When I started TEW/EWR....

[CampCornetteNWA]

<p>Let's tell the stages of life we've probably all through since we started playing these games..</p><p> </p><p>

When I started, EWR was still the big deal. I was in college, had a lot more free time and lived with my parents. I really didn't have a job per se back then. I did do a few things here and there, but nothing major.</p><p> </p><p>

Now, I'm married and living on my own with a full-time job that commands say 40 hours a week March-July and upwards of 50 and even up to 60 hours a week from August-February.</p><p> </p><p>

I think back and wish I'd had the more complex TEW when I was in college and EWR now, lol..</p>

[20LEgend]

atleast youve got a good life, a wife a job and a great game. if i had 1 of them id be happy (preferably a bloody job) lol

[Comradebot]

atleast youve got a good life, a wife a job and a great game. if i had 1 of them id be happy (preferably a bloody job) lol

 

As someone who gets to play TEW here in college (huzzah, EWR was in high school and middle school!)... well, it's awesome. I just got back from a test, I'm done for the day, boom, TEW time!

 

That said... a job would be nice. Eh, I'll survive.

[atomzero]

More TEW time would be nice, but I'll keep my son.

[juggaloninjalee]

I fumbled upon Rylands website about a decade ago while looking for wrestling emulators for NES I think. Then DLed EW1000 or something. It had WCW WWF and ECW in it. All the winners were random based on their stats I think.

 

Then EWR became the hot game and RAVEX always had the best updated rosters and junk.

 

I am 25 now. Work 40-50 hours at my day job. Work about 14 hours a week as a bouncer Thurs-Sat. So rarely do I have time to play but I love it! Still don't have the latest version of TEW. Waiting to get my computer fixed and moved in with my gf (4/26) to buy it.

 

It's killing me to wait for it.

[Irish Wolf]

I started with EWR I think a friend showed me that and promotion wars at the same time. I lost track of it for awhile and when I went looking for it again that was about the time TEW 2004 came out.

 

Ever since then I play pretty much as often as I can. Now I'm 33 and since I've had a job since right out of high school and even in high school my time frame had always been the same so I'd play a lot. As of two weeks ago, training to be a pro wrestler has eaten up more of my time then playing at managing a wrestling company, so I've not played as much. Although I'm a New Yorker so I get in a lot of game time on the train. An hour from home to work, an hour from work to gym and an hour and a half from gym to home.

[Greg McNeish]

I fumbled upon Rylands website about a decade ago while looking for wrestling emulators for NES I think. Then DLed EW1000 or something. It had WCW WWF and ECW in it. All the winners were random based on their stats I think.

 

Yep. Same here. I actually still have EW9000, I think, somewhere on this machine.

 

It was EWR that I took a long time to get into. I had stopped following Adam's website, shortly after EW9000 came out, so I completely missed EWR's release. In fact, I didn't discover that game until TEW came out. I played it for a year, and bought TEW05 on release day (only one I have bought that early).

[DK2112]

I go way, way back with wrestling sims!

 

It all started when one of my cousins told me about Promotion Wars, it was the very first one, so when I got home that day I did a search, downloaded it and absolutely loved it.

 

I was still pretty much a kid at the time, and we used to 'wrestle' ourselves quite a bit down the park So after playing PW to death with the real wrestlers, we created our own fed with ourselves and friends in it and had loads of fun with it.

 

A few updates came out with little additions, but I remember the day that Promotion Wars 2 was announced, the forums were absolutely crazy busy. We waited, and waited, and waited. And PW2 never came out. It was pushed back and pushed back, and in the end the creator decided to release 'PW 1.3', basically a 'complete' new game but only a small portion of what PW2 would have been, had he finished it.

 

No offence to anyone on this forum, but I always preffered PW over EWD at the time.

 

That changed though, when EWR came out! I remember reading the hype for EWR, people who had a copy of the game before it was released were doing 'diaries' of games they were playing, basically hyping it up and putting screenshots up of the features. It looked amazing and I downloaded it the day it was released.

 

I then played EWR to death, and soon after that I fell out of love with wrestling for a while, mainly due to WWE going majorly tits up post-Attitude era. I just wasn't into it any more.

 

After a long absence, I decided to check out the EW battleground forum. I was pointed in the direction of Grey Dog Software, and saw that TEW 2010 was coming out soon. So I decided to try out the freeware 2005, which was really good, then eventually purchase 2010.

 

I now have 2010 and I'm loving it, what a top, top game this is. It's so strange that all these years later I'm still playing a wrestling sim. But I've got a feeling I always will be if the games being churned out are as addictive and fun as this one!

[ritwik]

I first started playing EWR in high school. This would be in early 2003. I was searching the net for business sims and was pointed in the direction of EWR by the old Home of the Underdogs website.

 

EWR was my first "behind the scenes" look at pro-wrestling. I joined the EWB forums and spent many happy hours bitching to friends about Triple H's backstage games

 

Having mastered EWR over an year of intense playing, I was very stoked about the release of TEW 2004. I remember I was very sold on the idea of in-ring psychology - I could now hold Angle vs Rey Mysterio and the match won't suck due to them not working in complementary styles.

 

TEW 2004 was not a great experience - probably because I didn't get into the Cornellverse and there weren't any real world mods that did the game justice. Plus, the AI was nothing to write home about.

 

Having gone off wrestling for a while, I decided to check out the TEW scene again and purchased TEW 2005 [which had already been out for a year, I think]. This time I made a determined effort to get into the Cornellverse, 'cos lots of people seemed to be loving it. I started a game with NYCW, changed them to a cutting edge style, and couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. Many many hours were killed in getting them to national.

 

By now I was very busy with College, and completely skipped TEW 2007. After waiting for weeks, I bought TEW 2008 soon after it's release but somehow the game didn't click for me. It was packed with features, and had an updated Cornellverse [which I loved by this point] but having missed TEW 2007, I struggled with the perfect show theory. I hated repetitive booking penalties which made playing with smaller promotions all the more difficult. I now realize that my booking techniques were still heavily influenced by EWR, which had worked in the cutting edge style in TEW 2005, but not having played TEW 2007, I really struggled with 08.

 

Recently I bought TEW 2010, and must admit that I love it so much that I have been playing even at the cost of preparing for final exams! It is undoubtedly the best wrestling sim ever made, and probably Adam's best game yet.

[atomzero]

Any of you ever play around with the TNM simulators?

[ritwik]

Any of you ever play around with the TNM simulators?

 

TNM 7 demo, for about half an hour.

[jgriff3029]

Any of you ever play around with the TNM simulators?

 

TNM was great if you played it before finding Adam's games. After finding the EWR games I just couldn't go back. It's sorta like trying to go back to the Atari after getting a NES.

[Linsolv]

I'd always thought I was an exception. How many people on this board are... shall we say, between jobs?

[fatallylost]

I know I started with Promotion Wars, thanks to a friend of my ex's. It was after PW2 was "announced" so, I went looking for info on it, and came across EWR. I want to say 2, it might have been just before 2 though, if I remember. I don't recall what was going on at that point, it was around the time I started working, which was somewhere between 20-40 hours depending on time of year (retail)

 

Since then.. well, nothing has changed really. I'm in a different room, and work at a different retail job, for now.

[soundsofsilver]

Haha I feel like such an oldie in this genre when people say they go "way back in wrestling sims" to Promotion Wars.

 

I started with EW5000. I've put hundreds of hours into TNM7. Put hundreds of hours into the various EWs.

 

When EWR and Promotion Wars came out, it was INSANE. How could such great wrestling sims be made? There had been games promising those features for years, and the programmers always disappeared. TNM7 and EWSB ruled for years and then EWR and Promotion Wars were just unbelievable.

 

I preferred EW5000 to TNM7 in some ways (TNM7 was a much better game at that point, which is why it controlled the market and was the only one with a price tag), but now it's amazing how far it's come.

 

Unfortunately, now I'm in college, have lots of friends, play other video games, plus Front Office Football, and I have no time for TEW. Sadly. I own TEW2010 and have only booked one show.

 

If only I had less classes, studying, partying, reading for fun, and playing other games....

 

Or if I had this when I was 13.

[Trashbear]

Back in the day, I was given a cracked copy of TNM 6.2 PLUS. It came on several floppy disks. I put a lot of time into that, and I legit purchased TNM 7 and played more of that than I care to admit.

 

I believe I played the original EW freeware. I just remember it being pretty simple and so, so fun. Of course, I edited my favorite wrestlers' salaries down to $1.

 

I fell out of the scene, but Promotion Wars brought me back, and through that community I got into EWR. And then college became more about booking my favorite cards than writing 5000 word essays on the epic of Gilgamesh.

 

And now, here I am. Purchased every Ryland game...all the TEWs, the WreSpi series, and both WMMAs. Gotta support your favorite designers.

[BHK1978]

I'd always thought I was an exception. How many people on this board are... shall we say, between jobs?

 

I have been for a while sadly, which is why my post count is so high. I have nothing better to do with my time.

[crayon]

Funny thing is that me and my friend probably never would have got into EWR in the first place if we hadn't have started to get disillusioned with the way WWF/E was being booked (or at least, the way some of the people were).

 

Before that we were pretty happy to just watch the shows and be surprised, and at some stage it was "hey who's booking this monkey crap?" and then we discovered EWR and got a chance to make all those "if I was booking this..." claims come true(ish).

 

Unfortunately he found TEW too much of a learning curve and never stuck to it.. and like many sentiments which seem to be echoed here, I'm too busy to actually take advantage of TEW2010 right now (I'll see your one show booked and raise you NO shows booked (John Awesome lulz doesn't count)).. although I am having fun modding it, which I guess *kinda* counts.

[PoisonedSuperman]

I found it on accident kind of and I always played as TNA because they had a few named stars that I liked such as Jeff Jarrett, etc. I played with out pictures, don't remember if pictures were even available at the time...

 

Without knowing them AJ Styles and Devon Storm would always win their matches and even when they occasionally lost they would ALWAYS use the beat down. One day I bought a TNA PPV for ten bucks and not only was AJ Styles but Devon Storm was CROWBAR!! It was great.

 

I signed Altar boy Luke and Matt and they tore up the tag team division, hired just because of their gimmicks, I thought they were awesome. Now one day while watching a TNA PPV guess who made one quick appearance in a X Guanlet type match? Luke!

 

Raven was always a champion!

 

I would hire a bunch of guys WWF would fire just because I knew them weather I liked them or not. Rikish was named Phat Phuck and had a manager I forgot who, he was in fueds with storm and styles all the time so he'd lose.

 

I had a good vs. evil storyline. Don't really remember much but I remember "Superman" Danny Doring and The Amish Penguin leading their sides to battle.

[Greg McNeish]

I'd always thought I was an exception. How many people on this board are... shall we say, between jobs?

 

So, every once in a while, when my boss gets in his pissy mood, and yells at me for some perceived shortcoming, the thought crosses my mind that getting fired wouldn't be so bad, because I'd at least have more time to play TEW & WreSpi....

[Showtime4Lajf]

I started out stumbling upon EW9000 (might've been 5000, as I played both, but I'm pretty sure I just found 5000 somewhere and figured I should try it out because it was an EW game) and shortly thereafter EW Deluxe. I guess I would've been around 11-12 at the time. I also remember being at a friend's house, finding out EWR had come out two days after its release, and literally running home and downloading it.

 

For some reason I played 1.4 more than any other version of the game, where I took a company from nothing to number two in the world (which was quite a bit easier back then) on the backs of BJ Whitmer, Sonny Siaki, Christian, and Scott Vick. Took me 5 years or thereabouts, if I recall correctly.

Still to this day 0/0/0/0 games are the kind of games I enjoy the most.

 

The EWR days were the most active for me. I would play for hours on end and like most in this thread, these days my time is prioritized differently.

 

I also dabbled in TNM and Promotion Wars and actually played PW quite a bit for at little while. I never got as into it, as I have with the Ryland games, though.

 

Pretty fun to see how many boarders go back to before TEW. I have to admit I would have figured most players from back then would have moved on by now, and a new breed of players who have mainly played the 6 year old TEW franchise would be dominant. Then again, I haven't outgrown checking the forum every chance I get, so I guess I should have figured.

[Slagaholic]

My brother introduced me to EW9000 when I was 10 or 11. Since then I've been a pretty consistent EW/TEW player. I played some PW but never got into it. Even bought an MDickie game before he went bat**** insane. Have bought TEW 2007-2010 so far.

[The Masked Orange]

Pretty fun to see how many boarders go back to before TEW. I have to admit I would have figured most players from back then would have moved on by now, and a new breed of players who have mainly played the 6 year old TEW franchise would be dominant. Then again, I haven't outgrown checking the forum every chance I get, so I guess I should have figured.

 

My generation, the generation that you thought should be dominating these boards, largely do not play TEW.

 

I tried to introduce a few friends to it, but they felt the learning curve was too steep, and some barely touch their PC's when it comes to gaming. The EWR guys already knew about Ryland and wrestling Sims, so it was more learning more rather than learning everything, like I had to. Must say the beginning, where I managed to book a D show for SWF was hugely frustrating. Then I read the help file. C-. Then I read the forums. D-. Then I filtered out most things except for a few select people (like derek and Remi) C+. It's a learning process and many people from my generation just do not have the attention span. And why should they when they could easily play an explosion fest on their PS3/Xbox 360/Wii?

[Maximilian_WWW]

The Amish Penguin

 

I simply have to ask. What??

[Showtime4Lajf]

My generation, the generation that you thought should be dominating these boards, largely do not play TEW.

 

I tried to introduce a few friends to it, but they felt the learning curve was too steep, and some barely touch their PC's when it comes to gaming. The EWR guys already knew about Ryland and wrestling Sims, so it was more learning more rather than learning everything, like I had to. Must say the beginning, where I managed to book a D show for SWF was hugely frustrating. Then I read the help file. C-. Then I read the forums. D-. Then I filtered out most things except for a few select people (like derek and Remi) C+. It's a learning process and many people from my generation just do not have the attention span. And why should they when they could easily play an explosion fest on their PS3/Xbox 360/Wii?

 

I guess that makes sense, when you put it that way. That's the thing about a game that's so incredibly detailed and deep as TEW, it's a gift and a curse. If you ever really get into it, you will buy the games forever, even if you're like seemingly a lot of people on here and you don't actually play the game much. But getting to the point of caring enough to immerse yourself enough to getting into the game I can absolutely see as being difficult, like you described.

 

I simply have to ask. What??

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's an alter ego for (Amish) Roadkill of ECW fame. Whatever happened to that guy after he got cut from OVW, anyway?