WCW Monday Nitro

WCW Monday Nitro was a weekly professional wrestling telecast produced by World Championship Wrestling, created by Ted Turner and Eric Bischoff. The show aired Monday nights on TNT, going head-to-head with the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF) Monday Night Raw from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001. Production ceased shortly after WCW was purchased by the WWF.

The debut of Nitro began the Monday Night Wars, a ratings battle between the WWF and WCW that lasted for almost six years and saw each company resort to cutthroat tactics to try to compete with the competition. In mid-1996, Nitro began to draw better ratings than Raw based on the strength of the nWo storyline, a rebellious wrestling stable that wanted to take over WCW. Nitro continued to beat Raw for 84 consecutive weeks, forcing WWE owner Vince McMahon to change the way he did business. As the nWo storyline grew stagnant, fan interest in the storyline waned, and Raw began to edge out Nitro in the ratings.

The turning point for the organizations came during mid April 1998 after Stone Cold Steve Austin won his first WWF World Heavyweight Title. From that week forward, Raw beat Nitro in the ratings by a significant amount, and WCW was never able to regain the success it once had.

WCW Nitro (video game)

WCW Nitro is a video game based on the professional wrestling TV show WCW Monday Nitro. Released by THQ for the PlayStation game console in 1997, the game featured a large roster of playable WCW wrestlers as well as full motion video clips of the TV show. The game was followed by WCW/nWo Thunder, which was based on Nitro's Thursday night counterpart. Ports for the PC and Nintendo 64 were released in 1999 with the updated roster featured in Thunder.

Gameplay

Moves are performed by inputting various button combinations. Each wrestler shares a repertoire of wrestling moves and possesses several of their own signature moves.

Modes of play include singles and tag team matches for one or two players, as well as a one-player tournament mode, where the player must defeat a number of wrestlers to be crowned champion.

There are initially 16 playable characters (each featuring a video introduction of themselves), with 48 others that can be unlocked, either by playing through the tournament mode with various wrestlers or by using a cheat code. Some of these secret characters are WCW wrestlers or personalities, while others are fictional characters or THQ staff.