Hulk Hogan Endorsed The Worst Wrestling Video Game Of All Time
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In 2011, Hulk Hogan was struggling for money. The former WWE and WCW megastar had accumulated an outrageous amount of wealth from his wrestling days, but after a costly divorce with Linda and several botched business ventures, Hulk Hogan’s wealth all but faded. Before all this, Hogan’s net worth was about $25 million but by 2011, he almost ended up broke.
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Fortunately, Hogan, even in 2011, had the name value. He was well past his prime, but he was a recent part of TNA television, so Hogan started endorsing a number of different products, and wrestling fans were blessed with the worst wrestling video game ever made.
Hulk Hogan Puts His Name On A Truly Awful Video Game
On second thoughts, to call it a wrestling game is just unfair. Wrestling fans are no strangers to bad quality video, but Hulk Hogan’s Main Event on the Xbox 360 is on another level of terrible. The game was released in 2011 by Majesco Entertainment (the same company responsible for Drake of the 99 Dragons masterpiece) and it made use of Xbox’s Kinect motion system, just not very effectively.
As amazing as the Kinect seemed on paper, in 2011, it was the worst out of the bunch, especially compared to PlayStation Move and Nintendo Wii. Controlling the game’s interface using the motion accessory was a nightmare. Upon launching the game and sitting through the logos, you end up on the main-screen, with a very generic looking cartoon wrestler and three different options: Game modes, Create-A-Wrestler, and Extras.
The game was not affiliated with any wrestling company, so it doesn’t really have a roster of well-known characters. The only relevant wrestling personality you’ll encounter is Hulk Hogan himself. You’ll have to create a wrestler to move forward in the game and good luck there.
The menus are ridiculously hard to navigate with gestures, and you’ll lose your patience real quick while trying to create a character. Even the worst WWE 2k game has a robust creation suite. The old SmackDown games on the Playstation 1 had better customization than this game. You get a cartoony character model and that’s it.
The facial features never change, but you can change the hairstyle, facial hair, skin tone and add in a bunch of accessories. That’s pretty much it. Once you’ve miraculously created your very own wrestling character by punching the air, the game moves you into a tutorial, with the Hulkster himself by your side as your mentor.
This is where the majority of gamers give up. The tutorial is all they can take and nobody can blame them. Since this is a motion game, gestures are everything, but most of the time, you’ll be flailing around while trying to follow the Hulkster’s instructions on screen.
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After playing for a total of five minutes, you’ve basically seen everything the game has to offer. Punching, kicking, a very dodgy jump that sometime works and sometimes doesn’t, and a very primitive grappling system. Through exaggerated gestures, your characters pick up a rival opponent and slams him. There is not much variation to the slams, or the striking attacks, so within the first tutorial, you’ve pretty much seen it all.
Hulk Hogan's Main Event Is Not a Wrestling Game But a Poor Brawler
After going through the tutorial, players are presented with a couple of different game modes. Career mode puts the created “wrestler” through a typical rags-to-riches story, with Hogan himself serving as the mentor. Head-to-Head is a basic exhibition mode and the hardcore mode is the same thing, except for the addition of weapons.
That’s pretty much it. To be honest, it would be wrong to call Hulk Hogan’s Main Event a wrestling game. It isn’t. It’s an arcade brawler with very little substance and horrendously dated visuals, despite being released for the Xbox 360, and in the year 2011. This was another attempt for Hogan to make quick money but, unfortunately, the game bombed in sales and the reviews.
On the plus side, playing this game for half-an-hour does give you a pretty good workout. The sheer rage that comes along adds to the overall experience as well.
