For the average wrestling fan, turning to WWE’s games is a safer way to live out your sports entertainment fantasies than, say, jumping off the roof of your garage through a flaming table. Since the late 80s there’ve been well over 50 such games that have averted countless such ill-advised* attempts to be a pro wrestler at home, all wearing the WWF/E banner. And while it’s as difficult to parse out the incremental improvements from one year to the next as it is to kick out of a Tombstone, here’s an attempt at narrowing down the 10 best WWE games of all time.**
To start with, we didn’t book this list all by ourselves without consulting our roster. The IGN audience participated in a Face-off, giving us a capacity crowd's worth of data to work with. There are a handful of surprises and no small dose of nostalgia for the Attitude Era that showed up in the results, but without further ado or wrestling wordplay,*** let’s ring the bell.
10: WWE SmackDown! Vs. Raw (2004) - 65%
At number 10 with a win percentage of 65% in our Face-off, we find ourselves in the heady days of the mid-aughts with 2004’s WWE SmackDown! Vs. Raw. The game represents a fairly major shift for WWE as well. The Attitude Era was coming to an end and the silly Invasion storyline was getting smaller in the rearview mirror. Meanwhile, the brand split between Raw and SmackDown that happened just a few years prior was popular enough to gamble on rebranding the SmackDown series of games.
The Clean and Dirty mechanic was a weird little blast as well, giving even the kayfabe-iest fans a chance to lean into a gimmick and be rewarded for it. Meanwhile, the stare down and test of strength style mini-games, including a bra and panties match spanking mechanic that snuck in at the tail end of the Attitude Era's influence, offered a little more of what the live wrestling events featured on TV. You could also create your own belt in a Create-a-Championship mode for when creating yourself in a wrestling game just isn’t enough.
The Royal Rumble of WWE games, SmackDown! Vs. Raw at number 10 feels like the new guy in the promotion that lasts for a respectable run in the ring, but ultimately you forget he was there by the next pay-per-view.
9: WWF SmackDown! (2000) - 65.6%
Counting down to number nine, we go back to Y2K and the beginnings of what became the WWE 2K series, with WWF SmackDown! It was a welcome change from previous entries on the PlayStation that went back to the more arcade style action we knew from the N64 games which, not to give too much away, might do a run in and attack this list with a chair here in a few spots.
SmackDown! is also a little notorious for the things it got rid of. With no commentary, you had to wrestle to a bizarre mix of stock house-adjacent music and a steady hum of fan noise (it was honestly a little stressful...) while the bizarre non-entrances for the wrestlers in front of matches felt like a wonky corner-cutting measure more than a creative choice.
On a personal note, however, the hardcore and steel cage match were an absolute must of an inclusion. What are we even doing if, at the height of the Attitude Era, we don’t have unimpeded violence on the menu. I think I got injured just watching the TLC matches with The Dudley Boyz, The Hardyz and Edge and Christian.
All that to say, it’s a solid enough way to kick off a new series. This is a game that would’ve had 2 memorable spots during a Royal Rumble before getting dumped over the ropes by the 15th entrant immediately, so landing at number nine on our list feels right.
8: WWE SmackDown! Vs. Raw (2007) - 65.8%
For our eighth pick with a 65.8% win rate that’s not even a full percentage point higher than our number 10, we jump ahead to the 2007 edition of WWE SmackDown! Vs. Raw. Landing on the Xbox 360, it’s the first WWE game for a 7th generation console, and immediately took advantage of those sweet, sweet joysticks. The analog control system introduced in the game made the action more realistic where important grappleman tactics like throwing a guy into the audience are concerned.
Perhaps the most realistic part of the game though is how wet Triple H is on the cover. This may be my own bias, but nothing says “2007 in the WWE” quite like a soaking wet Triple H screaming on the apron, baby oil from his hair streaking down either side of his chest, having undoubtedly just spit half a bottle of Crystal Geyser onto the front row. It was a sticky, greasy time for the WWE in those days and “soggy Triple H” as the cover image for this game makes the most sense. In fact, the game might’ve gotten bonus points in our Face-Off for being a bigger highlight for wrestling fans than the actual wrestling happening in 2007.
That 2007’s SmackDown! Vs. Raw made this list feels like more of a testament to something being the first. In retrospect it isn’t spectacular for anything more notable than being our first chance to play WWE games on 7th gen consoles. It seems like that nostalgia could’ve been the tie-breaker between this game and the games that finished eleventh or twelfth, just a percentage point or two behind it.
So to sum up, Wet Hunter 2007 in the number eight spot is like the time Diamond Dallas Page entered the Rumble to promote his yoga program. It’s nice to see a guy whose better days you remember.
7-6-5: A Triple Threat Match of The Rock's Catchphrases
Before we move on to the next few picks, I want to remember how stupidly popular The Rock was in the Attitude Era. That probably goes without saying, but don’t forget that in the real world of Determined Outcome Grappling, SmackDown as a brand was basically The Rock’s spinoff show. Like if The Rock went to be a radio psychiatrist in Seattle while Stone Cold kept running the bar in Boston.**** Having popularized “laying the smack down on candy asses,” the game series moved on to borrow more of Dwayne’s completely over verbiage for the next three games in the series, which also happen to be the next three spots on our list. Because I’m, frankly, a little confused as to how that happened, I’m going to talk about them in one oversized segment. So for our numbers seven through five, we’ve got Know Your Role, Just Bring It and Shut Your Mouth.
7: WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role (2000) - 67.7%
So going back to when the WWE was coasting through the peak of its popularity, at number seven, winning 67.7% of its match-ups in our Face-Off, is WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role. Dropping just months after its predecessor WWF SmackDown! in 2000, the game had options galore. While previous wrestling games featured them, Know Your Role had the first properly advanced Create-a-Superstar mode. Crafting your own gimmick complete with individualized taunts really gets what being a wrestling fan is all about: telling yourself “I could do that without serious injury” and believing it.***** Know Your Role, which now that I think about it is a thematically perfect subtitle for a game with the first proper Create-a-Superstar mode, offered you the chance to prove you understand how to be a wrestler.
6: WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It (2001) - 67.8%
A year later in 2001, WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It dropped another of The Rock’s mic gems to herald the return of commentary to the action. But while it was the first SmackDown game to feature Michael Cole and Tazz talking you through the matches, it was the last to feature the WWF branding before the World Wildlife Fund landed a frog splash from the top rope of a courtroom. While Just Bring It also includes six- and eight-man match formats, those were subsequently ditched for over a decade and a half, and the game is the meat of a SmackDown sandwich. It’s a midcard gimmick match in the forgettable stretch of a pay-per-view destined to be outshined by the main event. Or, to continue my thread of Royal Rumble allegories, a Mark Henry/Big Show confrontation near the halfway point of the Rumble where they somehow eliminate each other because nobody else is strong enough to get them over the ropes.
5: WWF SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth (2002) - 70.3%
Two years after Know Your Role, the SmackDown! Series finally finished The Rock’s signature catch phrases with Shut Your Mouth in 2003. It’s another incrementally better game in the series, with a bump in the graphics so the wrestlers looked more like the wrestlers and, while I personally love being able to climb and jump off the jumbo tron, it’s interesting to find this game along with its two predecessors occupying all three spots in the middle of our list. Perhaps it’s a nostalgia thing and these years were the first the majority of IGN’s audience got into wrestling games. It could also be that this stretch of the series gets mixed up with one another so they all kind of split the vote. Regardless, SmackDown’s early 2000s entries generated some fond memories. Like how maybe you can’t remember which Rumble it was that Kane eliminated himself when the orderlies tried to take him back to the insane asylum, but you can narrow it down to a couple of years window.
4: Wrestlemania 2000 (1999) - 70.7%
Arguably the first officially great WWF game, dropping in 1999 (a year that could be considered the high watermark for pro wrestling's popularity), Wrestlemania 2000 won over 70% of its matchups in our Face-Off. It’s also a game that makes me feel safe saying that N64 stuff was all unimpeachably great while also taking no follow-up questions on the matter.
While it was the first time you could edit the Superstars, and the idea of putting Chris Jericho in Shane McMahon’s tracksuit would be worth the price of the cartridge just in case it was possible, the truly incredible thing about this game is how the development of it mirrored the business of the time. The Monday Night Wars weren’t really a contest anymore, with the WWF lapping the WCW in popularity by 1999. It would be another two years before the McMahons straight-up bought the competition, but the rivalry between the two companies extended into the video game space in the late '90s.
WCW/nWo Revenge from developer AKI and publisher THQ was a truly beloved wrestling game from 1998, so the only natural response would be for WWF to ditch Acclaim and swoop in to partner with AKI and THQ. The result is more or less the same game as the popular WCW/nWO Revenge, just with wildly more popular Superstars from the WWF roster. The huge database of move sets and customizable options in the create-a-wrestler area that already existed in the game’s engine from the WCW title actually made it possible to mimic the WCW wrestlers that got left behind, which is such an on-brand middle finger from the WWF to their on-the-verge-of-vanquished competitor. It was a pile on after the bell had already rung.
As far as the actual game goes though, it laid a sturdy groundwork for subsequent titles, including the one that landed at number one on our list. Kind of like the guy that’s already feuding with the champ coming into the Rumble in the twenties somewhere. You just know he’s going to end up winning so they can square off at Wrestlemania.
3: WWE 2K24 (2024) - 71%
WWE 2K24 won 71% of it’s match-ups in our Face-Off, earning it a spot on the podium in this Top 10 list, which is wild considering where the series was just a few years ago. WWE 2K20 was such a trainwreck that they just said “nevermind” in 2021 and started from scratch for 2k22. So, if 2K20 was the end of a heel turn angle before a wrestler takes a little time off, 2K22 was his return to the active roster building up to his title run in 2K24.
With a more reliable foundation built with the year off, 2K24 was the third year in a row that has been about layering the bells and whistles back into the gameplay, and as a result 2K24 feels complete in a way that WWE games just haven’t in a very long time.
WWE 2K24 built on the solid foundation of its predecessor by not only polishing and improving every feature across the board, but adding way more than perhaps anyone expected for an iterative WWE game. Ambulance and Casket matches were a welcome change to the grappling action, and the return of special guest referee mode - the first time we’d seen it in over 10 years - was as surprising as Shane McMahon flipping Austin twin birds when he put on the black and white stripes himself.
There’s recency bias with this one, sure, but WWE 2K24 does feel like a feature-complete wrestling package, an accolade previously reserved almost exclusively for our top two on this list.
2: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain (2003) - 77.3%
We have to jump back to the run of successful WWE SmackDown! Games for our number two spot with 2003’s follow-up to Shut Your Mouth, the equally threatening Here Comes the Pain. Winning over three-quarters of its Face-Off match-ups, it might have been the best of the SmackDown! bunch before the series changed to 2K.
The Elimination Chamber showed up in a game for the first time, as did the Bra and Panties match (although the aforementioned spanking mechanic that unlocked a cut scene of the two female wrestlers kissing would have to wait another year). The game also featured Legends for the first time, with all-timers showing up like Rowdy Roddy Piper, Sgt. Slaughter and The Iron Shiek. That you couldn’t pit The Undertaker’s Dead Man gimmick against George The Animal Steele in a Bra and Panties match feels both not surprising and like a missed opportunity, however.
The thing that gives this game a lasting legacy though has to be its career mode. It had an RPG feel to the locker room maneuvering. Players were free to talk to more people backstage and chart a course for your Superstar that felt a little more off the rails. This game is the face that takes a good long run through the Rumble, the one you want to win the whole thing, but comes up short in the end by just under three percentage points.******
1: WWF No Mercy (2000) - 80.5%
So here comes the payoff to my TLC match comment from way back in number nine. On the list of things that tug on my wrestling nostalgia strings like a desperate Bubba Ray Dudley trying to loose a tag team belt 20 feet above the ring, the top two are grimacing through ladder matches and huddling in front of a very small tube TV with three friends, Swanton bombing from the top of a ladder on an N64.
WWF No Mercy has been a benchmark for wrestling games for more than 20 years now and at just a tick over an 80% win percentage, we’ve got the proof that it continues to be everyone’s favorite (or more accurately, at least four out of five people’s favorite). As part of the class of the N64 era (on which I’ve already made my feelings clear), additions like the ladder match and backstage brawls brought more of what was popular in-ring at the time, while the create-a-wrestler function continued to expand and a career mode that branched in all kinds of directions was an obvious upgrade over Wrestlemania 2000.
There’s something about that combination, catching everything that was wild about the height of the Attitude Era and channeling it through easy to get grappling mechanics, that has made this game more enduring than every other one on this list. Modders are still actively adding new wrestlers to the playable roster and even AEW Fight Forever was an attempt at recreating No Mercy’s magic.
The game wasn’t perfect (it chugged as soon as four players showed up) but it nailed the most important thing: capturing the essence of a wildly popular time in wrestling history, which is why we think it’s one of the best WWE video games ever made.
What do you think? Agree with this list? It’s kind of yours actually, on account of you guys voted in the Face-Off, but feel free to disagree with it down in the comments anyway!
*seriously, don’t f*cking backyard wrestle
**in this case “all time” refers to the last 40-ish years, which is still a while, but in the grand scheme of things it’s only four decades and “of all time” is mostly just here for the cheap heat
***had to sneak one more in and didn’t feel like deleting this promise
****yep, it’s 100% exactly like that
*****my gimmick was named “Arrogant” Dandy Blaine, and he was a vicious and muscly heel, just like me
******I am aware Royal Rumbles are not scored on a percentage point basis
