WWF SmackDown! (2000). Play online

Summary

When WWF SmackDown! hit the PlayStation in early 2000, it felt like the wrestling world finally had a game that lived up to its TV counterpart. The backstage area was surprisingly expansive, letting you wander between ringside talk and locker‑room hype while decisions you made reshaped rivalries, tag teams and season storylines. The Create‑a‑Superstar tool pushed boundaries, offering sliding scales, personality knobs and even a way to insert video clips, so you could craft a fighter that moved and taunted exactly the way you imagined. Every superstar came stocked with their signature moves and quirks—from the iconic elbow drop to the classic eyebrow‑wiggle—giving the matches an authentic feel. Critics praised its fast‑paced gameplay and season mode, even if some called the create feature a bit arcade‑like. The game quickly became a bestseller, earning a Platinum ELSPA award and moving almost a million copies in its first year, launching a franchise that would eventually evolve into the modern WWE 2K series.

Storyline

WWF SmackDown! on PlayStation offers a story mode split into three sections, the first being a Pre‑Season designed for created wrestlers. During the Pre‑Season you must guide your creation through a full in‑game year, building skills and forming alliances before you can move on, and after ten such years the option to skip it becomes available. Advancing through the season modes rewards you with unlockable items such as new attires and, uniquely, additional body parts that can be mixed onto your custom wrestler rather than new characters.

The narrative is presented without any voice‑overs; backstage meetings show mouths moving in silence while on‑screen text delivers the dialogue. Cutscenes follow the same silent‑text format, keeping the presentation simple. Additionally, the game does not include play‑by‑play color commentary, focusing instead on the core wrestling action.