![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/kaientaisd2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I was having a conversation the other day about how the WWE\u2019s minor league federation, NXT was either by coincidence or strategy, placed on Thursday nights.\u00a0 Thursday nights are when TNA wrestling, the WWE\u2019s main \u201ccompetition\u201d airs, and has been the norm for I don\u2019t know, a year or two?<\/span><\/p>\n The joke is now that TNA is screwed, because they\u2019re going to get outclassed and outdrawn by NXT, which is pretty much the equivalent of a Ford Mustang getting smoked by a Toyota Corolla, or Outback Steakhouse getting murdered by a Taco Bell in profit margins, or any other instance of something thought to be of moderate quality, getting owned by something thought to be of inferior quality.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not entirely sure how that segued into talking about old video games, but at least I got to take my shot in at TNA in the process; seriously, this is going to be like the late 90\u2019s when one hour of Sunday Night Heat started outdrawing three hours WCW Monday Nitro.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, I remember playing\u00a0Smackdown 2<\/em>\u00a0for the Piss1.\u00a0 The roster was packed to the gills with top-tier talent of that era \u2013 The Rock, Triple H, Undertaker, Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle, etc, etc.\u00a0 But as is the case with the hipster smark, I\u2019m always intrigued and drawn to jobbers, and if we\u2019re playing video games, those are the guys I\u2019m always going to choose.\u00a0 So after deliberating the jobbers among the default roster of available characters, I found myself picking\u00a0Funaki<\/strong>\u00a0at every chance I got.<\/span><\/p>\n And man, was Funaki terrible.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the programmers of the game knew he was designated to be a jobber, so his pool of moves was pathetically low.\u00a0 I honestly don\u2019t even remember what his finishing move in the game was, I think it might have been a hurricurana, or if the opponent was turnbuckled then maybe it was a frankensteiner.\u00a0 Frankly, Funaki won almost no matches in real life with anything other than a cheap roll-up or small package pinfall, that he probably didn\u2019t actually ever have a real-life finishing move.<\/span><\/p>\n But because it was a video game, and video games are always limited, or expansive as the skill of the player, I could still win with Funaki.\u00a0 I would spam the hell out of the head-scissors and stomp enemies incessantly, until they ground down to low enough health where I could cradle them for pinfalls.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t pretty, and truthfully it wasn\u2019t a whole lot of fun, but I wanted a reality where Funaki rose through the ranks and became a main-eventer.<\/span><\/p>\n Put me up against other players, and I could beat them.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t matter if they were The Rock, or the Undertaker, I\u2019d still manage to cheese them into defeat.\u00a0 Choose Funaki in the Royal Rumble, and I could manage to throw guys over the top by spamming Irish whips as soon as guys entered to throw them back over the top rope onto the apron, followed by a drop kick to eliminate them; faster than 1988 Warlords, all day long.\u00a0 It was definitely troll-like and ironic, but I could win with Funaki in exhibition modes and against other players.<\/span><\/p>\n But in the mode that really mattered, the \u201cstory\u201d mode, in which you pick a wrestler, and storylines are supposed to come into play, and you will eventually get opportunities to rise through the ranks, and it\u2019s supposed to culminate with Wrestlemania or something like that.\u00a0 I\u2019m not entirely sure, because I haven\u2019t, and I don\u2019t know anyone who\u2019s actually played the game long enough to make it that far.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, this is what I really wanted to do ultimately, and take Funaki, and eventually get him to the main event of Wrestlemania, where I would undoubtedly take the WWF World Title away from whomever it was, whether it be The Rock, Austin, or Triple H.<\/span><\/p>\n So clearly, the story mode starts off fairly appropriately, and my first opponents is Essa Rios.\u00a0 Pin him easily.\u00a0 The next \u201cshow,\u201d my opponent is, Essa Rios.\u00a0 I\u2019m like, okay, so I go out and beat him again.\u00a0 Next is Scotty 2 Hotty, and I beat him too.\u00a0 However, the next match I have is against, you guessed it, Essa Rios.\u00a0 So I beat him again.<\/span><\/p>\n Mind you, while the \u201cshows\u201d play out, they try to act like real-life WWE programming, so there are occasional vignettes of other storylines playing out, and although they don\u2019t make you watch them, other matches occur, so you\u2019re always aware of who\u2019s rising or falling in the ranks, and who has the all the respective championships.\u00a0 Despite the fact that I\u2019m the only one playing, and playing as Funaki, Funaki had yet to be inserted into any sort of storyline, or at least been involved in at least a vignette.<\/span><\/p>\n And as if the game were reading my mind, at the start of the next show, I\u2019m delighted to see the start of a vignette occur, and there I am as Funaki, walking backstage with my Kaientai partner, Taka Michinoku, and suddenly a guy gets up in my grill, and the text boxes of dialogue indicate that he wants a match, HERE TONIGHT.\u00a0 Of course, Funaki accepts.<\/span><\/p>\n Problem is, that guy was Essa Rios.<\/span><\/p>\n So for at least three \u201cmonths\u201d of game time, I had fought almost nobody other than Essa Rios, with occasional Scotty 2 Hotty or Crash Holly.\u00a0 I won every single match without any difficulty.\u00a0 Meanwhile, storylines were transpiring all around me, with The Rock feuding with Kurt Angle, Rikishi getting involved with Triple H, and Kane and the Undertaker at odds.\u00a0 Sounds a lot like reality, even in a video game.<\/span><\/p>\n But what got me was that even Taka was involved in a storyline, being buddied up with Shane McMahon who was looking for a patsy to be his guest referee when he got involved with Steve Blackman.<\/span><\/p>\n Basically, every wrestler on the roster was getting a storyline except for the guy I happened to be in control of.<\/span><\/p>\n And then suddenly, at the third PPV event, apparently the game realized that it had to throw me a bone, because ultimately the programming of the game eventually needed to progress your character, so they can eventually make it to Wrestlemania.\u00a0 That being said, I was suddenly in a Light Heavyweight title match against, X-Pac.\u00a0 Finally, I thought, a chance to get a belt, and hopefully some storylines!<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as if Triple H himself was in the ears of the programmers when Smackdown 2 was made, and implored that all his buddies be unbeatable.\u00a0 Despite the relative ease of defeating Essa Rios 50 times and Crash Holly and Scotty 2 Hotty additionally, fighting against X-Pac was suddenly like an insurmountable opponent.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the difficulty were ratcheted up to Expert mode for that particular match, and I could barely get any offense in against fucking X-Pac.<\/span><\/p>\n The coup de grace was when I went for a head-scissors and he countered it into a sit-out flapjack.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even know that that move was even in the game.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even know the counter\/block button could even be applied to something like a head-scissors.\u00a0 All I knew was that the match didn\u2019t last much longer, and no matter how much button mashing I did to try and counter X-Pac\u2019s onslaught, it was only a matter of time before I got X-Factor\u2019d and pinned.\u00a0 I felt dejected after losing that match.<\/span><\/p>\n When the next show began, and Essa Rios\u2019 music hit, I turned the game off.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t even save my progress, because I had no more intention of playing the game anymore after that charade.<\/span><\/p>\n Somehow, in spite of a being a video game, where we tried to make our fantasies into realities, the WWE had managed to defy me there too.\u00a0 Even in a virtual WWE, WWE political tropes managed to remain steadfast, and being a jobber in reality equates to being a jobber in a virtual world.\u00a0 Triple H\u2019s buddies still get preferential treatment, and those not in the fold are ground down and given shit work, until they are the ones who quit and are seen as responsible for their own demises.<\/span><\/p>\n Amazing how realistic Smackdown 2 managed to mimic real life so accurately.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was having a conversation the other day about how the WWE\u2019s minor league federation, NXT was either by coincidence or strategy, placed on Thursday nights.\u00a0 Thursday nights are when TNA wrestling, the WWE\u2019s main \u201ccompetition\u201d airs, and has been the norm for I don\u2019t know, a year or two? The joke is now that … Continue reading When video games effortlessly mimic reality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,15,52,91,19,54,55],"class_list":["post-38333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-nostalgia","tag-og","tag-owned","tag-pf","tag-video-games","tag-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38335,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions\/38335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}