enjoyment of the game, like Gangrel emerging through a ring of fire and Edge coming to the ring through the crowd. What made this more impressive was that it had the biggest roster ever seen in a WWF game, each one with their own full entrance and authentic move list. In all, the game had over 30 wrestlers, some of which were secret characters that could be unlocked by achieving certain goals within the game. One such secret character was "Head" who had no body, but two hands and two feet and technically should never have been able to be beaten since it had no shoulders which could be pinned down. WWF Attitude was even better than Warzone, and just built on what that game had established. Again, while not a perfect simulation, the game play was decent for its time with the career mode and creation options enough to keep fans coming back for a while. Despite being good, it was the last ever WWF game produced by Acclaim, but a fair one to go out on. Acclaim went on to make two ECW games in "Hardcore Revolution" and "Anarchy Rulz," though both games were mostly just clones of Attitude with an ECW theme over the top. The WWF moved on to THQ, with everyone hoping that they could keep the quality up, and keep moving the genre forward.