WCW Mayhem is a professional wrestling video game by Electronic Arts, which shares its name with a World Championship Wrestling pay-per-view event. The first WCW game produced by EA, it was released for PlayStation and Nintendo 64 in 1999 and for the Game Boy Color the following year.
The game featured several firsts for a wrestling title. For instance, Mayhem was the first game to feature all twelve WCW pay-per-view venues as well as all three major WCW TV shows (Nitro, Thunder, and Saturday Night). Mayhem was also the first wrestling game released in the United States to include backstage areas, a feature which would be expanded upon in its sequel, WCW Backstage Assault. It was also one of the first wrestling games to integrate audio commentary provided by Bobby Heenan and Tony Schiavone; although, only Schiavone was included in the N64 version despite some of his lines being addressed directly to Heenan. The game was also originally going to be the first story-based wrestling video game. This idea, however, was later abandoned due to time restraints.
Mayhem was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) that replaced the promotion's November PPV event World War 3 which was held from 1995 to 1998 and was held in the month of November in 1999 and 2000. It is noted for being the first wrestling pay-per-view named after a video game, rather than the video game named after a pay-per-view. The 1999 match between Bret Hart vs Chris Benoit was featured in the opening credits of the TV Show Malcolm in the Middle. The rights to the event is now owned by the WWE since 2001.
Mayhem 1999 took place on November 21, 1999 from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario.
During the WCW World Heavyweight Championship tournament semi-final match between Bret Hart and Sting, The Total Package interfered by attacking Sting with a baseball bat. This led to Hart being announced as the winner via disqualification. Not wanting to win in this manner, Hart demanded the match be restarted, and ultimately forced Sting to submit with the Sharpshooter. Scott Hall was originally supposed to face Rick Steiner for the WCW World Television Championship, but Steiner was too injured to compete. Hall was awarded the title by forfeit and immediately had to defend it against Booker T instead.