The 5 Worst Wrestling Games Ever Released

The pro wrestling genre has seen the release of some of the greatest games ever made. WWE Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain, WWF No Mercy, WCW/NWO Revenge — these games are objectively great, even when compared to games outside of the scope of wrestling. However, for as many great wrestling games that are out there, there are plenty of stinkers too.

I’d like to iterate that this is just my opinion. And if you happen to enjoy any of the following games, I apologize. Also, because this is such a limited list, we obviously can’t include everything. Trust me, I was tempted to include some modern duds such as AEW Fight Forever due to its ridiculous microtransactions or WCW Mayhem on account of its lack of move variety. But for simplicity’s sake, I’ve decided to stick with games that are laughably bad.

Without further ado, here are the top 5 worst wrestling video games ever released.

Top 5 Worst Wrestling Games Ever Released

WWE WrestleMania 21

After the massive success of WWF SmackDown! and its sequel SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role on the original PlayStation, it’s unsurprising that WWE’s next move would be to branch out and create a market presence on the newly released Xbox in the early 2000s. The company’s first two attempts — WWF Raw and WWE Raw 2 — didn’t quite live up to expectations. But surely the third time would be the charm for an Xbox-exclusive WWE game, right?

No. No, it wasn’t.

Developed by fighting game veterans Studio Gigante, 2005’s WWE WrestleMania 21 was a massive disappointment, bogged down by game-breaking bugs, terrible AI, and clunky gameplay. And while the Career mode — which focused on a user-created character moving up the ranks and taking down the villainous Evolution stable — wasn’t bad in and of itself, most players who bought the game at launch didn’t even have access to it due to a production error with the game disc that made the mode completely inaccessible.

The Career mode wasn’t the only thing broken in the original game, either. Loading screens are long and the game seems to come to a complete halt in terms of frame rate once a match is finished. On top of that, the gameplay is as slow as molasses. As opposed to the fun, arcade-y feel that the SmackDown games were providing at the time, Studio Gigante opted for a more slow and deliberate pace within an in-game engine that was designed from the ground up. And the results were not good. It feels unresponsive, janky, and clunky.

It’s one thing for a game to be just bad. It’s another to be bad and broken.

Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home

ECW’s bankruptcy in 2001 left a huge void in the “violence over substance” wrestling genre. And in turn, the concept of guerilla hyper-violent backyard wrestling was born. Edios Interactive’s Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home was an effort to cash in on that niche market back in 2003, and boy, was it bad.

For starters, the game has a severe lack of game modes and match types as its only offerings are Exhibition and Talk Show Mode, the latter of which serves as a kind of career mode. All matches are pretty much the same — anything-goes hardcore matches — with the only variety being the choice of “arena” (or backyard, duh). Furthermore, the game looks awful, even by 2003’s standards. The character models are bad, environments look low-res, and the game emphasizes every strike landed with copious amounts of cartoonish blood being splattered everywhere.

On top of that, there is almost no notable names on this roster outside of ECW legend Sabu. Outside of him, the only prominent names are Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who make up the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. I am not a fan of ICP or Juggalo Championship Wrestling — their excuse for a “wrestling” promotion — so their inclusion really did nothing for me. Otherwise, the only other name that might seem familiar to wrestling fans is M-Dogg 20, the then-ring name of indie veteran Matt Cross.

Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home not only highlights some of the worst cultural aspects of its time, but is one of the most underwhelming and ugly wrestling games to ever hit the market. But hey, if you enjoy low-brow entertainment with ICP tracks blaring out over the top of it, maybe you’ll think this game is great.

WWF Raw

Remember when we mentioned the previous two WWE games released on the Xbox before WrestleMania 21? Well, WWF Raw was the first. And there’s no other way — this game isn’t good.

While the game boasts a sizeable roster and decent visuals for its time, WWF Raw had been delayed from early 2001 until February of 2002, meaning that by the time the game had come out, its roster was already painfully outdated. Furthermore, WWF Raw was severely lacking in match variety, with the only options being a singles, tag, tornado tag, triple threat, fatal four-way, and battle royale matches, completely omitting most of wrestling’s most exciting gimmick matches such as the steel cage or Hell in a Cell. The control scheme is also a mess and almost impossible to get a handle on. And considering how bad the AI is in this game, it seems I’m on to something.

So we’ve got an outdated roster, no fun match types, bad controls, and terrible AI. Does it at least look good? Well, here’s The Rock’s in-game entrance. ‘Nuff said.

WCW Backstage Assault

For most people, the most exciting stuff in professional wrestling happens in the ring. But not according to developer Kodiak Interactive and publisher EA Sports, who thought that what wrestling fans truly wanted was a game that was exclusively backstage.

2000’s WCW Backstage Assault is the result of several bad ideas, all mashed into one. And nothing about it stands out as being good or even tolerable. It pretty much nails the bad video game trifecta. Boring arenas? Check. Bad graphics? Check. Janky animations? Check. There is absolutely no redeeming quality about this game which seems rushed out the door in order to recoup whatever EA had spent on WCW’s license before the company inevitably went under.

In many ways, the quality of WCW Backstage Assault mirrored that of WCW’s on-air product at the time: bland, boring, and outright bad. And the worst part about it all is that it was completely avoidable. Even though WWE had reestablished its dominance within the wrestling business by 2000, WCW still had a good enough talent roster to stay afloat. And that roster could’ve been used to create a good video game with enough stars that even non-WCW fans could enjoy.

Google “worst wrestling game ever”, and it’s likely WCW Backstage Assault will be near the top of the list, if not at the very top.

WWE 2K20

I’m sure if you go through the history of wrestling video games, there are games that might technically be worse than WWE 2K20. But I can guarantee that none of them had as little an excuse for being as bad as this game is.

WWE 2K20 wasn’t an ambitious idea for a new IP or anything like that — it was a continuation of the longest-running, most celebrated wrestling game franchises ever. But, as WWE was prone to do in 2019, it couldn’t help but shoot itself in the foot. Instead of continuing with Yuke’s as developer, Take Two Interactive decided to oust the Japanese developer in favor of putting Visual Concepts — their own in-house developer — in charge of the game’s development. And when development proved to be too difficult a task, the publisher had the gall to request Yuke’s help out. To the developer’s credit, they did as much as they could.

But just how bad is the actual game? Well, about as bad as you could imagine.

WWE 2K20 is an uninteresting, boring, broken mess. No matter what you were doing or what mode you were playing, you were all but guaranteed to come across some kind of game-breaking or immersion-breaking bug that would ruin your experience. I wish I could be more specific, but to put into perspective just how bad this game was, there was a “Try Not to Laugh” challenge made using only in-game glitches.

To put things into perspective, WWE 2K20 was so awful that 2K decided to not release a game in 2020 and instead focused on developing WWE 2K22, which turned out to be a much more refined and enjoyable experience.

These are the 5 worst wrestling games ever released. Let’s hope WWE 2K25 isn’t a candidate for this list when it releases this year.