Aero

While we're apparently getting a more realistic cage match, hopefully they'll fix HIAC also. It desperately needs changes. Everyone's biggest complaint is that if you throw your opponent off the top, he gets right back up usually. That must be fixed. Although it's not the biggest concern, it'd be nice to have the actually four 'trapdoors' on top of the Cell instead of just two. And I never really liked the automatic cut-scene move of putting someone through the trapdoor. A powerbomb doesn't necessarily have to bring you down with your opponent. Finally, the space between the cage and ring is too small, and not just because of the huge space between the ring and guardrails. In the past three games, it's been the exact same HIAC match. Sure, there's a few nice grapples outside the ring that allow you to throw your opponent into the cage and such, but when will we be able to do real moves and other punches/kicks outside the ring? And having weapons inside the cell would be good, too. For season, I really hope they allow roster changes just like HCTP. Last year's season got way too repetitive with the same roster and stories over and over again.

Vince being revealed as the Higher Power Paul Heyman turning on Brock at Survivor Series 02 Lita turning on Kane recently

Yeah, boredom caused me to play it some more yesterday, using the start with 100 lives Game Genie code. I actually managed to beat everyone's levels except Juggernaut level. The main problem I have is trying to tear through the walls because Juggernaut always speeds up if you go to far ahead, but if you stay too close, it's near impossible to break through the walls without taking hits.

Coco Puffs and Cookie Crisp both changed for the worse. I think I remember Coco Puffs getting more Hershey's chocolate or something. Cookie Crisp also added more chocolate and got much worse. They're both eatable, but nowhere near as good as they used to be. Now Fruit Loops. There's a fruit flavored cereal that's stayed just as good over the years.

From the Smackdown thread: For those wondering, the masked men who attacked The Undertaker on Smackdown were Mike and Todd Shane, Val Venis, WWE developmental talent Mike Knox and one other name I haven't confirmed yet

Just a random thought I had while watching the JBL-Cena I Quit match from Judgment Day. Since they're doing voice-overs again, if they decided to have I Quit matches in the game, again, they should record everyone saying 'I Quit' in an agonizing voice for the finishes. Unless the voice-overs came out in a normal voice, I'd say it would be much better than slowly standing over your opponent's head and shoving a mic in his face.

Edge was booed all the time last summer. During his match with Orton at Vengeance, the fans were chanting "Let's go Orton", and Orton was the heel. Then, at Summerslam, he was being booed by the 'bizarro' crowd, but he was facing Jericho of all people.

So I just rewatched this last night for the first time in years. I thought it was a fantastic match. First, there's a hot crowd that loves HBK and hates the hometown boy, Jarrett. While the match actually has a slower pace, both guys really get the crowd into it with the one upsmanship for the first few minutes and few highspots every so often. Jarrett does heel moves like teasing walking out several times and getting extra leverage on a submission with help from Roadie. The stalling when Jarrett circled the ring twice didn't even really bother me much. Those that love psychology might be pissed that Jarrett goes from working the back and shoulder into working the knee for the figure-four in the last few minutes. The finish comes out of nowhere, and I think it could've been better, but it was just HBK taking advantage of the heels' mistake. Still, I think they're all minor flaws. Overall, I think it's the WWF MOTY 1995.

So, now that Taker-Hassan at GAB is officially a No. 1 Contenders match, it's a safe bet that the winner faces Batista at Summerslam. If Taker wins, fine... the only problem is that there's a good chance the fans will cheer Taker over hometown boy Batista. Nothing major though. Now I'm starting to believe that they really are going for the Batista-Hassan match. There's just too many problems here though. Firstly, they're going to really need to make Hassan seem like a threat going in. So far he's been only a high mid-carder at best. And the time he fought Batista on Raw, he completely got his ass kicked drawing a DQ. Any intrigue of seeing the match for me is gone. I've seen Batista leave the guy in a blood bath on free TV. It's going to have to be one hell of a good build and not just the usual anti-USA stuff. Secondly, I know most of us complained a few weeks ago, but why did they waste Hassan's big pinfall loss on Cena in less than 3 minutes? The same guy is possibly going to be headlining the second biggest show of the year.

Yikes, I just popped in Spider-Man & X-Men: Arcade's Revenge today. It's safe to say I'll never beat it, even with Game Genie. While Spider-Man and Cyclops aren't that hard, the rest are too frustrating. I managed to beat Gambit's first stage, but it only took about 10 tries before I needed to memorize the layout of the stage so I could zoom through. Seriously, if you walk through an enemy, you seem to lose half of your life. Still can't beat Juggernaut. Since I didn't have success with them, I didn't even bother with Storm.

Better than Bret-Diesel and HBK-Razor ladder 2? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think so. Bret-Diesel (Survivor Series) is a REALLY close second to me, though. Ladder II never 'wowed' me. I thought it was a really good match, easily in the top 5 of 95. Just two things I hate, but they don't really take anything away from it: First, the blown finish, and second, the Razor's Edge tease that gets Razor backdropped over the top and outside. I really hate that spot because we all know Razor won't hit it when he's so close to the outside. It might as well be his signiture bump, kind of like how Kidman always seems to be DDT'd straight down from the top rope. The spot is kind of like whenever today, Angle teases hitting a German suplex to someone off the apron to the floor (think the video clip with Big Show from NWO 04), it's never going to happen in the WWF. I've always said Mind Games was HBK's best non-gimmicked single match, but this can definitely give it a run for its money. I haven't seen Mind Games in a while, so I'd have to watch it.

1. Nunzio 2. Funaki 3. Al Snow 4. Tyson Tomko 5. Val Venis Best Bet: Nunzio Phone Avoider: Val Venis

I'm a little late, but I'll try. Believe it or not Val isn't at home Please leave a message at the beep, I must be out, or I'd pick up the phone, Where could I be? Believe it or not, I'm not home... Beep

Well, WWE NEEDS to make room for at least half of the diva search people. Duh.

Jackie's gone.

Weird, I refreshed it a bunch of times and nothing new came up... until now. As for Haas being gone... NOOOOOO!

So, are Haas and Jackie just guesses? I don't see it anywhere on WWE.com.

Well, I really don't care about Matt Morgan. Everyone says that he had talent in OVW, but we never got to see anything in WWE. The Dudleys, though... that's shocking. I was actually looking forward to their return, too.

I'd say, "there goes the cruiserweight division", but WWE has barely actually used Kidman, Moore, or Akio for the division, outside of maybe a titles shot on a random SD/Velocity. Really, I'm only disappointed with Akio and Maven. Akio for the same reasons everyone has before me, and Maven's heel run was kind of growing on me.

Yikes, talk about overbooking. Cena's not THAT good that he needs to be beaten by five guys. Unless there actually is a stable in the works, I can't see HBK or Angle actually cooperating with HHH. Angle's been against HHH & Flair since he came over, and HBK and HHH have their 20 year history or whatever. But, it is WWE, so they might choose to do a nonsensical swerve for the sake of swerving everyone.

Well, from the Batista-HHH picture above, the stamina/life meters look alot like No Mercy's, and they're much smaller, too. Hopefully it'll be possible to fit maybe four or three meters across. In the past two games, the screen was way too full during Rumbles with four meters on the bottom, two on top, and each having a ring-out meter. Hopefully with smaller meters, it won't be so cluttered.

Oh yeah, that's another one. When your game's second stage is too hard for most people to get past (the ridiculously tricky swimming bullshit where you're dodging deadly seaweed, that's about as "fun" and hard as a game of Operation!) you really need to think about going back to the drawing board. The water level wasn't THAT hard. You just had to be extra careful. I was able to get by it usually with no problem, but the seaweed in that one part could be really annoying at times. After you rescue Splinter is where the game starts getting difficult, I think.

Well, I'm guessing JBL-Batista and Taker-Hassan will both happen at GAB, but I there's always the possibility of rematches. I'd go for something like this... WWE Title: Batista vs. Undertaker World Title: Cena vs. Jericho HHH vs. Kurt Angle IC Title: Carlito vs. RVD HBK vs. Hogan Rey Mysterio vs. Christian The rest of the matches are almost impossible to tell right now. I'm hoping that Eddie-Rey comes to an end at GAB, because the current stuff they're doing with Rey's kid is rediculous. The match with Christian is just a complete guess. As usual with Summerslam, for only a 3 hour PPV, it's hard to get everyone in there, especially with the diva search probably taking up 10-15 minutes like last year.

Well, I loved both SYM and HCTP when they came out. Like those, this actually looks like they're improving or changing alot of the features. Last year's seemed like an overall downgrade due to the smaller roster, bad season with voiceovers, and smaller CAW. The only really improvement was graphics and basic gameplay, which was pretty much the same as HCTP. I've never played the first three SD games, so I'd say that 2/3 games being good to most people doesn't automatically mean that this year's will be bad. I wouldn't just dismiss it right away. BTW, I can't be the only one that's glad that they're going with the logical SD vs. RAW 2006 title instead of a stupid catchphrase like 'You Can't See Me'?