WWE WrestleMania X8 Nintendo GameCube Retro Review

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About This Sports Courier Gaming Retro Review: TSC Gaming’s Fred Richani reviews WWE WrestleMania X8 on Nintendo Gamecube — the first WWE / WWF game ever released on GCN! The spiritual successor to the legendary WWF No Mercy on N64! Unfortunately, WrestleMania X8 (WrestleMania 18) has a hard time following up its more critically acclaimed predecessors. Released in June 2002, WrestleMania X8 would be the final WWE game to feature the old WWF Attitude Era scratch logo following the infamous World Wildlife Fund vs. World Wrestling Federation lawsuit.

WWE WrestleMania X8 was developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ exclusively for the Nintendo Gamecube.

WrestleMania X8 Game Modes: Exhibition matches, Path of A Champion mode, Create A Superstar / Wrestler, Hell in a Cell, Ladder match, WWE TLC match, Royal Rumble, steel cage, battle royal

WWE Titles Featured: WWE Heavyweight Championship, Intercontinental Championship, European Championship, Tag Team Championship, Light Heavyweight Championship, Hardcore Championship

Complete WWE WrestleMania X8 roster:

• Male Wrestlers: Albert (A-Train, Giant Bernard, Lord Tensai), Rikishi, Scotty 2 Hotty, Lance Storm, Test, Rob Van Dam, William Regal, Christian (long hair), Kurt Angle (with hair), Kane, The Undertaker (Biker), Ric Flair, Edge, Booker T, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Faarooq (Ron Simmons), Bradshaw (JBL), Bubba Ray Dudley, D-Von Dudley, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Hollywood Hulk Hogan (NWO Hogan), Triple H, Chris Jericho (Y2J long hair), Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon, Rhyno, Raven, The Big Show Paul Wight, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Tazz
• WWE Divas: Lita, Stephanie McMahon, Trish Stratus, Stacy Keibler, Mighty Molly Holly, Jacqueline Moore
• WWE Tag Teams: APA: Faarooq and Bradshaw (a year before becoming JBL), Brothers of Destruction (Kane and The Undertaker), The Dudley Boyz (Bubba and D-Von), Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz & Lita, The Hurricane & Mighty Molly, NWO (Scott Hall and Kevin Nash), 2 Cool (Scotty and Rikishi), Stephanie McMahon & HHH

Written Review

Is WWE WrestleMania X8 worth buying and playing on the Nintendo GameCube today? You’re about to find out.

What’s up everybody? This is Fred Richani of TSC Gaming, your home for game reviews, news, retro look-backs and everything in between. I’m here to give you my thoughts on WWE WrestleMania X8, the very first WWE wrestling game on the Nintendo GameCube, released back in June 2002. I’ve been catching up on a lot of GameCube classics, some obscure and some major, and as a wrestling fan I had to do a deep dive on some of these wrestling games. Day of Reckoning, Day of Reckoning 2 and even WrestleMania XIX were relatively well received by the GameCube community, but I’d kind of forgotten about WrestleMania X8. When I got my hands on it I was excited, because WrestleMania X8 is the spiritual successor to No Mercy on the N64. Nintendo came out with the N64 and a few years later the GameCube, so this was the first Nintendo WWE game since No Mercy, the greatest wrestling game of all time for storylines, game modes and more.

So we finally get WWE’s debut on the GameCube, and what do you get? Not much. You get an exhibition mode with match types like TLC, hardcore, Hell in a Cell, cage match and fatal four-way, the usual you’d expect even back then. There’s Path of a Champion, where you can go for all the men’s belts but none of the women’s belts; Battle for the Belts, where you compete for user-created championships; the always fun Create-a-Superstar mode; and your options.

What you do get is a rather large roster: the likes of Albert, Rikishi, Scotty 2 Hotty, Lance Storm, Test, RVD, William Regal, Christian, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Steve Austin, right before he walked out of WWE at the time, Booker T, Edge, Ric Flair, the American Badass Undertaker, Kane, Kurt Angle, Faarooq and Bradshaw of the APA, the Dudleys, the Hardys, Hollywood Hogan, The Rock, Triple H, Chris Jericho, Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon, Rhyno, Raven, Chris Benoit, the Big Show, Tajiri and Tazz. On the women’s side, the Divas at the time, you had Lita, Stephanie, Trish, Stacy Keibler, Molly Holly and Jacqueline. The wacky thing, as in a lot of these early 2000s WWE games, is that you can do men versus women, which seemed a little awkward and looks awkward looking back now, about 20 years later.

The really awkward thing about WWE WrestleMania X8 is that even though it’s titled WWE, I believe it was the final WWE video game to feature the WWF scratch logo. You may recall that back in 2002 they lost the lawsuit against the World Wildlife Fund. It’s a long story; Google it. So they changed their name to WWE, which is what they’re known as today, but throughout the game it’s all WWF, which I’m assuming means it was way too late to change the logos. That’s fine; it’s a cool little piece of history.

What’s not cool is the complete lack of a story mode, voice-overs, interesting angles or the unique scenarios we’d come to expect from the Day of Reckoning series, WrestleMania XIX, SmackDown vs. Raw, and nowadays WWE 2K, although the most recent WWE 2K was hot garbage, but that’s another story. The other thing is the character models. I know this is the GameCube and we’re judging it roughly 20 years later, but Day of Reckoning, Day of Reckoning 2 and WrestleMania XIX looked and moved a lot better than this. The one thing that’s plagued WWE games over the last two decades or so has been multi-person matches, and it’s no different here: very chaotic and all over the place.

As for what’s good, it’s a nice trip down memory lane. If you’re a longtime WWE or wrestling fan like me, you’ll get a kick out of it. If you’re a youngin who grew up on John Cena, Batista and Randy Orton, you might be thinking, oh my God, you boomers had to play this back in the day? Hey, don’t judge us by this. Please judge us by No Mercy and WCW/nWo Revenge. Other than a trip down memory lane, unless you’re a collector, I don’t see a reason to really pick up this game. If you already own it and want to go back and play with friends, be my guest. I know the GameCube still has a huge fan base and community. It’s fun, it’s okay, but once the novelty of the older roster, the animations and the TitanTron, and seeing how far we’ve come, fades away, it comes off like an updated version of WWF War Zone-era titles like WCW Nitro or WCW Thunder. If you haven’t played those, they were kind of cool for ’97 and ’98, but not so cool after the releases of nWo Revenge and No Mercy, because they didn’t have much of a story and were pretty bare-bones.

So again, if you’re a collector, go for it. For anybody just looking to buy an old WWE game to play on the GameCube you still have, it’s going for anywhere between $13 and $20 on eBay right now, which isn’t bad at all. If you can pick it up used for $10 to $20, that’s fine, but anything more than that, unless you’re a collector, I don’t know if I could justify it. If you enjoyed this retro review and trip down memory lane, let me know in the comments. Until next time, as always, enjoy the games.