Extreme Warfare
Encyclopedia
Extreme Warfare is a series of professional wrestling
management text sim
ulators created by British
programmer Adam Ryland
for the PC
since 1995.
with a wrestling theme. Due to complexity and set up time it was decided a computer format would be more suitable. The first Extreme Warfare on the PC (now called Extreme Warfare 1) was programmed in 1995 in QBasic
. This game was a simple simulator, where one could decide what matches were to take place and who was going to win them but also involved some simple financial elements, such as the wages of wrestlers. Due to limitations in QBasic, Ryland moved the series over to Turbo Pascal
where further incarnations of the game were created, including:
Each version of the game was an upgrade of the previous and continually built on the ideas of booking matches and running the business side of a professional wrestling promotion
. Currently, only games from 2002 to 9000 can be found on the Internet
for download. After release of EW 9000, Extreme Warfare met its main rival. A game called Promotion Wars was released by fellow British programmer Adam Jennings, taking some inspiration from both Extreme Warfare 9000 and Championship Manager
. After the game's release, some of Extreme Warfare's fan base shifted their interest over to this game when released in October 2000.
EWD expanded on the previous games in terms of the actual game world. The game world was expanded in that everyone in the database can now be hired by any promotion, unlike previous games in which WWF
superstars can only be hired by the WWF, with the same applying for WCW
and ECW
. This helped to bring more competition between promotions, which now had their own AI
. Also included in EWD was the match report screen which featured stats about the match quality, crowd reaction and worker effort of the match along with an overall rating. This setup would end up being the basis of all match report screens in later games in the series up to and including TEW 2004.
Initially, Ryland stated that Deluxe was going to be the final game of the series but shortly afterwards, he changed his mind and began work on a new Extreme Warfare game. With the limitations of Turbo Pascal now pushing the game to the limit, Ryland decided in October 2001 to start work on a brand new game in the EW series.
, the series now took a Windows
style interface. One of the most significant changes this game took to the series was the fact that everything on a wrestling event is under the control of the user. In previous games in the series, angles, finishes and (in EWD) interviews were randomly created. This also coincided with the new feud system that was to count the matches, angles and interview victories between the workers involved. The match reports also took a slight change, featuring reviews of the matches from such Internet columnists as Scott Keith instead of a straight play-by-play style. However, the report style would revert back to its old style in TEW 2004.
Another major feature that changed the way the game was played was the way the game world was represented. Unlike the previous games in which it was mostly focused on the major promotions such as the WWF and WCW, the promotion size feature meant many promotions in North America
could now be included from the global sized promotions like WWE
to the cult sized promotions like ROH
to a mere backyard federation
.
From June 2002 to July 2003, the game has had some significant upgrades and new versions of the game were released. Some of these changes included changes to the TV timeslot system where the more further away from a primetime slot a televised event is shown, the fewer segments the user gets to book with. The Internet feature was also increased to include a website based on the independent promotions, a website based on backstage gossip and a website for your promotion. Relationships between workers were added to help bring in backstage politics where people are more willing put over their friends and less with their enemies. Eventually workers could also be in multiple tag team
s with a statistic for experience which increases with each match fought together. Gimmicks were then added for wrestlers to use which would affect the overness of a worker over how strong that gimmick was. More changes were made to adapt to the independent promotions. This included multiple open contracts for workers, enabling them to work in up to three promotions and the ability of workers to go on Japanese tours, affecting the booking of cards. The optional ability of viewing a wrestler's picture was also added later in the game's production.
Since its release, EWR's popularity has exceeded that of the game's previous incarnations. In some cases, this game is played more than its later (and commercialized) incarnations. The popularity of EWR also made a huge dent in Promotion Wars' popularity, as its planned sequel Promotion Wars 2 was never completely released.
Due to the size of the game, Ryland felt that in order to include new features and upgrades a completely new game would have to be programmed from scratch. With this task taking quite a lot of his time, Ryland decided to turn his hobby into a commercial venture, signing a contract with simulator game company .400 Software Studios to produce a new commercial game.
Total Extreme Warfare 2004 (TEW 2004) was released on March 31, 2004 under .400 Software Studios. The game was distributed by downloading on the Internet after purchase, (using ELicense). A full working trial was also available for download which originally would expire after a single day but was replaced by a trial that makes the user able to play one game month unlimited times.
Along with a new professional layout, the game had more features. While the previous games only focused on the wrestling scene of North America (Japan was featured in later versions of EWR but not playable), TEW 2004 expanded the world to include such areas as Japan
, Mexico
, the United Kingdom
and Australia
. With this, each worker's overness was now expanded from EWR's single value to a series of values depending on areas in the world. The AI was changed in that now the user could now see what matches other promotions have booked, other promotions' financial details and what deals they have made. More contract clauses such as medical coverage and travel expenditure being included, contracts deal decisions were now made over time rather than immediate. Inspired by some fans playing against each other using WWE brands by sending files to each other through the Internet, a multi-player feature was added to make users play against each other with different promotions. Booking was also improved in that not only could the user edit the card more easily, the booking was now time-based, meaning such anomalies as booking 11 hour-long Iron Man matches on a two-hour shows would no longer be possible. The game was also more customisable than before with new editing modes as Create-A-Match and Create-A-Gimmick.
Due to the problem of copyright issues by going commercial, the series turned from using stats of the real wrestling world to a fictitious wrestling world called the CornellVerse. This world is named after the character of Tommy Cornell one of the most influential people and best wrestlers in the CornellVerse, based on a character Ryland had created a few years ago when participating in e-federations
.
On June 14, 2004, the game was renamed to Total Extreme Wrestling 2004 to help distinguish the EWR series with the new TEW series. Due to undisclosed reasons, Ryland moved from .400 Software Studios to another simulator game company, Grey Dog Software
. His first game created there however was not another Extreme Warfare game, instead the first Wrestling Spirit game.
Due to .400 Software Studio's closure on January 1, 2006, the game was taken off the market permanently. There are currently no plans to make this game freeware or shareware
.
The sequel to TEW 2004, Total Extreme Wrestling 2005 (TEW 2005) was released on October 6, 2005 under Grey Dog Software. A demo was also released in advance on September 29, 2005, allowing the user to play one game month just like previous demos. TEW 2005 included some more new features. Advance booking was one example which helped to promote upcoming big events. Televised shows also improved, bringing both competition to the shows with non-wrestling shows along with multiple television deals around the world for one show. The pay-per-view feature was now very similar to television in that there's now a list of pay-per-view providers which the user must make a deal with to get their pay-per-view provided. A momentum meter was also added to the wrestlers to bring in more realism in that if they give great matches, cut good interviews and participate in angles, it will increase and thus gain more overness. This helped to prevent the user from booking the same over people all the time and expect good ratings. The booking also improved in that the match purpose feature from EWR has returned and enhanced. The user must now talk to road agents about how the match has to be set up, including ways of putting people over, burying a worker and the way an actual match needs to be performed. TEW 2005 also made more features customizable with its new editable statistics for angles, storylines, locations and injuries. Its angle editor consisted of many different types such as interviews to beatdowns to celebrations and uses up to six people to participate in various roles. The storyline editor takes these angles and places them in an order the booker will need to comply to. The storyline editor was created by Phil Parent, using Georges Polti
's book The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
as an inspiration. Also included was the "grades" feature. Instead of having an exact view of the stats each wrestler has along with changes, a more realistic grade feature was instead added to make the user rely on instinct for crucial decisions.
TEW 05 became freeware on July 1, 2009.
On January 20, 2010 Adam Ryland released the demo to Total Extreme Wrestling 2010. The official release happened on January 25, 2010.
Professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a mode of spectacle, combining athletics and theatrical performance.Roland Barthes, "The World of Wrestling", Mythologies, 1957 It takes the form of events, held by touring companies, which mimic a title match combat sport...
management text sim
Text sim
Text Sim refers to a type of computer or video game that focuses on using a text based element to simulate some aspect of the real world...
ulators created by British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
programmer Adam Ryland
Adam Ryland
Adam Ryland is a British programmer best known for creating the Extreme Warfare series of games.-Background:Born July 23, 1980 and currently residing in Birmingham, England, Ryland graduated from Aston University in 2001 with a degree in computer science. After graduating, Ryland worked for Wrox...
for the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
since 1995.
Classic Extreme Warfare
Ryland originally developed Extreme Warfare as a collectible card gameCollectible card game
thumb|Players and their decksA collectible card game , also called a trading card game or customizable card game, is a game played using specially designed sets of playing cards...
with a wrestling theme. Due to complexity and set up time it was decided a computer format would be more suitable. The first Extreme Warfare on the PC (now called Extreme Warfare 1) was programmed in 1995 in QBasic
QBasic
QBasic is an IDE and interpreter for a variant of the BASIC programming language which is based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate form, and this intermediate form is immediately interpreted on demand within the IDE. It can run under nearly all versions of DOS...
. This game was a simple simulator, where one could decide what matches were to take place and who was going to win them but also involved some simple financial elements, such as the wages of wrestlers. Due to limitations in QBasic, Ryland moved the series over to Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS, developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership...
where further incarnations of the game were created, including:
- Extreme Warfare 2
- Extreme Warfare 2000
- Extreme Warfare 2001
- Extreme Warfare 2002
- Extreme Warfare 5000
- Extreme Warfare 6000
- Extreme Warfare 7500
- Extreme Warfare 9000
Each version of the game was an upgrade of the previous and continually built on the ideas of booking matches and running the business side of a professional wrestling promotion
Professional wrestling promotion
A professional wrestling promotion is a company or business that regularly performs shows involving professional wrestling. Promotion also describes a role which entails management, advertising and logistics of running a wrestling event...
. Currently, only games from 2002 to 9000 can be found on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
for download. After release of EW 9000, Extreme Warfare met its main rival. A game called Promotion Wars was released by fellow British programmer Adam Jennings, taking some inspiration from both Extreme Warfare 9000 and Championship Manager
Championship Manager series
The Championship Manager series is a series of British football-management simulation computer games, the first of which was released in 1992.The Championship Manager brand and game was conceived by two brothers: Paul and Oliver Collyer...
. After the game's release, some of Extreme Warfare's fan base shifted their interest over to this game when released in October 2000.
Extreme Warfare Deluxe
On April 1, 2001, Extreme Warfare Deluxe (EWD) was released. This was a significant game in the series in that it was the first game in a while to be built by scratch instead of an upgrade of which the previous games were.EWD expanded on the previous games in terms of the actual game world. The game world was expanded in that everyone in the database can now be hired by any promotion, unlike previous games in which WWF
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
superstars can only be hired by the WWF, with the same applying for WCW
World Championship Wrestling
World Championship Wrestling, Inc. was an American professional wrestling promotion which existed from 1988 to 2001. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it began as a regional promotion affiliated with the National Wrestling Alliance , named Jim Crockett Promotions until November 1988, when Ted Turner and...
and ECW
Extreme Championship Wrestling
Extreme Championship Wrestling was a professional wrestling promotion that was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1992 by Tod Gordon and closed when his successor, Paul Heyman, declared bankruptcy in April 2001...
. This helped to bring more competition between promotions, which now had their own AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
. Also included in EWD was the match report screen which featured stats about the match quality, crowd reaction and worker effort of the match along with an overall rating. This setup would end up being the basis of all match report screens in later games in the series up to and including TEW 2004.
Initially, Ryland stated that Deluxe was going to be the final game of the series but shortly afterwards, he changed his mind and began work on a new Extreme Warfare game. With the limitations of Turbo Pascal now pushing the game to the limit, Ryland decided in October 2001 to start work on a brand new game in the EW series.
Extreme Warfare Revenge
Arguably the most popular game of the series, Extreme Warfare Revenge (EWR) was released on June 15, 2002. Now programmed in Visual BasicVisual Basic
Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...
, the series now took a Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
style interface. One of the most significant changes this game took to the series was the fact that everything on a wrestling event is under the control of the user. In previous games in the series, angles, finishes and (in EWD) interviews were randomly created. This also coincided with the new feud system that was to count the matches, angles and interview victories between the workers involved. The match reports also took a slight change, featuring reviews of the matches from such Internet columnists as Scott Keith instead of a straight play-by-play style. However, the report style would revert back to its old style in TEW 2004.
Another major feature that changed the way the game was played was the way the game world was represented. Unlike the previous games in which it was mostly focused on the major promotions such as the WWF and WCW, the promotion size feature meant many promotions in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
could now be included from the global sized promotions like WWE
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
to the cult sized promotions like ROH
Ring of Honor
Ring of Honor ' is an American professional wrestling promotion, founded in 2002 by Rob Feinstein and Gabe Sapolsky. From 2004 to 2011, the promotion was under the ownership of Cary Silkin before being sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in May 2011...
to a mere backyard federation
Backyard wrestling
Backyard wrestling , and also referred to as yarding or backyarding is a controversial underground recreation based on the usually untrained practice of professional-style wrestling in a typically low budget environment between predominantly 12 to 30 year old males. Some practitioners have attended...
.
From June 2002 to July 2003, the game has had some significant upgrades and new versions of the game were released. Some of these changes included changes to the TV timeslot system where the more further away from a primetime slot a televised event is shown, the fewer segments the user gets to book with. The Internet feature was also increased to include a website based on the independent promotions, a website based on backstage gossip and a website for your promotion. Relationships between workers were added to help bring in backstage politics where people are more willing put over their friends and less with their enemies. Eventually workers could also be in multiple tag team
Tag team
Tag team professional wrestling is a variation in which matches are contested between teams of multiple wrestlers. A tag team may comprise two wrestlers who normally wrestle in singles competition, but more commonly are made of established teams who wrestle regularly as a unit and have a team name...
s with a statistic for experience which increases with each match fought together. Gimmicks were then added for wrestlers to use which would affect the overness of a worker over how strong that gimmick was. More changes were made to adapt to the independent promotions. This included multiple open contracts for workers, enabling them to work in up to three promotions and the ability of workers to go on Japanese tours, affecting the booking of cards. The optional ability of viewing a wrestler's picture was also added later in the game's production.
Since its release, EWR's popularity has exceeded that of the game's previous incarnations. In some cases, this game is played more than its later (and commercialized) incarnations. The popularity of EWR also made a huge dent in Promotion Wars' popularity, as its planned sequel Promotion Wars 2 was never completely released.
Due to the size of the game, Ryland felt that in order to include new features and upgrades a completely new game would have to be programmed from scratch. With this task taking quite a lot of his time, Ryland decided to turn his hobby into a commercial venture, signing a contract with simulator game company .400 Software Studios to produce a new commercial game.
Total Extreme Warfare 2004
Along with a new professional layout, the game had more features. While the previous games only focused on the wrestling scene of North America (Japan was featured in later versions of EWR but not playable), TEW 2004 expanded the world to include such areas as Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. With this, each worker's overness was now expanded from EWR's single value to a series of values depending on areas in the world. The AI was changed in that now the user could now see what matches other promotions have booked, other promotions' financial details and what deals they have made. More contract clauses such as medical coverage and travel expenditure being included, contracts deal decisions were now made over time rather than immediate. Inspired by some fans playing against each other using WWE brands by sending files to each other through the Internet, a multi-player feature was added to make users play against each other with different promotions. Booking was also improved in that not only could the user edit the card more easily, the booking was now time-based, meaning such anomalies as booking 11 hour-long Iron Man matches on a two-hour shows would no longer be possible. The game was also more customisable than before with new editing modes as Create-A-Match and Create-A-Gimmick.
Due to the problem of copyright issues by going commercial, the series turned from using stats of the real wrestling world to a fictitious wrestling world called the CornellVerse. This world is named after the character of Tommy Cornell one of the most influential people and best wrestlers in the CornellVerse, based on a character Ryland had created a few years ago when participating in e-federations
Fantasy wrestling
Fantasy wrestling is an umbrella term representing the genre of role-playing and statistics-based games which are set in the world of professional wrestling...
.
On June 14, 2004, the game was renamed to Total Extreme Wrestling 2004 to help distinguish the EWR series with the new TEW series. Due to undisclosed reasons, Ryland moved from .400 Software Studios to another simulator game company, Grey Dog Software
Grey Dog Software
Grey Dog Software is a computer games development company, based in Phoenix, Arizona, and specializing in sports text simulations. Notable games released by Grey Dog include the Total Extreme Warfare series and the Wrestling Spirit series.- History :...
. His first game created there however was not another Extreme Warfare game, instead the first Wrestling Spirit game.
Due to .400 Software Studio's closure on January 1, 2006, the game was taken off the market permanently. There are currently no plans to make this game freeware or shareware
Shareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
.
Total Extreme Wrestling 2005
Georges Polti
Georges Polti was a French writer from the mid-19th century . He is best-known today for his list of thirty-six dramatic situations and for writing Art of Inventing Characters .-External links:* Full text of available at Internet Archive* Full text of available...
's book The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a descriptive list which was created by Georges Polti to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. To do this Polti analyzed classical Greek texts, plus classical and contemporaneous French works. He also analyzed a handful...
as an inspiration. Also included was the "grades" feature. Instead of having an exact view of the stats each wrestler has along with changes, a more realistic grade feature was instead added to make the user rely on instinct for crucial decisions.
TEW 05 became freeware on July 1, 2009.
Total Extreme Wrestling 2007
TEW 2007 was officially released on December 29, 2006, with a number of new features. Where both TEW2004 and TEW2005 were written from scratch, TEW 2007 was being built on top of TEW 2005's source code. There were a large amount of new features, such as the ability to customise merchandise and a large amount of new contract types (short-term, etc.).Total Extreme Wrestling 2008
A new installment of the series, TEW 2008, was announced on the Grey Dog Software website on January 1, 2008. The game is largely based on TEW 2007 but Adam Ryland has made more than 100 changes and additions. The game allows players to import and convert their TEW 2007 databases. The game was released on June 7, 2008. The demo for the game was released on June 1, 2008. Response to the demo overloaded the website, including the company forums, requiring a change to a larger server.Total Extreme Wrestling 2010
In late 2009 in was announced that TEW 2010 would be released in early 2010. Some of the new features announced included a revamp of backstage morale, and several changes to improve the interface and to reduce the amount of time it takes to navigate through the game and to book a show.On January 20, 2010 Adam Ryland released the demo to Total Extreme Wrestling 2010. The official release happened on January 25, 2010.
External links
- WrestlingSims.de - The German resource for Wrestling-Sims (formerly known as Extreme Warfare Germany)
- Total Xtreme Wrestling & MMA - It´s your Choice - German Site for Wrestling & MMA Diaries
- Grey Dog Software
- Total Extreme Wrestling 2004 at GameSpotGameSpotGameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
- Inside Pulse TEW 2005 review
- CNET TEW 2005 review
- - Foro en español de EWR y TEW