[EWR] KBH January 1996 v0.4

[KONGO]

DA MOD

v0.4 - WWC, AAA, NWANJ

Previous:

v0.2 - WWF, WCW, ECW, USWA

The short version: This is clean, accurate 1996 data.

In a nutshell, this is the first step in a project to basically convert the 1996 mod for TEW10 (done by BurningHamster, the BH in KBH)into an EWR format. I'm going to take it by stages so at least there'll be a useable and coherent product out there each time. My main goal with this is accuracy, not getting a whole bunch of wrestlers in there at the same time. To that end, I've actually cut out a lot of workers from the data, so there are currently 227 total and 4 promotions (WWF, WCW, ECW, USWA). Stats have been transposed to something I think will work with EWR, especially seeing as it doesn't have the variety of stats that TEW has.

Ultimately, I hope to have all of North America as described in the BurningHamster mod converted over to EWR. I will not be adding a lot of Japanese or non-North American wrestlers into the game even with further updates. EWR's modeled on the North American wrestling scene, so only people who have some steady presence in the States by Jan 96 will ever go in this.

Next I'm looking to add in one Mexican promotion and one or two other American promotions, as well as a few more freelancers. But I'll leave that for a little bit. Download, look around, leave your thoughts. Hope it's useful.

[Mancuerda]

This could just be my opinion, but a lot of the stats seem.. well... low. Maybe not the primary stats necessarily, but the secondary stats seem far below what I would consider appropriate.

Take for example Cactus Jack and Undertaker. You gave Jack a 90 for brawl, which is really good and appropriate. But you gave him a 9 for speed and 9 for tech. Foley was still doing a lot of sick bumps and off the apron moves and such. He was fairly quick and underrated as a technician in this period. His matches in '96 through '99 were solid, some of the best of his career. Likewise, Undertaker only has 77 for brawl (I feel like he deserves a 10 point boost) and only 10 in speed, 12 in tech. This is a man who walked the ropes, dove over them, did a lot of quick stuff, even for his size. As for technique, I don't remember him botching moves hardly ever and he was great at story-telling.

I look at someone like Benoit, who has 88 in tech which is about right but only has 30 in speed... or someone like Rey Misterio Jr. who only has 10 in brawl... or RVD having 41 in tech... Roddy Piper having 5 in speed... Steve Austin (as The Ringmaster) having 10 in speed.

It's consistent, across the board for sure, and it will make the game more challenging. That said, it feels like a lot of the stats could be higher. Maybe this was by design, though, since it seems like it's in all the stats.

EDIT: Some of the over values are messed up if you ask me. Bret Hart being 100 and Hulk Hogan being 96... I get that Hogan was getting boos as his babyface run was going stale around this time, but shit, Bret was getting mixed responses too. With the rise of HBK, he wasn't exactly endeared by the whole crowd, which led to his own heel turn. Plus nobody was more recognizable than Hogan until Austin was in the height of his glory... I don't think anyone should be higher in over, or even on that level. I mean, Savage is higher, Flair is higher... Sting, Taker, HBK... Do you really think all these people were more well-known, more popular than Hogan in America? Hogan was a household name. Sting hadn't reached his peak in terms of popularity yet as the nWo won't be formed for another 6 months and he won't go crow for almost another year.

EDIT2: There's a big gap in speed as well. Juvi and Rey are the only ones above 80 and they're at 90 and 91 respectively. Why put them 10+ points above everyone else in speed? They were phenomenal, but what about guys like Liger, Ultimo Dragon, Psychosis, etc.? They were pretty good as well and deserve speed in the 80s at least.

EDIT3: Just realized you don't have Ultimo Dragon. I hope you plan on adding him, even though he's Japanese... he had worked in Mexico and the US by this point.

[KONGO]

Stats are lower. Number one, I put a soft cap of 90 on the four major stats. Second, the way I transposed them, stats which were middle of the road tended to get boosted and stats which were very low got shrunk. Plus, BH's stats are low naturally. I personally agree with them in pretty much every case, and when I didn't, I changed it. That's all I'm going to say about it. I feel like a lot of "versatility" in performers doesn't mean that they need to have bumped up stats in other areas. Cactus Jack taking sick bumps is not evident that he's a better flier or any more agile, and neither does Austin being a limber technical wrestler. I'll grant you, that might be a little low, but I've never seen anything from Austin that suggested he had any talent in the air.

My blanket statement on the matter, though, is: yes, they are lower.

As for Bret/Hogan, that's my fault. Hogan was at 100 but I took him down to 96. I didn't think anybody else would have an overness that high so I guess that slipped my notice. I'll be going back over it later and I'll make sure I grab that. Thanks.

EDIT: As for speed, there were no standout fliers in the US at the time. None that I can remember really. I took out guys like Ultimo and Psicosis. They'll come back, but I wanted everything to come in clean. The choice was between leaving stuff I hadn't edited in there, waiting until I had gone through all of them, or cutting that stuff out. Figured I would just cut it down to something playable as people would be most interested in the big three anyway.

[OGpistolpete]

We need to combine our powers and create a really strong '96 database.

[Skummy]

There's always been a misunderstanding over what the "Speed" stat means. Being able to pull-off a high-flying move doesn't constitute a higher speed stat. It refers to a worker's ability to work a "speed-based" match - so someone like Rey Mysterio or Psicosis would have a high stat, whereas The Undertaker really wouldn't. Despite the rope walk, or the odd high spot like his dive over the ropes, his matches were still methodically-paced, and largely based around brawling. Similarly for Cactus Jack - the ability to do high spots doesn't necessitate a higher speed stat, as his matches were never speed-centric. Though, at this point in time, I would suggest raising his tech stat slightly.

I'd also argue that 'Taker's brawl stat shouldn't be raised - in 1996 he wasn't the great worker he would become. He was good, but 77 is fine for him.

Mysterio's brawl stat should be low at this point in time - he was still very much a lucha worker, with little to no brawling offence. It would be a few years before he adapted to a more "sports entertainment" friendly style.

Liger's a more complicated one, as he had his brain tumour operation in August of 1996 - anything after that, his speed stat shouldn't be too high, as he changed his style drastically. Obviously this is starting in January '96, so you may choose to ignore that, but it's something I feel is worth taking into account. 1996 was really the last days of Liger being one of the better speed guys.

[spangek]

I have a Jan 96 scenario that I have largely modified myself, not a great deal of workers in there but employment stats and ages etc are spot on, stats are largely accurate. I'm happy to send it your way and let you use what you require.

[KONGO]

Thanks. I think I'm gonna be fine mostly going off of the BurningHamster mod but I'll let you know.

[Nerf]

I'd argue that you should remove people like RVD, Shane Douglas, Mr. Hughes, Headhunters and Juvi Guerrera from ECW. Granted, they weren't far from debuting and probably would have already agreed to the dates, but they weren't physically on the shows yet. That's up for debate though, I guess.

You need to add a tag team between Bad Crew 1 and 2, and 1 needs to be changed to a heel. Cactus Jack needs to be added to Raven's Nest and changed to tweener. Chubby Dudley needs to be added to the Dudley Family. Damien Stone needs a gimmick change. El Puerto Ricano wasn't a "comedy character," but change his position to jobber. Hack Meyers was a face. The Eliminators should be renamed to just Saturn and Kronus, no first names, and change Saturn's gimmick to Bad Ass. JT Smith was a heel, give him the Fiery Italian gimmick. Drop the "Saed" from Mustafa. Change Big Dick Dudley's gimmick to... Enforcer? Change Bill Alfonso's gimmick to Evil Referee. Meanie and Stevie should be heel. Change Buh-Buh Ray's gimmick to Comedy Character, you should probably do the same for the rest of the Dudleys. Damien Kane needs to be a heel, gimmick changed to Racist perhaps, although he hadn't debuted yet IIRC. Don E Allen should be a heel. I think Public Enemy were "Fun Babyfaces," despite feuding with the Gangstas. Konnan should probably be upper midcard instead of main event. Shane Douglas, if you're keeping him on the roster, should be face or at least tweener. Taz should be heel. Sandman should be heel with the "Violent Drunk" gimmick. Sabu should be a main eventer. Tommy Dreamer should be an upper midcarder. Tony Stetson should be a heel. Scorpio should be heel with "cocky" gimmick.

And thus ends my KrisClassic impersonation.

Most of that is off the top of my head, so you may want to double check it all.

[KONGO]

Okay, getting ready to resume work on this mod. The promotions I'm focusing on for v0.5 are AAA, NWA New Jersey (mostly since they've got the NWA title), World Wrestling Council, and All Pro Wrestling. If people have any info on these promotions, especially AAA and WWC, would love to have some info on rosters and traits (Fonz Factor, Menace, etc.). I'm going to be basing most of it on the BH mod as before. Also, if there are any freelancers people really want to see, feel free to shout them out. I'll be adding 20 more for the next update.

Thanks for the ECW suggestions, Nerf. RVD and Shane Douglas debuted at House Party and Mr. Hughes was already managing Jimmy Del Ray, from what a show review says. That's on January 5th, so I think it's safe to say they were set to appear there. Headhunters and Juvi debuted later so I took them out. Kind of conflicted about Konnan and Public Enemy since apparently both of them were leaving after that show and there's no real way to simulate that unless the bigger companies still raid ECW at game start. Leaving them for now.

[KONGO]

I'm thinking about adding Comisión de Box y Lucha Libre Mexico D.F. as a small/regional promotion in Mexico to control a few Mexican National titles that weren't specifically controlled by AAA or CMLL. Their starting roster would only be those champions, no TV, just running their Mexico City shows (unless it expands, of course). I'm assuming Mexico was working on open contracts at the time, but I guess AAA/CMLL wouldn't like too much cross-pollination. Should I give AAA/CMLL open or written contracts?

Also, by way of a status update, I've finished WWC and NWA New Jersey. I'll probably end up adding most of the Northeast indys along with this next update because I'll need a lot of workers to meet the minimum.

[Nerf]

Okay, getting ready to resume work on this mod. The promotions I'm focusing on for v0.5 are AAA, NWA New Jersey (mostly since they've got the NWA title), World Wrestling Council, and All Pro Wrestling. If people have any info on these promotions, especially AAA and WWC, would love to have some info on rosters and traits (Fonz Factor, Menace, etc.). I'm going to be basing most of it on the BH mod as before. Also, if there are any freelancers people really want to see, feel free to shout them out. I'll be adding 20 more for the next update.

Thanks for the ECW suggestions, Nerf. RVD and Shane Douglas debuted at House Party and Mr. Hughes was already managing Jimmy Del Ray, from what a show review says. That's on January 5th, so I think it's safe to say they were set to appear there. Headhunters and Juvi debuted later so I took them out. Kind of conflicted about Konnan and Public Enemy since apparently both of them were leaving after that show and there's no real way to simulate that unless the bigger companies still raid ECW at game start. Leaving them for now.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Hughes debuted at House Party too. This was Jimmy Del Ray's first singles match since Dr. Tom signed with WWF. Makes sense to keep him, RVD and Franchise though.

Definitely keep Konnan and PE. They were still on the ECW roster. If anybody wants to stick to reality they can just release them after the show.

On further review I'd make Douglas a tweener. His schtick when he returned, if I recall, was that Tommy Dreamer was trying to teach him how to be a babyface so he could fight Cactus Jack but couldn't shake his heel tendencies.

I genuinely can't remember if Damien Kane and Lady Alexandra had already debuted. Might be worth taking them out with the Headhunters.

Oh, you'll also need to add the Hardcore TV regulars like Koji Nakagawa and Dirtbike Kid.

[KONGO]

I did take out Kane and Alexandra, but left them in the game. Probably should add a marriage relationship or something. Any other Hardcore TV regulars I should add? I'll put in Koji and Dirtbike. If I need stats for em I'll let you know.

[Nerf]

Lord, you're testing my memory

Bruiser Mastino (Mantaur from WWF). He was doing a Chi-Town gangster gimmick, complete with trilby and violin case.

Was Rockin' Rebel on the roster in your data? I think he was still around.

That's all I can remember >_>

[KONGO]

Yeah, I have both those guys in the data already, I'll put them in ECW.

[KONGO]

Have just finished AAA. Got 54 more wrestlers to add so that EWR doesn't slap on some randos. I've got spots for several of them, but if there are any mid-90s indy guys or journeymen you'd like to see, shout 'em out.

[KONGO]

KBH January 1996 v0.4 - WWC, AAA, NWANJ: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?y0o7w694q2ks3qs

The original plan was to do v0.5 with a bunch of other small indies. The issue is that in EWR, every promotion added requires 50 new workers to not auto-update. So I actually have added the rosters of some smaller indies but didn't add the promotions just yet. This one hasn't been gone over with a fine-toothed comb and actually is lacking all the wrestlers needed to prevent auto-complete (still at the 54 mark I was way back when, hence why this isn't v0.5), but since I had this much done I figured I might as well release it rather than sit on it.

Hope to really work on this again soon, but don't hold your breath.