October 2023

I haven’t posted any new material here for YEARS and I’m sorry about that. today however is significant in that it’s 20 years since the release of the PlayStation 2 game WWE SmackDown! Here Comes The Pain (HCTP) and I would like to tell my story about my gameplay experiences with it. WWE SmackDown! Here Comes The Pain was developed by Yuke’s and released by THQ on October 27, 2003. It’s the 5th release in the SmackDown! series. (The information contained within are exclusively from the way how I remember it, so it may not be 100% accurate.) WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth (SYM) was prominently shown in TV commercials during Monday Night RAW back in 2002, but by 2003 I’d largely tuned out of watching the TVs, so I’m uncertain what kind of advertising campaign existed for HCTP. I got this game for my 21st birthday, and getting back to my dorm room my only goal was to perform the Tombstone Piledriver finisher with Undertaker (the biker one). Except that wasn’t his finisher, and I had no prior experience with any of these games at all. I was unaware of the gameplay changes that were made since SYM, and…