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World Championship Wrestling
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For the Nintendo Entertainment System video game, see WCW Wrestling. For the Australian promotion, see WCW Australia.
World Championship Wrestling
Details
Acronym WCW
Established 1986
Style American Wrestling
Location Atlanta, Georgia
Founder(s) Ted Turner
Owner(s) Turner Broadcasting System (TBS)/Turner (1988-96)
Time Warner (1996-2001)
Vince McMahon (2001-present)
Parent Turner Broadcasting System (TBS)/Turner (1988-96)
Time Warner (1996-2001)
World Wrestling Entertainment (2001)
Formerly NWA Eastern States Championship Wrestling
NWA Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling
Georgia Championship Wrestling
Jim Crockett Promotions
NWA World Championship Wrestling
Universal Wrestling Corporation
Merged with World Wrestling Entertainment
World Championship Wrestling or WCW, was a professional wrestling promotion that was based in Atlanta and existed from 1986 to 2001. Rights to the promotion and all properties of it currently belong to World Wrestling Entertainment. Originally known as Jim Crockett Promotions, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling, the company was formed when Turner Broadcasting System acquired control of the wrestling related assets of Jim Crockett Promotions, at the time the flagship of the dissipating National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) for $9 million (the Crocketts continued to own a minority stake in the promotion until selling out altogether a few years later). WCW became very popular in the mid-1990s and maintained its popularity until the late 1990s, before spiraling down into severe misfortune. In March 2001, the company's assets, including trademarks, wrestler contracts, and extensive video library were purchased by the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE), who continued to use the name as part of a storyline until November 2001, when the promotion officially ceased. WCW was also a member of the NWA until September 1993.

Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 In the Beginning: The NWA Years
1.2 The Bischoff Era Begins
1.3 Monday Night Wars
1.4 Vince McMahon Strikes Back
1.5 The Death of WCW
2 Final champions
3 WCW Titles
4 WCW Special Tournaments
5 Books/DVD
6 See also
7 External links



[edit]
History
[edit]
In the Beginning: The NWA Years
Although World Championship Wrestling was a brand name used by promoter Jim Barnett for his Australian promotion, the first promotion in the United States to use the World Championship Wrestling brand name (though it was never referred to as "WCW") on a widescale was Georgia Championship Wrestling (although Vincent James McMahon's Capitol Wrestling Corpotation did in fact use the name in some house show promotion).

This promotion, owned primarily by Jack Brisco and Gerald Brisco and booked by Ole Anderson, was the first NWA territory to gain cable TV access. In 1983, Georgia Championship Wrestling changed the name of its television show (and thus its public face) to World Championship Wrestling since it was already starting to run shows in "neutral" territories such as Ohio and Michigan. Although many in the business felt that Anderson was mismanaging the company, Georgia Championship Wrestling had managed to compete against the other major territory trying to go national (Vince McMahon's WWF).

Main article: Black Saturday (1984)
In May 1984, the Brisco brothers sold their shares in Georgia Championship Wrestling, including their timeslot on the TBS cable TV network to Vince McMahon. The WWF show did not fare well in ratings. World Championship Wrestling's core audience was not interested in the WWF's cartoony approach, preferring a more athletic style. Despite originally promising to produce original programming for the TBS timeslot in Atlanta, McMahon chose instead to provide only a clip show for TBS, featuring highlights from other WWF programming. In May 1985, McMahon sold the TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions, owned by Jim Crockett, Jr., under pressure from Ted Turner, who resurrected the World Championship Wrestling name (Turner Broadcasting had copyrighted it and prevented McMahon from using it).

By 1986, Jim Crockett, Jr. controlled key portions of the NWA under the name Jim Crockett Promotions, including the traditional NWA territories in The Carolinas, Georgia, and St. Louis. Crockett merged his various NWA territories into one group. A feud between Crockett and Vince McMahon's WWF sprang up, and both companies attempted to outmaneuver the other to acquire key TV slots.

In the same year, he also purchased Heart of America Sports Attractions Inc (HASA), which owned the rights to promote wrestling shows through several central states (Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa). HASA was known to fans as NWA Central States, and ran a TV show called All Star Wrestling.

In 1987, Crockett would purchase Championship Wrestling from Florida, and Universal Wrestling Federation (which covered Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana), which was not an NWA member. The CWF & Mid-South (and its wrestlers) were absorbed into Jim Crockett Promotions.

Crockett had almost accomplished his goal of creating a national federation. Between his purchasing several NWA territories, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas leaving the NWA in 1986 (and later merging with Jerry Jarrett's Championship Wrestling Alliance in Memphis to create the United States Wrestling Association) brand, and the once highly viable Portland territory going bankrupt (it closed in 1992), he was the last bastion of the NWA, and the last member with national TV exposure. Since it was all they now saw, many people began to believe that World Championship Wrestling was the NWA. Although Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA were still two separate entities, with Crockett as NWA President, they were very much on the same page. The NWA was effectively an on-paper organization funded by Crockett, and allowed Crockett to use the NWA brand-name.

With the large amount of capital needed to take a wrestling federation on a national tour, Crockett's territorial acquisitions had seriously drained JCP's coffers. He was in a similar situation to that of the WWF in the early 1980s: a large debt load, and the success or failure of a federation hinging on the success or failure of a couple of PPVs. Crockett marketed StarrCade '87 as the NWA's answer to WrestleMania. However, Vince McMahon released Survivor Series on the same day and threatened to withhold WrestleMania IV from any PPV company that refused to show it. Later, in January 1988, Crockett released the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV, and McMahon counter-programmed with the first Royal Rumble on USA. Both Crockett PPVs achieved low buyrates.

In 1985, Crockett had signed Dusty Rhodes and made him booker for JCP. Rhodes had a well-deserved reputation for creativity and authored many of the memorable feuds and storylines of this period and gimmick matches like WarGames. By 1988, after three years of trying to compete with Vince McMahon, and a long, drawn-out political struggle with champion Ric Flair, Rhodes was burned out. He was unable to draw fan interest in his storylines, and the Dusty finish had reduced the house show market. By the end of 1988, Rhodes was booking cards seemingly at random, and planning at one point to have mid-card wrestler Rick Steiner defeat Ric Flair in a five-minute match at StarrCade for the NWA World Championship. At the end of 1988, Rhodes was fired by the promotion after an angle he booked where Road Warrior Animal pulled a spike out of his shoulderpad and jammed it in Rhodes's eye busting it wide open.

To preserve the inexpensive network programming provided by professional wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions was purchased outright by Turner on November 21, 1988. Originally incorporated by TBS as the Universal Wrestling Corporation, Turner promised the fans that WCW would be the athlete-oriented style of NWA.

1989 proved to be a turnaround year for WCW, with Ric Flair on top for most of the year both as World Champion and also as head booker. Flair had helped bring in Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, and his PPV matches with both were successful, financially and critically. Young stars such as Sid Vicious, Sting, Scott Steiner, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, The Great Muta and Lex Luger were given big storylines and championship opportunities.

Despite this influx of talent, WCW soon began working to gradually incorporate much of the glamour and showy gimmicks for which the WWF was better known. Virtually none of these stunts, such as the live cross-promotional appearance of RoboCop at a PPV event in 1990, the Chamber of Horrors gimmick and the notorious Black Scorpion storyline, succeeded. Behind the scenes, WCW was also becoming more autonomous and slowly started separating itself from the historic NWA name. In January 1991, WCW officially split from the NWA and began to recognize its own WCW World Heavyweight Championship and WCW World Tag Team Championship.

For more details on this topic, see Jim Herd.
Both the WCW and the NWA recognized Ric Flair (who was by now no longer the head booker) as their World Heavyweight Champion throughout most of the first half of 1991, but WCW, particularly recently-installed company president Jim Herd, turned against Flair for various reasons and fired him just prior to the July 1991 Great American Bash PPV. In the process, they officially stripped him of the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. However, according to Flair's autobiography, they refused to return the $25,000 deposit he had put down on the (physical) belt, so he kept it and took it with him when he was hired by the WWF at the request of Vince McMahon. Flair then incorporated the belt into his gimmick, dubbing himself the real World's Champion.

WCW later renegotiated the use of the NWA name as a co-promotional gimmick with New Japan Pro Wrestling, and sued the WWF to stop showing Flair with the old NWA World title belt on its programs, claiming a trademark on the physical design of the belt. The belt was returned to WCW by Flair when Jim Herd was let go and he received his deposit back, and it was brought back as the revived NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

During the period that WCW operated with its own World Champion while also recognizing the NWA's world title, Flair quit the WWF and returned to WCW, regaining the title from Barry Windham in July 1993. Immediately, the other, now smaller, member organizations of the NWA began rightfully demanding that Flair defend the title under their rules in their territories, as mandated by old NWA agreements. The title was later scheduled to be dropped by Flair to "Ravishing" Rick Rude, a title change which was exposed by the Disney Tapings, the months-in-advance taping of WCW's syndicated television shows at Disney-owned studios in Orlando, Florida. The NWA board of directors, working separately from WCW, objected to Rude, forcing WCW to finally leave the NWA for good again in September 1993.

See also: WCW_Disney_tapings#Logistical_Errors
However, WCW still legally owned and used the actual belt which represented the NWA World Heavyweight Championship (Rick Rude even defended it as The Big Gold Belt) but they could no longer use the NWA name. The title thus became known as the WCW International World Heavyweight Title (meaning the World heavyweight championship as sanctioned by "WCW International," a fictional organization made up of promoters from around the world, essentially their in-house version of the real NWA).

WCW knew that the title belt, because of its rich in-ring history and visual impact, was highly sought after and respected over in Japan and as such created this fictional subsidiary dubbed WCW International to inject some credibility back into the belt. WCW claimed that "WCWI" still recognized the belt as a legitimate World Championship. For a short while, there were essentially two World titles up for competition in the organization.

Sting eventually won the WCW International Championship and lost the belt to then-WCW World Champion Ric Flair in a unification match in May 1994 when the experiment was jettisoned. To make things more confusing, the WCW title belt, as introduced in 1991, was dropped and the old NWA Championship belt was revived and officially replaced it as the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It was used as such until WCW's closure in 2001. The belt (in a slightly altered design) is still seen today in WWE as the World Heavyweight Championship on their SmackDown! brand (previously on RAW), and WWE has claimed on various programs that the World Heavyweight Championship is a continuation of the World Heavyweight Championship lineage from WCW. However, WWE.com officially lists the title history of the World Heavyweight Championship as beginning with Triple H being awarded the belt by Eric Bischoff on RAW on September 2, 2002.

[edit]
The Bischoff Era Begins

WCW logo from 1988-1999.The creative product of the company sank very noticeably in 1992 and 1993 under the presidency of Jim Herd and, subsequently, Bill Watts. There were signs of gradual recovery in late 1993 when former commentator and American Wrestling Association (AWA) booker Eric Bischoff was appointed as Executive Vice President of WCW. Bischoff, originally brought in as a secondary commentator behind Jim Ross after the AWA became defunct, was desperate to give WCW a new direction and impressed Turner's top brass with his confrontational tactics and business-savvy.

Bischoff's first year was considered unsuccessful. Dusty Rhodes and Ole Anderson were in full creative control at this point, with what were considered to be cartoonish storylines, as well as seemingly pointless feuds with little or no buildup. During a live Clash of the Champions to build up the Fall Brawl PPV, WCW decided to introduce a "mystery partner" for the babyfaces, a masked man known as The Shockmaster. The Shockmaster (previously known as Typhoon in the WWF) was supposed to crash through a fake wall and intimidate the heels. Instead, he tripped through the wall and fell on live television.

For more details on this topic, see Fred_Ottman#The_Shockmaster_incident.
WCW in 1993 decided to base the promotion around Ric Flair. This was seen as more or less a necessity, as prospective top babyface Sid Vicious tried to injure wrestler Arn Anderson with a pair of scissors four weeks before StarrCade while on tour in England. Flair won the title at StarrCade and was once again made booker.

Bischoff would declare open war on McMahon's WWF in the media and aggressively recruited high-profile former WWF superstars such as Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage in 1994. Using Turner's monetary resources, Bischoff placed his faith in the established stars with proven track records. Because of their high profiles, Hogan and Savage were able to demand and get several concessions not usually allowed to wrestlers at the time, such as multi-year, multimillion dollar guaranteed contracts and significant creative control. This would later seem a problem during subsequent years of competition with the WWF, as other wrestlers were able to make similar demands, and contract values soared out of control. Hogan, in particular, was able to gain considerable influence through a friendship with Bischoff. Another thing Bischoff may have failed to consider was the fact that many WCW fans watched it as an alternative to the product of the WWF in the early 90s, and many NWA fans saw the hiring of former WWF talent as an attempt to copy its success, as opposed to being an alternative product with an emphasis on in-ring action.

WCW's first major event since Hogan's hiring, Bash at the Beach, saw the former WWF mainstay defeat Ric Flair for the WCW Championship. The two had worked for the WWF at the same time from 1991 to 1992, and a feud was teased between them, but the big-money match originally planned for WrestleMania VIII was changed to Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid. When WCW delivered the match, the PPV drew a high buy rate by WCW standards due to mainstream intrigue and hype.

This was not lost on Turner management, however, and Bischoff's bold, expensive steps didn't quite meet their expectations when they came to check up on things in mid-1995. Thus, Bischoff called Turner and requested a private meeting, which he was granted.

[edit]
Monday Night Wars
Main article: Monday Night Wars
Bischoff would be instrumental in launching the weekly show WCW Monday Nitro in September 1995. Turner asked Bischoff how WCW could conceivably compete with McMahon's WWF. Bischoff, not expecting Turner to comply, said that the only way would be a primetime slot on a weekday night, possibly up against the WWF's flagship show, Monday Night RAW. Turner granted him a live hour on TNT every Monday night, which specifically overlapped with Raw. This format quickly expanded to two live hours in May 1996, and then later three. Bischoff himself was initially the host, alongside Bobby Heenan and ex-NFL star Steve "Mongo" McMichael.

McMahon later admitted to being bitter about Turner's decision to air Nitro live on Monday nights, saying that Turner and Bischoff's only reason for doing this could be to hurt and damage the WWF. Turner and McMahon certainly had something of a personal history: in the early 1980s, when McMahon began buying up local organizations in order to create a nationwide wrestling system, one of the promotions he took over was Georgia Championship Wrestling; thus he was in the position of providing a Saturday night show for Turner's TBS station. When viewers tuned to TBS on July 14, 1984 (a date known as Black Saturday in the wrestling community) and saw WWF programming instead of the GCW wrestlers they were used to seeing, many called the station and demanded the NWA's return; two weeks later, GCW returned, albeit on Saturday mornings. Turner quickly grew tired of the personality-driven glitz of McMahon's product and was upset at the fact that McMahon had gone back on his earlier promise not to dump second-rate stars and matches onto TBS. Turner therefore axed McMahon's show and turned to Jim Crockett for the Saturday night pro wrestling slot. It is rumored that on the very same day that Turner later acquired Crockett's territories, he called McMahon to say "Vince, I'm in the rasslin' business!" Vince claims he congratulated him and then told him "That's great Ted, but I'm in the entertainment business."

In 1995, Turner (as sole head and owner of both TBS and TNT), could air Nitro whenever he wanted. The WWF on the other hand was constrained by having to deal with the USA Network, whose executives were pleased about the viewers RAW brought to their network, but were also weary of the stigma associated with being the wrestling channel. WCW Monday Nitro made its debut in September 1995 live from the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and featured the surprise appearance of then-WWF wrestler Lex Luger, who had been working on a handshake deal with WWF after his most recent contract expired, on a week when RAW was pre-empted by the US Open.

In the first head-to-head ratings the following week, Nitro managed to convincingly defeat RAW, seeing WCW beat the WWF for the first time ever. For most of Nitro's first year, the ratings battle between the two promotions were close. In the end, Nitro ended up beating RAW in the ratings for 84 straight weeks between 1996 and 1998.

RAW and the WWF in general was consided to be at a creative nadir from 1995 to 1997, thus helping WCW's meteoric rise. The WWF tried in vain to fight back in early 1996 with the Billionaire Ted sketches, which occasionally starred an unbilled Vince Russo and viciously parodied Turner, Hogan (The Huckster), Gene Okerlund (Scheme Gene) and Savage ("Nacho Man") in particular. Only when stars such as ex-WCW wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin began to emerge, and when McMahon selected Russo, a New York DJ and WWF magazine writer, as his head booker, did the WWF begin to pick up steam.

Siphoning off the WWF's talent and airing Nitro on Monday night was not the end of WCW's tactics to defeat the competition (a stunt McMahon himself pulled when he steamrolled over territories to monopolize the WWF, although McMahon would be the one crying "foul" this time). In the early days, as RAW was only live once every three weeks at that point, and as hours of upcoming shows would be taped in one arena on one night, announcers on Nitro could (and would) often give away the results of that week's RAW to keep viewers tuned to Nitro. Much later, with the WWF firmly back on top, this tactic memorably backfired on January 4, 1999, when WCW announcer Tony Schiavone was instructed by Bischoff over his headset to announce that Mick Foley (wrestling as Mankind in the WWF), would win the WWF Championship that night on the USA Network. Schiavone then sarcastically remarked, "that would put a lot of butts in the seats." Nielsen ratings for that night showed that almost immediately after Schiavone's comment, around 300,000 to 600,000 viewers switched from Nitro to RAW in a matter of seconds. This startling ratings switch was seen as a true testament to Foley's dedication to wrestling and the WWF's ever-growing popularity.

[edit]
Vince McMahon Strikes Back
See also: Monday_Night_Wars#1999-2000:_The_Tide_Turns
After WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new WWF Attitude brand, led in particular by rising stars "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H and Mankind. The classic feud between McMahon (who was re-imagined and re-branded as the evil company chairman character Mr. McMahon) and Austin (who, ironically, had been released by Bischoff in the summer of 1995 for not being marketable) caught the imaginations of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of RAW, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996. WWF didn't stop there. Their ratings increased dramatically in the next two years, more then ever before. WCW attempted to counter this by dividing the nWo into the Hogan-led heel nWo Hollywood faction and the Nash-led face nWo Wolfpac faction, but many felt that it was a poor rehash of the original WCW vs. nWo storyline. Undeterred, WCW also launched a new Thursday TV show, the aforementioned WCW Thunder, around this time.

WCW's next big attempt at ratings supremacy was marketing ex-NFL newcomer Bill Goldberg as an invincible monster with a record-breaking winning streak. Goldberg was indeed incredibly popular from the outset, with chants of 'Gold-berg, Gold-berg' heralding his approach to the ring, but business still quickly fell off for WCW, especially as the list of stars ready to be destroyed by Goldberg grew shorter. One of WCW's last big genuine wins in the Monday night ratings war was on July 6, 1998, when WCW gave the long-awaited World Title match in Atlanta between Hogan and Goldberg (which Goldberg won), away for free on Nitro. By doing this, they indeed 'spiked' and inflated their TV ratings for a week, but flushed away millions of possible PPV dollars in the process, as Hogan vs. Goldberg was a clear PPV main event. On September 14, 1998, WCW won the ratings war once again with a memorable moment that featured Ric Flair's return to WCW and the reformation of the legendary Four Horsemen. On October 25, 1998, WCW's Halloween Havoc PPV ended up running longer than the time allowed due to the last-minute addition of a Tag Team Title match. As a result, several thousand people lost the PPV feed at 11pm which was during the World Title match between Diamond Dallas Page and Goldberg. The following night, WCW decided to correct the problem by airing the entire match for free on Nitro and thus winning the ratings war for the final time.

WCW slowly slid into a period of extravagant overspending and what was viewed almost universally as creative decline; why this happened and who let it happen is a matter of debate among wrestling fans and historians. Some attribute the slump to the overuse of celebrities (such as Dennis Rodman and Jay Leno just to name two) to wrestle PPV matches. Some feel that the WCW's credibility was badly damaged by embarrassing product placement, like Rick Steiner trading barbs with Chucky the killer doll (which was roundly booed by the in-house audience on the live Nitro broadcast) in the hopes of generating interest in the 1998 film Bride of Chucky. Others blame the stale, pointless, and at times self-serving storylines concocted by inexperienced bookers such as Kevin Nash, while still others claim that the top-level stars had no motivation to excel in the ring due to their long-term guaranteed-money contracts, and only gave their utmost when it suited them to do so. What is known is that WCW programming slowly started to go downhill in quality with people turning off their TVs or switching to WWF programming, and in reaction the company began to panic and tried to solve its problems by throwing money at them (a practice it could ill-afford to engage in).

As mentioned above, people were growing suspicious of Nash's questionable storylines, which were dominated by his on-screen persona. After booking himself to win World War 3 in November 1998, he went on to end Goldberg's winning streak and win the World Title on the StarrCade PPV just one month later. Then came the infamous 'fingerpoke of doom' match with Hulk Hogan in January 1999. The World Heavyweight Championship changed hands when Hogan knocked Nash to the mat by prodding him in the chest with one finger and then pinning him, further damaging the credibility and perceived value of the title. It was the same episode of Nitro that Tony Schiavone mockingly announced the Mick Foley WWF Title win.

For more details on this topic, see Fingerpoke_of_Doom#The_Impact.
Also in 1998, The Ultimate Warrior, a former WWF star, was recruited by Eric Bischoff to feud with Hogan (Warrior's WrestleMania VI opponent). Their October 1998 encounter at Halloween Havoc was mostly seen as sub-par, and Warrior vanished soon after. The Ultimate Warrior also insisted on a number of elaborate and costly apparatuses such as a trapdoor in the ring, which badly injured The British Bulldog when he landed on it.

For more details on this topic, see Warrior_(wrestler)#World_Championship_Wrestling.
In addition, no matter who was in charge, WCW did not like promoting its younger stars to the company's top slots. Despite having many talented younger wrestlers such as Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Jr., the late Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Raven, Rey Mysterio, Jr., and Booker T (just to name a few) on its roster, they were kept away from the main event scene. What was seen as WCW's poor talent decisions combined with the massive popularity of the new, hip and edgy WWF Attitude Era, likely began WCW's rapid demise.

Bischoff was eventually removed from power by the Turner higher-ups on September 10, 1999, the last straws perhaps being what was felt as a bizarre and mystifying push for the 1970s rock group KISS through WCW shows, a storyline involving rapper Master P and The No Limit Soldiers that saw Master P last only two weeks (the No Limit Soldiers flopped so badly that the West Texas Rednecks heel stable that they were feuding with was cheered by the Southern WCW fans); an announced million-dollar contest that was later cancelled; a planned Nitro animated series that was scrapped, as well; and Bischoff's long-standing desire to put on a huge, outdoor rock 'n' wrestling concert featuring KISS on December 31, 1999.

See also: Eric_Bischoff#Downfall
[edit]
The Death of WCW
See also: Vince_Russo#WCW
Bischoff was unexpectedly replaced by former WWF head writer Vince Russo and his colleague Ed Ferrera. Russo and Ferrera had been the head writers for the WWF at the beginning of the Attitude Era, subordinate only to Vince McMahon himself. WCW offered them lucrative contracts to jump ship in October 1999 in an effort to revitalize their own flagging product and weaken the product of the WWF. Russo and Ferrera tried to push the younger WCW talents straight away, and phase out aging stars such as Hogan and Flair. However, Russo was thought by many to be incapable of recreating the intriguing and cutting-edge TV he had produced while working for McMahon.

Russo and Ferrera struggled to gain approval for their near-the-knuckle ideas from the WCW management, such as 'Piñata on a Pole' matches between Mexican wrestlers. In late 1999, Russo and Ferrera revived the nWo storyline, this time with Jeff Jarrett and Bret Hart at the helm. They next targeted WWF announcer Jim Ross with a parody character called 'Oklahoma', who was played onscreen by Ferrera (Ross had been suffering from Bell's palsy, and the character lampooned his resultant facial defects). Bad luck struck in December 1999 when Hart suffered a genuine (and ultimately career-ending) concussion at the hands of Goldberg, who severely damaged his own hand less than a week later while punching through a limousine window in Salisbury, Maryland as part of a storyline that was written by Russo. Russo himself became an onscreen character during this period, though one whose face was never shown on camera, in a manner not dissimilar to Doctor Claw from Inspector Gadget and the George Steinbrenner character from Seinfeld. Only his hand and the back of his chair were ever actually seen, as he called wrestlers into his office to receive their marching orders for the night.

See also: Bret_Hart#World_Championship_Wrestling
Both Russo and Ferrera were suspended just three months later amid rumors that they wanted to make former UFC fighter Tank Abbott the WCW Champion (Abbott, despite his legitimate fighting background, had little wrestling experience and had failed to connect with WCW audiences). Kevin Sullivan, who had been an on/off booker over the course of several years, was placed in charge in the interim. The new writing team attempted to appease the demoralized wrestlers and fans by making Chris Benoit the WCW Champion at the Souled Out PPV in January 2000. However, because of the real-life personal issues between himself and Sullivan, let alone that prior to the PPV he and a few other wrestlers demanded their releases from the company (due to their lack of being pushed to stardom as well as their similar hatred for Sullivan), Benoit handed the belt back right after winning it and the next day left WCW. He signed with the WWF along with his similarly frustrated friends Perry Saturn, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. The four quickly became popular in the WWF as "The Radicalz."

On February 11, 2000, black wrestlers Bobby Walker and Harrison Norris and Japanese manager Sonny Onoo launched racial discrimination lawsuits against WCW, claiming that they had not been pushed as a result of their ethnicities, had not been paid as well as other wrestlers and personalities, and had been given offensive gimmicks. Some speculated that the charges of racism brought against WCW (and the resultant bad publicity for the company, which had been dogged by accusations of racism for years), were partially responsible for black wrestler Booker T winning the WCW Championship later that year and his brother Stevie Ray being made a color commentator, with Ray himself acknowledging that it might have been a factor.

In April 2000, with ratings hitting new lows, both Russo and Bischoff were reinstated by WCW. They formed an on-screen union that stood up for the younger talent in the company (which they dubbed the New Blood) in their battle against the Millionaire's Club, which consisted of the older, higher-paid, and more visible stars such as Hogan, Sting, and Diamond Dallas Page. Though initially well-received, the storyline quickly degenerated into yet another nWo rehash, with the heel nWo recast as the New Blood and the face WCW embodied in the Millionaire's Club. As well, the unorthodox and often controversial storylines continued. These included making actor David Arquette the WCW Champion in order to promote a WCW-themed movie, Ready to Rumble; Russo himself winning the WCW Championship in September 2000 (Russo, like Arquette, was not a trained wrestler); a botched (and, in the eyes of many, completely unnecessary) June heel turn for Goldberg that greatly diminished his drawing power; and a shoot speech by Russo at Bash at the Beach 2000 aimed at Hulk Hogan which led to Hogan resigning and filing a defamation of character lawsuit against the company (which was eventually dismissed in 2002). Bischoff vanished once more in July 2000, and Russo was gone from WCW completely by late 2000, leaving Terry Taylor holding the reins.

For more details on this topic, see Hulk_Hogan#The_end_of_Hogan_in_WCW.
Meanwhile, when Time Warner bought out Turner's cable empire in 1996, it also purchased WCW. Even though Turner was a big fan and faithful to the professional wrestling shows on his stations (a professional wrestling program had helped get Turner's very first TV station, WTBS, off the ground, and WCW was, in fact, the modern incarnation of the promotion that Turner had run on WTBS back in those days) regardless of whether it was losing him money, Time Warner did not share his loyalty, especially when accounts showed that WCW was losing between $12-$17 million a year because of its decline. However, Turner was still the single largest Time Warner shareholder, and WCW was supported at his behest. When AOL merged with Time Warner in 2000, Turner was effectively forced out of his own empire. The new AOL Time Warner finally had the power to auction off WCW, which they saw as an unnecessary drain on resources.

In late 2000, Bischoff and a group of private investors, calling themselves Fusient Media Ventures, inquired about buying WCW but backed out when Turner networks head (and The WB founder) Jamie Kellner formally cancelled all WCW programming from its TV networks. With no network to air its programming, WCW was of little value to Fusient, whose offer was dependent on the Turner networks continuing to air WCW programming.

On March 23, 2001, virtually all of WCW's trademarks and archived footage, was sold to Vince McMahon and World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. for a paltry $7 million (although the book The Death of WCW said it was less than $3 million). It should be pointed out that McMahon did not purchase the actual company known as World Championship Wrestling, Inc.

A gloating McMahon opened the last-ever episode of WCW Monday Nitro simulcast with RAW on March 26, 2001 with a self-praising speech. Sting vs. Ric Flair (won by Sting) was the nostalgic final match of the final broadcast, ending affectionately with a respectful embrace.


The WCW logo used in the WWF during the 2001 Invasion storyline.When Vince came on RAW after the Sting/Flair match to declare victory over WCW, Vince's son Shane McMahon appeared at the Nitro event, declaring that he had bought WCW. However, this was kayfabe and part of a WWF storyline that would have Shane leading the WCW Invasion of the WWF (a highly anticipated storyline which many considered a squandered opportunity), which lasted from March to November 2001 and marked the end of WCW. Despite aborted attempts to run WCW-branded events, the WWF only ran a handful of matches on RAW and SmackDown! under the WCW banner.

When the WWF bought WCW in March 2001, several top WCW wrestlers, including Bill Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and Sting had high-priced contracts with AOL Time Warner that WWF was unwilling to pick up. Rather than trying to get a buyout of their contracts and taking a pay cut to go to WWF, they chose to sit home and got paid for the remainders of their WCW contracts. This is most often cited as being the main reason the planned WCW Invasion of WWF storyline failed. The WCW was not seen as a powerhouse organization invading WWF when most of their top stars did not appear.

The WCW World Heavyweight Championship (which was renamed the World Championship) would continue to be used in WWF until it was merged with the WWF Championship into the WWF Undisputed Championship when Chris Jericho defeated The Rock and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin for the respective titles on December 9, 2001 on the PPV, Vengeance.

Although new professional wrestling alternatives such as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor have seen rising popularity in recent years, none have achieved the mainstream popularity or financial support that WCW enjoyed and thus are not yet considered competitive with WWE.

[edit]
Final champions
This is a list of the champions as they were at the end of the last WCW Monday Nitro on March 26, 2001 (though all these titles, with the exception of the Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship, continued to be active in WWF until November of that year).

Championship Final champion(s)
WCW World Heavyweight Champion Booker T
WCW United States Champion Booker T
WCW World Tag Team Champions Chuck Palumbo and Sean O'Haire
WCW Cruiserweight Champion "Sugar" Shane Helms
WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Champions Billy Kidman and Rey Mysterio

Here's a list of the final WCW Champions under the WWF banner.

Championship Final champion(s)
WCW World Heavyweight Champion1 The Rock
WCW United States Champion2 Edge
WCW World Tag Team Champions3 The Dudley Boyz
WCW Cruiserweight Champion4 Tajiri

Footnotes

1Renamed the World Championship after Survivor Series 2001; unified with the WWF Championship at Vengeance 2001. The belt design was later reintroduced as the WWE sanctioned World Heavyweight Championship as a RAW exclusive title in September 2002 (now exclusive to SmackDown!).
2Unified with the WCW United States Championship at Survivor Series 2001; reactivated as a WWE sanctioned title on SmackDown! in 2003 by then-General Manager Stephanie McMahon.
3Unified with the WCW Tag Team Championship at Survivor Series 2001.
4Title adopted by the WWF after Survivor Series 2001; renamed the WWF / WWE Cruiserweight Championship.
[edit]
WCW Titles
WCW World Heavyweight Championship
WCW International World Heavyweight Championship
WCW World Tag Team Championship
WCW World Television Championship
WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championship
WCW United States Heavyweight Championship
WCW United States Tag Team Championship
WCW Cruiserweight Championship
WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Championship
WCW Light Heavyweight Championship
WCW Hardcore Championship
WCW Women's Championship
WCW Women's Cruiserweight Championship
WCW Grand Slam
The Vault's Entire & Accurate WCW Title History
[edit]
WCW Special Tournaments
WCW Jesse "The Body" Ventura Strongest Arm Tournament (1992-1993)
WCW King of Cable Tournament (1992)
WCW/NWA Gauntlet Series (1990)
WCW Battle Bowl
WCW Lethal Lottery
[edit]
Books/DVD
The Death of WCW by R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez, 2004, ISBN 1-55022-661-4.
The Monday Night War: WWE Raw vs. WCW Monday Nitro World Wrestling Entertainment, 2004, ASIN B0001CCXCA.
[edit]
See also
World Championship Wrestling alumni
List of professional wrestlers
List of professional wrestling stables
List of WCW pay-per-view events
List of WCW television programming
The Alliance
Monday Night Wars
Nitro Girls
WCW Monday Nitro
WCW Thunder
WCW Power Plant
[[Jim Crockett Promotions]}
[edit]
External links
Official World Wrestling Entertainment website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Championship_Wrestling"
Categories: 1988 establishments | 2001 disestablishments | Defunct companies of the United States | Sports in Atlanta | Time Warner subsidiaries | World Championship Wrestling

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Mario
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Mario

For over 25 years, Mario has been Nintendo's official mascot.
Game series Mario series
First game Donkey Kong
Creator(s) Shigeru Miyamoto
Voice actor(s) Charles Martinet
For other uses of this name, see Mario (disambiguation).
Mario (マリオ, Mario?) is a video game character created by Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo. As well as being Nintendo's mascot, he is one of the most recognizable characters in video game history, appearing in over a hundred games, many of them best-sellers. Outside of the platformers with which he is traditionally associated, Mario has appeared in video games in many different genres, including the Mario Kart series, many of Nintendo's arcade sports games (such as the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series), and Nintendo's series of Mario role playing games (RPGs) (including Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Paper Mario, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and its sequel, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time).

Mario is a plumber motivated by a sense of justice, though at times he has been depicted as a doctor and numerous other professions. His distinctive appearance was defined somewhat by the limitations of early video game hardware. Though he began with the ability to jump high, in subsequent games, he received additional powers such as pyrokinesis and flight, and additional playable versions, including Baby Mario, Tanooki suit Mario, and Metal Mario, through the use of power-ups. In adventure games, Mario has used varying techniques for defeating enemies and solving puzzles in his games, both by using his own abilities and the properties of items or abilities of allies he encountered.

The character has also appeared in mass media, and has spawned a line of licensed merchandise. He has also had a number of cameo appearances in other video games, and his likeness has been licensed to software publishers for educational titles. Fans have also created a number of unauthorized works depicting Mario.

Contents [hide]
1 Game history
2 Character
2.1 Biography
2.2 Personality
2.3 Occupation and hobbies
2.4 Baby Mario
2.5 Development
2.6 Romances
2.7 Abilities and techniques
2.8 Metal Mario
3 Mainstream success
3.1 Special cameo appearances
4 Cultural references
5 Trivia
6 Appearances on non-Nintendo platforms
7 See also
8 Notes and references
9 External links



[edit]
Game history
Main article: List of Mario games

Mario made his 3D debut in Super Mario 64To date, nearly 275 million copies of games featuring Mario have been sold,[1] making it by far the best-selling video game franchise of all time.

Mario's first role was as the hero in 1981's Donkey Kong. The game was so successful that he carried over into an arcade spin-off, Mario Bros., which boasted a simultaneous two-player mode and introduced his brother Luigi. In Donkey Kong Junior, he was the villain, and in the ending cinematic, he is knocked out (although obviously he is not dead because he is in future games). His next appearance would be in the very first game for Nintendo's wildly successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the console credited with reviving the home video game market. Super Mario Bros. sold over 40 million copies (pack-in copies included) making it the best-selling video game of all time and has been ported to numerous Nintendo consoles since.

Overall, Mario games have sold approximately 275 million copies worldwide, with Super Mario Bros. 3 holding the record for most copies of a non pack-in video game sold, with over 18 million copies sold. Mario and his friends also appeared in some of the later Game & Watch games.

Mario has explored just about every genre of video game. Aside from action platformers, the plucky plumber has also starred in puzzle games, racing games, sports games, fighting games, role-playing games, educational games, etc.

Future Mario titles include Mario Hoops 3-on-3 and Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis on the Nintendo DS, and Super Paper Mario on the Nintendo GameCube. In addition, Mario will be included once again as a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and will star in the new Mario platformer Super Mario Galaxy both on the Nintendo Wii. His newest game is New Super Mario Bros. featuring exclusive items such as the Mega Mushroom and the Mini Mushroom, either making him grow to huge proportions or shrink to a minuscule size, as well as a Blue Koopa Shell, giving him semi-invulnerability if he crouches and the same shell-sliding as a Koopa while dashing.

[edit]
Character
[edit]
Biography
Mario is in many ways an undeveloped character, with numerous details of his accepted biography having been created through a complex lore spawned from the imaginations of comic book artists and cartoon writers. During the process of designing the character, Miyamoto initially defined the character as simply "a middle aged man with a strong sense of justice who is not handsome". [2] Officially, Nintendo producers have stated that Mario's biography is kept simple in order to make the character versatile, and reusable in many different games and situations.


Mario in Super Mario Bros.In his first appearance in Donkey Kong, all that was stated was that he was a carpenter whose duty it was to save Pauline from Donkey Kong. Furthermore, before the game was widely released in America, the hero was simply labeled Jumpman, having not yet acquired his Italian moniker. He was dubbed "Mario" in homage to his physical similarities with Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo's warehouse at the time in Redmond, Washington [3]. His second appearance in Donkey Kong Jr. solidified the character's name. It was in his third appearance in Mario Bros. where he changed his profession to plumber, which was more fitting with the long-running pipe theme established in that game. Here, Mario and his brother Luigi fought monsters in the sewers of Brooklyn.

Because of this, and the American made cartoon series and the movie, it led many to believe that Brooklyn was Mario and Luigi's original home. However, the games (starting with Yoshi's Island) indicate that Mario and Luigi were delivered to the Mushroom Kingdom. The game, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, also shows that Mario and Luigi were living in the Mushroom Kingdom while they were still babies.

Over the course of his many games, Mario has rescued a number of women from captivity (including Pauline, Princess Peach, and Princess Daisy) and has become regarded as the great hero of the Mushroom Kingdom. His main nemesis is the king of the Koopas, Bowser, who constantly attempts to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom and kidnapping Princess Peach but is thwarted by Mario at every turn. Bowser isn't Mario's only foe, however. He has rescued Princess Peach and saved the Mushroom Kingdom from a number of different villains such as Wart in Super Mario Brothers 2, Cackletta in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, the Shroobs in Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, and the X-Nauts in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

[edit]
Personality
Mario is always portrayed as being a kind-hearted and brave hero. He helps those in need without any hesitation. Despite his status as a great hero, Mario is very humble. His cheerful personality and love of life make him a very approachable video game character. He also has a love of pasta and pizza, as the stereotypical Italian does. This was first started in the cartoons, but soon afterward, Nintendo supported the idea by having Mario dream of pasta. On his trip to Isle Delfino in Super Mario Sunshine, he daydreams about the food. Also, in Super Mario 64, if the player does not press any buttons for long enough Mario will take a nap and mutter the names of various pastas in his sleep. Not much else is known about Mario's personality, as much of it remains hidden due to the fact that the character never openly converses in the games.

[edit]
Occupation and hobbies

Mario in the Paper Mario games, using his trademark weapon, a hammer.Despite Mario's given occupation as a plumber, he is almost never seen doing any plumbing during the games. The closest Mario came to actually doing any plumbing was clearing pipe levels of enemies in Mario Bros. and fixing some pipes in the Mario and Luigi games. Pipes have, however, remained a mode of transportation in almost all Mario games. Mario was most often seen plumbing during the animated series, where he often carried around a plumber's wrench which turned out to be handy in many episodes as a weapon and tool.

Beginning with the Dr. Mario series of puzzle games which first debuted in 1990, Mario has been occasionally depicted as medical physician as well. As a doctor, Mario fights various germs by throwing pills into an infected jar that would match the color of the specific germ. When a certain number of color matching pills hit the germ, it is destroyed. In 2001, Mario appeared in doctor form as a secret character in the Nintendo GameCube hit, Super Smash Bros. Melee. Mario's most recent appearance as a doctor was in 2005 on the Game Boy Advance.

Mario's only full-time job in the games seems to be saving Princess Peach, the Mushroom Kingdom, and surrounding kingdoms from evil tyrants such as Bowser. As seen through character interactions in his role-playing games, Mario has achieved a level of fame amongst the kingdoms' populations due to his heroics.

However, according to the official Nintendo website, Mario earns most of his money through the profits from his Mario Toy Company, which produces Mini Donkey Kong, Mini Mario, Mini Toad and Mini Peach figures. [4]


Mini Mario, one of the figures produced by Mario's Mario Toy Company.Apparently, Mario works so hard at this job that he must often take a vacation – Super Mario World and Super Mario Sunshine detail such events. He is also quite the party animal; the Mario Party game series has already numbered seven titles, plus Mario Party Advance, Mario Party-e and the up and coming Mario Party game for the Nintendo Wii.

Mario and his friends are highly skilled in a variety of sports. The Mario franchise has spun off into games involving go-karting, soccer, baseball, tennis, golfing, basketball and dancing. In most of these games where different characters may have varying levels of skill, Mario is typically the most balanced character in classes such as weight, speed, power, or other abilities.

Mario has also demonstrated himself as being a great and powerful fighter in the very popular Nintendo all-star fighting series, Super Smash Bros.. He is the most balanced fighter, and his weight is the standard which all the other playable characters are based on.

[edit]
Baby Mario
Baby Mario is the infant version of Mario. Although he has paradoxically appeared alongside his older self in Nintendo sports titles such as Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Superstar Baseball and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, it is generally accepted that these games are outside the continuity of the main Mario series, and therefore do not suggest that Mario and Baby Mario are separate characters in the main storyline. An alternative solution is that the babies were present via time travel, as was the case in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. Like the older Mario, he is voiced by Charles Martinet.

Baby Mario first appeared in the Super NES game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island where the Yoshis saved his brother Luigi from Kamek the Magikoopa. In Yoshi's Island, Baby Mario has a rather passive role, essentially being carried around by different Yoshis for most of the game. However, in some levels, a power-up resembling a star allows him to transform into Super Baby Mario, giving him very high speed, relative invincibility, and the ability to float for short distances. Other than this, Baby Mario is remembered for his boisterous and annoying sobs whenever Yoshi ran into an enemy. When Yoshi took a hit, Baby Mario would float within a bubble while bawling loudly, and the player controlling Yoshi would have between 1-30 seconds to recover Baby Mario and hitch him safely on Yoshi's back. If the time ran out, Mario would be kidnapped by Kamek's Toadies and Yoshi would lose a life.


Baby Mario, as depicted in Yoshi Touch & Go.More recently, Baby Mario appeared in Yoshi Touch & Go and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time for the Nintendo DS. In Yoshi Touch & Go he reclaims the role he held in Yoshi's Island; Baby Mario falls from the sky, this time held up by balloons, as the player guides him by drawing clouds down to the ground where Yoshi waits to catch him. He then rides on Yoshi's back for the rest of that level of the game. In some game modes, Baby Mario can again find the power-up that turns him into Super Baby Mario, making him temporarily invincible. In Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, he appears alongside his adult counterpart, along with both respective versions of Luigi. The pair of brothers team up in order to save Princess Peach (the grown-up version) from a group of alien invaders known as the Shroobs.

The Japan only game Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa is sometimes referred to as "Mario Baby" due to that name being applied to a ROM hack of the game.

According to the information revealed about Yoshi's Island 2 at E3 2006, Baby Mario was preschooled on Yoshi's Island. When a mysterious island appeared and kidnapped most of his schoolmates, he teams up with Yoshi, Baby Peach, and even Baby Donkey Kong to save them. Baby Mario made an unexpected cameo alongside Baby Luigi in the first picture of the opening and ending intro of Mario Power Tennis.

[edit]
Development
Mario first appeared in the video game Donkey Kong. The game was surprisingly successful, and when the Nintendo Entertainment System was released, Mario was given the starring role in the revolutionary Super Mario Bros. game.

Mario's distinctive look is due to technology restrictions in the mid-'80s; with a limited number of pixels and colors, the programmers could not animate Mario's movement without making his arms "disappear" if his shirt was a solid color; they did not have the space to give him a mouth or ears; and they could not animate hair, so Mario got overalls, a mustache, sideburns, and a cap to bypass these problems. Mario's creator Shigeru Miyamoto has also stated when interviewed that Mario wears a cap because he finds it difficult to draw hair.

When Mario was first conceived, he looked, more or less, as he does today; a short, stubby man with the trademark hat, brown hair, black mustache, and overalls. He normally wears blue overalls on top of a red shirt, but such was not always the case. Originally, he wore red overalls on top of a blue shirt — exactly opposite what he wears now. The American Super Mario Bros. 2 was the first appearance of his modern outfit (the box had the red overalls-on-blue shirt, but the game itself had a blue overalls-on-red shirt); however, it was Super Mario Bros. 3 that standardized today's blue overalls-on-red shirt outfit. Incidentally, the original Super Mario Bros. has neither in-game; Mario wears a brown shirt with red overalls. In the animated series, Mario was always depicted as having red overalls and a blue shirt.

Mario's outfit rarely changes, though he's known to change it on occasion if the situation calls for it. For example, in Super Mario Strikers (Mario Smash Football in Europe), Mario wears an Association Football (soccer) outfit as opposed to overalls. Also, in some Mario games, Mario can transform into different forms, each with a different costume, such as Tanooki Mario, which allows him to fly and turn into a statue to hide from enemies, Fire Mario where, after collecting the Fire Flower, he will wear white overalls, and can throw fireballs. He can put on the frog suit to become Frog Mario, where his jumping and swimming sbilities are greatly enhanced. And collecting a Hammer turns him into Hammer Mario, an almost exact clone of the Hammer Bros, and in New Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo DS, Shell Mario, where he can skid across the level as if he kicked a Koopa Shell. He also flashes different colors when utilizing a star, which gives him temporary invincibility. Also many items could enhance him or his abilities, such as the "leaf" in Super Mario Bros. 3 which turned him into Raccoon Mario, allowing him to fly. He could also fly in Super Mario World by obtaining a feather which would give him a cape. A Power Wing in Super Mario Bros. 3 gave him a Racoon Tail and unlimited full charge, allowing him to take off at any given time (though this ability is lost after one level.)


A Super Mushroom, inspired by the Lewis Carroll story, Alice in WonderlandMiyamoto created many of the elements in the Mario world from ideas he had seen in other media. One of his most recognizable contributions to his Mario universe is the Super Mushroom, which enlarges Mario until he is damaged by an enemy. There is also a Poison Mushroom, which is darker than the Super Mushroom in the original Super Mario Brothers 2 (although colored purple in the Super Mario All-Stars version of the game), and shaded differently in Super Smash Brothers. When Mario takes it, he is either returned to small Mario, killed (Lost Levels), or becomes smaller and lighter for a short period of time (Super Smash Bros. Melee). These ideas were derived from the "Eat me" cakes and "Drink me" potions in the Lewis Carroll story, Alice in Wonderland, after Miyamoto was forced to shrink the original sketches of Mario because they were too big.[5] The concept behind warp pipes, colored tubes which sometimes transport Mario to another area, was inspired by Star Trek.

The surname "Mario" (which would make his full name Mario Mario) was first used in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, and then in the 1993 feature film Super Mario Bros. This was meant to explain how both Mario and his brother Luigi could be known as the "Mario brothers". This surname theory has never been employed in any official Nintendo games or media, however, and it is broadly accepted that Mario and Luigi are collectively called the Mario Bros. simply because Mario is the headliner of the pair.

Mario has taken on the role of mascot of Nintendo and has since been extensively merchandised. Mario's major rival was Sega mascot Sonic the Hedgehog who debuted in the early 1990s; the two mascots competed head-to-head for nearly a decade afterward, until around 2001 when a Sonic game showed up on a Nintendo console due to Sega's new third party status, ending a lengthy rivalry. Fans have wanted the two characters to appear in a game together for so long, the concept has become something of a cliché within the gaming community.

[edit]
Romances
Mario usually has the role of saving the damsel in distress. Originally, he had to rescue his girlfriend Pauline in Donkey Kong from the clutches of the giant ape himself. Pauline didn't last long as a character and was soon replaced by new damsel in distress Princess Peach in Super Mario Bros., (she was initially referred to as Princess Toadstool in the US. Peach is the princess's Japanese name; there, the character has always been referred to as Princess Peach). Pauline is recently returning in Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, although whether or not she still has a relationship with Mario is unknown at this point, especially since the Mario Toy Company has expanded its toy line to include Mini-Peach toys, among others.

Mario has rescued Peach multiple times since Super Mario Bros., often receiving a kiss as a reward. Although the true nature of their relationship is never revealed, it is evident that there is a mutual affection between the two characters. It has been revealed that Mario's nemesis Bowser is in love with the Princess, which explains why he constantly steals her away from Mario.

Mario once rescued Princess Daisy in Super Mario Land on the Game Boy, at the end of which Mario received a kiss. Additionally, the Japanese-only album Super Mario Compact Disco mentions Daisy as Mario's number-one girl (Peach does get a mention, but only once during the song "Super Mario USA"). In sports titles, though, Daisy hangs out with Luigi more often, leading to fan speculation that she may be romantically involved with Luigi rather than Mario. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, the text on Princess Daisy's trophy states that "after her appearance in Mario Golf, some gossips started portraying her as Luigi's answer to Mario's Peach," this quote provides some confirmation and evidence that there is a romantic connection between Mario and Princess Peach.

In the Game Cube game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, it is revealed that Mario is quite popular with many of the female characters. After Mario rescues Goombella from Lord Crump and his X-Naut soldiers at the beginning of the game, she rewards him with a kiss and at the end of the game in Goombella's e-mail it seems she has had a crush on him as well. Also when Mario and his companions return Flurrie's necklace to her, she forcibly gives him a kiss. Another recurring character, Ms. Mowz (who is also an optional partner) is instantly smitten by Mario when she first meets him and his companions and continuously flirts with him and gives him a kiss before she leaves every time she runs into them, much to the dismay of Goombella. Finally, another character who seemed to have a crush on Mario is Vivian, one of the Three Shadow Sirens. When Mario's name and body are stolen and is turned into a shadow of himself, he helps her search for a bomb she needed and is touched by his kindness even though she becomes aware that he has worse problems than her. At the end of the game, just as Mario is about to board the boat back to the Mushroom Kingdom with Princess Peach and Toadsworth, Vivian sounds like she is about to reveal her feelings for Mario but stops and says that he and Peach would make a great couple.

It should also be noted that during the scene in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars where Mario crashes Booster's wedding, Mario recieves a kiss from Peach if he recovers her accessories from the aisles quickly. However, if he takes too much time, Peach tricks Bowser and Booster into kissing Mario!

[edit]
Abilities and techniques

A Fire Flower as seen in Super Mario Bros.During the development of Donkey Kong, Mario was known simply as "Jumpman", named for his keen ability to jump exceptional heights. This ability is still described as Mario's greatest talent in most forms of media in which he is portrayed, and jumping -- both to access different areas of a level and as an offensive move -- remains a core element of gameplay in most Mario games, especially in the Super Mario Bros. series.

Mario's most commonly portrayed form of attack is jumping to stomp on the heads of enemies, first employed in Mario Bros. but better known from the later Super Mario Bros. game and its sequels. This jump-stomp move may entirely crush smaller enemies on the stage, and usually deals damage to larger ones, sometimes causing secondary effects as well. Most notably, this attack often enables Mario to knock the turtle-like Koopa Troopas back into their shells, which may slide across the stage, damaging other enemies, or Mario. Mario can also kick or toss these shells at enemies or barriers in many games.

Beyond this core mechanic, many subsequent games have elaborated on Mario's jumping-related abilities. Super Mario World added the ability to spin-jump, which allows Mario to break blocks beneath him. Later, the Gameboy remake of Donkey Kong allowed Mario to jump higher with consecutive jumps, and perform a back-flip. Super Mario 64 continued the use of these abilities as well as a long jump, a sideways flip called a Side Somersault, and a ground pound. It also made jumping off of walls much simpler to accomplish, and named it the "Wall Kick." Super Mario Sunshine then re-introduced the spin jump, but changed its function; in Sunshine, the spin-jump makes Mario jump a little bit higher, also falling more slowly than in a normal jump.

Mario also makes use of a wide array of items in most games in which he appears. The most prominent and best known of these is the Super Mushroom, which allows Mario to grow to twice his size. In this form he is usually labeled "Super Mario", and receives an additional hit-point; sustaining damage from most enemies will only cause Super Mario to shrink back down to "regular Mario" size. Mario is apparently stronger in his Super form, too, having the ability to break bricks with his fist. Additionally, in many games collecting a Fire Flower enables Mario to throw fireballs at enemies, and a Starman renders Mario temporarily impervious to harm. Beginning with Super Mario Bros. 3, leaves or feathers have been used as items that give Mario the ability to fly for short distances as well. Super Mario World introduced Mario's dinosaur friend Yoshi to the game series, whom Mario can ride. When riding Yoshi, Mario can clear spiky terrain and stomp foes that he otherwise cannot.

Although Mario is not usually portrayed to using weapons in games, one exception is the use of hammers as a weapons in some games, including Super Mario 3, as well as the Donkey Kong and Super Mario RPG series. In the Wrecking Crew series, Mario also wields a hammer to break bricks, but not offensively. Similarly, in the Super Mario RPG series, Mario uses his hammer to hit switches and solve puzzles as well as to hit enemies.

In Mario sports games, including the Mario Tennis and Mario Golf series, Mario is usually the most well-rounded playable character in his abilites, balancing power with speed or finesse. In the Mario Kart franchise, he's normally considered a middleweight or heavy middleweight character, with a slightly better top speed than most light and middleweights. In the Super Smash Bros. franchise, Mario also gains fighting abilites not closely related to those depicted in the platformer series. Among these are the use of a spinning attack called the Mario Tornado, and the ability to use fireballs without an item.

In the upcoming Mario game on the Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario seems to gain special "Astronomical" abilities like blasting to other planets and grabbing things using the "Wii-Mote". Nintendo says that Mario might also have some other special abilities in this 3D platformer. In Nintendo's E3 press conference it was stated that you could use the controller "to bat away objects" and game footage seemed to show a spinning jump that reflected attacks.

[edit]
Metal Mario
Metal Mario started as a powerup for Mario in Super Mario 64. In Hazy Maze Cave, there was a pool of swirling metal which held a new area. Once the switch in that area was pushed, Metal caps were available. Metal Mario was completely invulnerable. Similar to Sega's Super Sonic, Metal Mario could harm enemies by simply running into them. The ability was limited to a time limit. When Metal Mario was hit, he would sometimes flinch, but would be completely invincible and not lose health. Along with this, Metal Mario would not have to breathe, which allowed him to walk in noxious gas and water. His heavy weight would allow him to be able to sink in water, helping in some missions. Metal Mario would also lose the ability to speak (which wasn't important, just a side note to show he truly became metal). In Super Smash Bros, Metal Mario would come back as a sub-boss. he would deliver nasty damage to opponents and took double damage to be knocked off the stage. Metal Mario's strategy would be the movement of which he would walk back and forth delivering loud thuds on easier difficulties he would merely hit the player if the character got in the way. The higher the difficulty, the more aggressive to the point where Metal Mario would be using extremely furious Smash attacks with devastating combos. Additonally, it took double damage to knock him as far since he weighed double that of a normal character. The arena would be set in that of a metallic mine to give an interesting atmosphere to the fight.

In Super Smash Bros Melee, Metal Mario would return a little more aggressive than before; however, after unlocking Luigi, it would not be just Metal Mario the player would have to deal with. Metal Mario would not only be aided by Metal Luigi, but both characters would be monstrously difficult at the higher difficulties due to the increase in attacks and combos from the last game. Other Metal characters could appear as enemies in classic mode, although Metal Mario (and Metal Luigi if Luigi was unlocked) would be a battle every time played in Adventure Mode. The Metal Box was a power up (looked like the green ! box in Mario 64) and could turn any character metal.

For some odd reason, Metal Mario appeared as a secret unlockable character in Mario Golf. He was very strong, having an even longer drive than the super-powerful Bowser!

[edit]
Mainstream success

Mario as seen on The Saturday Supercade.
Mario as seen in his animated TV series.Since his creation, Mario has established himself as a pop culture icon having starred in three television shows (produced by Nintendo with DIC, between 1989 and 1991), comic books, and in a feature film where he was played by Bob Hoskins. Nintendo of Japan also produced a 60-minute anime feature starring Mario and his friends in 1986, although this film has never been released in the United States. He has also appeared on lunchboxes, t-shirts, in magazines, in commercials, in candy form, and as a plush toy. There was even a book series, the Nintendo Adventure Books. In 1990, a national survey found that Mario was more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse. In addition, Mario made history in 2003 by becoming the first video game character to be honored with a wax figure in the legendary Hollywood Wax Museum. In 2005, Jonathan Mann even wrote an opera based on the character, and performed The Mario Opera at the California Institute of the Arts.

Mario is the official video game mascot for Nintendo, and is synonymous with the Nintendo brand. Because of this, Mario appears almost exclusively in Nintendo games on Nintendo systems.

[edit]
Special cameo appearances
In the earlier days of the NES and Game Boy, Mario did several cameos, usually in the early sports titles on both systems. Often he was depicted as the referee, such as in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! or Tennis, but was also the playable character in both versions of Nintendo's early Golf-title. However some of his other cameos were more bizarre, such as the one in the Breakout-clone Alleyway which featured Mario on the game's box-art and also at the beginning of each stage where Mario jumps "into" the paddle. He was also featured on the Game Over screen for the Game Boy version of Qix dressed in Mexican clothes, playing a guitar in the desert next to a cactus with a vulture perched on it.

Mario made brief appearances in three games from Nintendo's other popular franchise, the Legend of Zelda series. In A Link to the Past, his picture hangs on the walls of certain village houses. In Ocarina of Time, a picture of him (along with Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, and Bowser) is visible through a window in the castle courtyard where Link meets Zelda. In Majora's Mask, one of the masks on the Happy Mask Salesman's pack depicted Mario's face.

In 1999, Mario was included in the cast for Nintendo's popular fighting game, Super Smash Bros., for the Nintendo 64. He returned with the cast from the original in the 2001 GameCube sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and will also appear in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, an upcoming game for the Wii. In the recent Super Smash Bros. Brawl trailer, Mario was seen picking up a Smash Bros. emblem (as an item), then he threw out a large fire wave at his opponents. In this series, he is considered a well-balanced character and is easy for most players to use.

In Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, he appears on Otacon's desk next to a Yoshi figurine. When players shoot the Mario figure, they regain HP.

In the GameCube version of NBA Street V3, Mario makes a cameo alongside Luigi and Peach as their own playable basketball team, along with their own exclusive Nintendo themed court. SSX On Tour also features the three and an exclusive Nintendo themed track.

Mario has also made a cameo appearance in the Nintendo DS game Nintendogs. In this game, his hat can be unlocked, as well as a toy Mario in a radio-controlled kart. The latter is only unlockable on the Dachshund & Friends version.

In the game "Animal Crossing: Wild World" you can buy Mario's hat in the clothes store owned by the Able Sisters. In the game, the hat is called "Big Bro's Hat". You can also buy an accessory in the game that resembles a fake mustache and nose called the "Big Bro's Stache".

In 1080 Avalanche, Mario appeared on the bottom of a snowboard and as an ice sculpture.

In the game Pilotwings 64, Mario's face can be seen with those of the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore, if his face is shot, it turns into Wario's face.

[edit]
Cultural references
Mario's popularity has been parodied and/or referenced in many television shows other than his own. For example, he appears in two episodes of The Simpsons: in "Marge Be Not Proud", he, along with Luigi, Sonic, and Donkey Kong try to convince Bart to steal a video game; and in "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass", Mario is an Italian tourist who, when visiting Homer (famous after an embarrassing video on the Internet), gets trash cans thrown at him - just like Donkey Kong, but is defeated by Homer when he gets a hammer from the treehouse. He is also parodied in the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest II", when Fry asks the What-If Machine what would life be like as a video game. In the sequence that follows, Mario is the Italian ambassador at the United Nations.
In a crossover spoof on Attack of the Show, Mario and Luigi are portrayed in a The Sopranos-type story.
Action figures of Mario, Luigi, and Wario are also shown taking part in a Fast and the Furious-meets-Cannonball Run parody on an early episode of Robot Chicken.
In an episode of The Sopranos, A.J. is seen playing Mario Kart 64.
In the cartoon Megas XLR, episode 18 "Thanksgiving Throwdown", parodies of Mario and Luigi appear, known as "The Super Fabio Brothers". The Fabio brothers attack using wrenches and their famed jumping ability.
The King of Town, a character from the popular Homestar Runner series, dressed up as Mario during a Halloween Special. There was even a fake game that can be played through an Easter Egg called "Super Kingio Bros." The game, however, is unwinnable because the KoT is too fat to jump over the first enemy encountered.
[edit]
Trivia
Mario's theme music in Super Mario Bros., composed by Koji Kondo, is highly recognizable. Sample.
Former NHL hockey player, Mario Lemieux was given the nickname "Super Mario" by the media during his illustrious career. Mario Williams, the #1 draft pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, was also given the nickname "Super Mario".
He has a Neapolitan accent.
[edit]
Appearances on non-Nintendo platforms

A screenshot of Level 1 of one of the Ion Shell Mario programs on the TI-83.Nintendo holds the copyright to Mario in many nations and retained these rights for their own use with few exceptions. Mario appeared in quite a few educational PC titles in the United States such as Mario Teaches Typing and in some very early games for non-Nintendo systems such as the Atari 2600 and the Mattel Intellivision. Philips made several games, such as Hotel Mario, featuring Nintendo characters for their Philips CD-i which was the result of a compromise with Nintendo over failing to release a joint CD-ROM product. Mario Is Missing!, another PC game, was later ported to the NES and SNES much like its sequel Mario's Time Machine.

There are many free fan-made games such as Mario Forever and Super Mario: Blue Twilight DX [1], and mini-movies using the Mario likeness available on the Internet such as the violent Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom cartoon series. Fan-made games vary from clones of the original games to more novel games that merely incorporate the Mario characters. Fans have produced and distributed simple games incorporating Mario on graphing calculators such as the TI-83. There have also been a number of fan-made games using the Super Mario World engine. [2]

[edit]
See also
List of Mario games
List of best-selling computer and video games
List of Mario series characters
List of Nintendo characters
List of Nintendo games created by Shigeru Miyamoto
List of video games developed by Nintendo
Shigeru Miyamoto
Luigi
Princess Peach
Princess Daisy
Bowser
Donkey Kong
Dry Bones
Toad
Yoshi
Wario
Waluigi
[edit]
Notes and references
^ David Low (2005). Nintendo reveal sales figures. Australia's PAL Gaming Network. Retrieved on February 12, 2006.
^ Demaria, R: "High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games", page 238. McGraw Hill-Osbourne, 2002
^ Retro Gamer Magazine, vol. 2, issue 2
^ Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis. Nintendo (2006). Retrieved on 2006-18-7.
^ O’Connell, Patricia (November 7, 2005). Meet Mario's Papa. BusinessWeek. Retrieved on February 12, 2006.
Sheef, David. Game Over, Nintendo's Battle to Dominate the Game Industry. Hodder and Stoughton LTD, UK 1999. ISBN 0340751932.
Super Mario Wiki
Super Mario Bros. at GameFAQs
Holidays on the Net
[edit]
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
MarioMario's World (Nintendo of America Official Site, currently replaced by New Super Mario Bros. info)
Mario's Megasite (Nintendo of Europe Official Site)
Super Mario Wiki, a wiki dedicated to everything Mario
The Mushroom Kingdom
Super Mario Bros. Headquarters
The Evolution of Mario History of Mario Sprites
Mario: The Unauthorized Biography
Video game parodies with Mario on Newgrounds
Mario Licensees at MobyGames
Mario Monsters List of Monsters from Mario Games
Mario at Answers.com
Mario online games, images and info (also incorporating Sonic the Hedgehog)



Mario series characters[ Show ]
Mario | Luigi | Princess Peach | Bowser | Toad | Wario | Donkey Kong | Yoshi
Mario series[ Show ]
Main series Donkey Kong | Donkey Kong Jr. | Mario Bros. | Super Mario Bros. | Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (SMB2J) | Super Mario Bros. 2 | Super Mario Bros. 3 | Super Mario Land | Super Mario World | Super Mario Land 2 | Super Mario 64 | Super Mario Sunshine | New Super Mario Bros. | Super Mario Galaxy
General subseries Super Mario RPG | Paper Mario | Luigi's Mansion | Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga | Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door | Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time | Super Paper Mario
Remakes Kaettekita Mario Bros. | Super Mario All-Stars | Super Mario Bros. Deluxe | Super Mario Advance | Super Mario Advance 2 | Super Mario Advance 3 | Super Mario Advance 4 | Super Mario 64 DS
Mario spin-offs Mario Party series | Dr. Mario series | Super Princess Peach | Mario Pinball Land | Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix | Wrecking Crew | Wrecking Crew '98 | Mario Clash | Mario's Picross
Mario sports series Mario Kart series | Mario Golf series | Mario Tennis series | Mario Superstar Baseball | Super Mario Strikers | Mario Hoops 3-on-3
Mario vs. Donkey Kong Donkey Kong | Donkey Kong Jr. | Donkey Kong '94 | Mario vs. Donkey Kong | Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis
Other games Hotel Mario | Mario's Early Years series | Mario's FUNdamentals | Mario Is Missing! | Mario Paint | Mario Teaches Typing | Mario Teaches Typing 2 | Mario's Time Machine | Super Mario Bros. Special | Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up | Super Mario's Wacky Worlds | Super Mario FX | Super Mario 64 2 | Super Mario 128
Super Smash Bros. series[ Show ]
Games: Super Smash Bros. | Melee | Brawl
Super Smash Bros. Captain Falcon | Donkey Kong | Fighting Polygon Team | Fox McCloud | Jigglypuff | Kirby | Link | Luigi | Mario | Master Hand | Ness | Pikachu | Samus Aran | Yoshi
SSB Melee: Bowser | Crazy Hand | Dr. Mario | Falco Lombardi | Fighting Wire Frames | Ganondorf | Giga Bowser | Ice Climbers | Marth | Mewtwo | Mr. Game & Watch | Pichu | Princess Peach | Princess Zelda | Roy | Sandbag | Sheik | Young Link
SSB Brawl: Meta Knight | Pit | Solid Snake | Wario | Zero-Suit Samus


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario"
Categories: Italian computer and video game characters | Corporate mascots | Video game mascots | Silent protagonists | Nintendo protagonists | Animation protagonists | Mario characters | Super Smash Bros. fighters | Fictional heroes | Fictional New Yorkers | Fictional plumbers | Fictional pyrokineticists | Fictional racecar drivers | Japanese superheroes

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Metal Gear Solid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the original Metal Gear Solid released for the Sony PlayStation. For the Game Boy Color spinoff of the same name, see Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.
Metal Gear Solid

Developer(s) Konami Computer Entertainment Japan (West)
Publisher(s) PlayStation: Konami
Microsoft Windows: Microsoft
Designer(s) Hideo Kojima
Release date(s) September 3, 1998 (JP)
October 21, 1998 (NA)
February 26, 1999 (EU)
Genre(s) Stealth action
Mode(s) Single player
Rating(s) ESRB: Mature (M)
CERO: 15+
ELSPA: 15+
OFLC: M 15+
Platform(s) PlayStation, Microsoft Windows
Media 2 CDs
Input Controller, Keyboard
Metal Gear Solid (メタルギアソリッド, Metaru Gia Soriddo?), commonly abbreviated as MGS, is a stealth-based game developed by Konami and first published for the PlayStation video game console in 1998. It is the third canonical game in the Metal Gear series, produced and directed by Hideo Kojima, with artwork by Yoji Shinkawa. Metal Gear Solid alternates stealth gameplay and expository cinematic sequences. It has frequently been selected by a number of gaming publications as the greatest action game on the PlayStation.

Metal Gear Solid was groundbreaking in its use of spoken dialogue and cinematic presentation, which served to enhance its intricate plot. The availability of 3D graphics and the extensive storage capacity of the CD-ROM format, compared to the limited cartridge format the Metal Gear team had to work with during the late 1980's and early 1990's, made it possible to create a more cinematic version of Hideo Kojima's vision for what its predecessors, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX2 could have been like.

After a teaser showing at E3 in 1997, it became one of the most highly anticipated games of its time.[citation needed] It topped the sales charts upon its release in 1998,[citation needed] and held the number one spot in the ELSPA UK videogames chart for eight consecutive weeks, a record at the time.[citation needed]

To date, Metal Gear Solid has spawned one sequel (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, released in 2001) and a prequel (Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, released in 2004). A fourth game, titled Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, is currently in development, set for a 2007 release. MGS1 has been enhanced and remade by Silicon Knights for the Nintendo GameCube with the subtitle The Twin Snakes.

Contents [hide]
1 Plot summary
2 Game details
2.1 Cinematic presentation
2.2 Real-world references
2.3 Breaking the fourth wall
3 Alternate versions
3.1 Japanese release
3.2 North American release
3.3 European release
3.4 Metal Gear Solid: Integral
3.5 VR Missions
3.6 Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
3.7 Metal Gear Solid comic book
3.8 Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel
3.9 Game.com Version
3.10 Bleem!cast
4 Cast
5 Music
6 External links
6.1 Official
6.2 Others



[edit]
Plot summary
To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Solid Snake entering the facility where Metal Gear REX is being developed.In February of 2005, during a training mission at a nuclear weapons disposal facility on Shadow Moses Island, a fictional and remote island off the coast of Alaska, a group of genetically enhanced soldiers known as the Next Generation Special Forces (NGSF, or "genome soldiers") stage a rebellion and seize control of the facility. The rebellion is initiated by Liquid Snake, the squad leader of a covert black ops organization named FOXHOUND. The terrorists threaten the White House with a nuclear strike and have the following demands: the remains of Big Boss, the man considered to be the greatest warrior of the 20th century, one billion dollars, and later in the game, the vaccine to the programmable virus FOXDIE.

At the request of the US Secretary of Defense, the former head of FOXHOUND Colonel Roy Campbell returns from retirement and enlists the help of Solid Snake, an elite spy and ex-FOXHOUND operative, to rescue the hostages and eliminate nuclear threat. Solid Snake must enter the base alone, supported only by a handful of specialists communicating with him over a two-way radio Codec embedded in his body through the injection of nanomachines.


Solid Snake conversing with the DARPA chief.Having infiltrated the facility, Snake immediately sets about locating and freeing the hostages. The first hostage Snake locates is Donald Anderson, the chief of DARPA, who appears to die of a heart attack before Snake is able to free him from his cell. The next hostage is Kenneth Baker, head of Armstech, who explains that to deactivate Metal Gear, Snake will need three key-cards, which have been entrusted to another loose cannon moving around Shadow Moses: a rookie soldier named Meryl. Baker then mysteriously dies from what appears to be a heart attack similar to that suffered by the DARPA chief.

Along the way Snake encounters and battles various members of FOXHOUND, such as Revolver Ocelot, skilled gunfighter who loses an arm after a fight with Snake when he is attacked by a biomechanical ninja, Vulvan Raven, and Inuit shaman who attacks Snake with an Abrams tank, Psycho Mantis, a psychic and telekinetic takes control of Snake's ally and uses her to attack him, and Sniper Wolf, a beautiful sharpshooter who shoots an ally of Snake and engages him in a sniper duel.

Since FOXHOUND seems to have the ability to follow through with their threat of launching a nuclear weapon, Snake contacts Otacon (Dr. Hal Emmerich, PhD), REX's primary engineer, who was also captive on the island. First, Snake is forced to rescue him from the cyborg ninja Gray Fox.

Following the encounter with Otacon, Snake meets up with Meryl and the pair attempt to reach REX's hangar on the other side of the Shadow Moses complex. On the way they successfully eliminate Psycho Mantis, despite his occasional possession of Meryl. The journey to the hangar, on the other hand, is less successful: it involves a long concrete alleyway with a communications tower at the far end, where they are ambushed by FOXHOUND's Sniper Wolf, who shoots Meryl in both legs and an arm. To save her, Snake must backtrack to one of the first buildings in the facility and retrieve a PSG-1 sniper rifle, which he uses to duel Sniper Wolf at long range. During this interval the injured Meryl is captured. Believing that he has defeated Sniper Wolf, Snake attempts to cross the alley, but he too is captured and taken to meet Liquid Snake.


Snake is tortured by Revolver Ocelot.The terrorist leader reveals that the two Snakes are twins, each a genetically-manipulated clone of Big Boss created as part of a secret project titled "Les Enfants Terribles." Liquid professes to hate Snake, as he believes that Snake was given all of Big Boss's dominant traits, while Liquid was given the recessive traits. Liquid leaves Snake in the hands of Revolver Ocelot, who uses a torture device to try to extract information from him. During his captivity Snake finds himself in a holding cell with the body of Donald Anderson, who appears to have been dead for much longer than a few hours.

Eventually Snake escapes from the cell and returns to the communications tower where he and Meryl were ambushed. While climbing the tower he is attacked by Liquid Snake, who is piloting an Mi-24 Hind-D attack helicopter. While searching for a Stinger missile launcher to attack Liquid, Snake encounters Otacon, who asks Snake for a solider's perspective on love. Snake manages to shoot down Liquid and the helicopter, however when he finally descends from the tower he is ambushed for a second time by Sniper Wolf. Snake kills her, and Otacon arrives in time to bid her a tearful goodbye.

Snake has finally reached the Underground Base where REX is kept. At this point, Master Miller calls with startling news. Naomi claimed earlier that her Japanese grandfather worked in the FBI under Hoover—which, according to Miller, is a lie. Snake then encounters Vulcan Raven, this time equipped with an M61 Vulcan gatling gun. After being defeated, he reveals that the DARPA Chief Snake encountered was not the real one, but was rather Decoy Octopus, FOXHOUND's impersonation specialist. Why he did this, Raven leaves Snake to figure out for himself. Finally, Miller informs Snake and Col. Campbell that "Naomi Hunter" is no such person; she must be, in fact, a spy affiliated with FOXHOUND. He also reveals some sort of secret weapon: "FOXDIE," a secret assassination weapon—a genetically engineered virus that kills only specific people. Supposedly, it was deployed by Snake during this mission... And it kills by simulating a heart attack. With all this in mind, Naomi is placed under arrest.

Otacon, who has been hacking his way into Shadow Moses's files, has finally figured out the secret of the card key Snake got from Meryl. The nuclear weapon requires three card keys, but the single key Snake has is all three of them, because it is made of a "shape memory alloy" and will change form when exposed to different temperatures. The card keys are one-use-only: inserting them when the nuke is armed will disarm it, and vice-versa. Snake uses his three-in-one card key—and then, to his alarm, hears the computer report that the nuke is armed. Liquid Snake, chortling triumphantly, reveals how he's been manipulating the mission from the start: by posing as Master Miller. He explains that the DARPA Chief died under Ocelot's torture without revealing his half of the nuke's arming codes, but from Baker they learned the existence of the three-in-one key, which functions regardless of arming codes. Decoy Octopus then disguised himself as Chief Anderson to fool Snake into arming the nuke, exactly as he just did. Snake now has only one option: destroy Metal Gear REX.


Metal Gear REX.Snake is in trouble until the cyborg ninja reappears. He reveals himself to be Gray Fox (Frank Jaeger), Snake's former FOXHOUND comrade, thought dead for six years. At the cost of his own life, he destroys REX's radar dish, forcing Liquid to open the cockpit itself and observe the situation manually. Before his death, Gray Fox reveals that he raised Naomi Hunter after killing her parents years ago, for which he has never forgiven himself. Snake succeeds in destroying REX, but is knocked unconscious, while Liquid remains intact. He lectures Snake on the details of the Les Enfants Terribles project, not to mention the gene therapy that created the Genome Soldiers, and reveals Meryl, bound and near death. Campbell then calls and explains that he has been removed from command in favor of Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman, who is about to drop nuclear weapons onto Shadow Moses. Liquid and Snake duel hand-to-hand aboard the carcass of REX, and after Snake wins, he escapes in a Jeep, using its mounted machine gun for a final confrontation with Liquid (who appears to be impervious to bullets; it's FOXDIE that ultimately kills him). Finally, Campbell reasserts his command by getting in contact with President George Sears, recalls the bombers and nukes, and helps arrange for Snake's departure.


The ending of the game is determined earlier on during the torture sequence.The game features two possible endings, affected by performance in the torture session. The player is given an option to 'break' and surrender, but if the player does, Meryl is revealed to have died during Snake's bout with Liquid, and Otacon drives the jeep. If the player succeeds in withstanding Ocelot's torture, however, Meryl lives and drives the jeep, while Otacon stays behind in the "doomed" base (the attack on the base having been cancelled).

Finally, after the credits, the player is treated to a one-sided telephone report between Revolver Ocelot and a mysterious party. Ocelot reveals to his superior that Liquid was wrong: Snake was, in fact, the inferior one. But unlike many would think, Ocelot wasn't referring to genes at all. Ocelot also retains data from the test-firing of REX's nuclear railgun, and plans to sell it on the black market. In the "Meryl" ending, he reveals that neither Solid nor Liquid knew of the existence of their third twin: Solidus Snake, a "well-balanced individual" and the man with whom Ocelot is now conversing. Finally, he signs off: "Yes. Thank you. Good-bye. Mr. President."

[edit]
Game details
[edit]
Cinematic presentation

Solid Snake (right) is hiding behind a crate in a store room.The entire game was fully voiced, with an unprecedented amount of quality voice acting talent. The majority of the game's dialogue takes place during radio conversations between Solid Snake (Akio Otsuka/David Hayter, Japanese and English respectively) and other characters through a transmitting device called a "Codec". The player was also free to initiate additional Codec calls during gameplay, which allowed additional details outside of the core storyline to be gleaned. Upon completion, the game features a rolling demo mode, in which the player may watch every cutscene and Codec conversation in the game without actually playing through it. The game contains over four hours of dialogue, which contributed to its shipping on two CDs.

The rest of the plot unfolds during fully-voiced cut scenes of ground-breaking quality. These scenes featured motion captured movements, elaborate camera shots, and special effects. They were rendered in real-time using the game's 3D engine. This decision to go with real-time rendering cost the scenes some realism: the characters' mouths did not move during dialogue and instead a slight jiggle of the head was used to represent speech.

[edit]
Real-world references
The game, though set in (what was then) a near future, retains many elements of today's global, political, economic and military climate. Part of The Pentagon's urgency on Snake's sneaking mission is that the President is about to sign the fictional START III treaty, which REX's nuclear railgun violates. Of course, President Sears has not been fully briefed on REX's abilities, for reasons of plausible deniability. Nastasha Romanenko's parents died of cancer from helping clean up after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. One of the co-developers of Metal Gear REX in the game is Rivermore National Labs, an obvious reference to Livermore National Labs (or perhaps simply a mistranslation, as Japanese does not differentiate between "L" and "R" sounds). Finally, many of the game's gadgets and weapons (the SOCOM pistol, the FAMAS assault rifle, Ocelot's dual Colt Single Action Army, and Meryl's Desert Eagle handgun) are drawn directly from real life, though a number of others (the Soliton radar, the Codec radio system, and optical camouflage, for example) are totally fictional, if superficially plausible.

[edit]
Breaking the fourth wall
A stylistic quirk, Kojima's script breaks the fourth wall in a number of places.

In the PlayStation version of the game, Psycho Mantis performs a variety of stunts to prove the truth of his telepathic and psychokinetic powers. First, he scans the player's memory card for save files from other Konami games and drops pithy comments if he finds them. (In the Japanese version, if save files from both Snatcher and Policenauts are found, Mantis delivers a message of gratitude from Kojima himself. One example in the US version is Konami's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) He also asks the player to drop his DualShock controller on the ground and then invokes the controller's vibration function in a violent manner. As one of his battle attacks, he is able to turn the game's screen black, with only the word "HIDEO" on the top corner of the screen, with characters resembling those of some TV sets e.g. Sony's (a pun of "video" as reference to Hideo Kojima), as if the player's television were malfunctioning. Finally, to counter his "mind-reading ability", the player must unplug the controller from Controller Port 1 and insert it into the infrequently-used Controller Port 2 instead.
In the Gamecube update, Psycho Mantis does all the same things as his Playstation counterpart, with a few minor differences; when the player shifts to first-person mode, after a while the camera becomes Psycho Mantis' point of view instead of Snake's. There are also several extra tricks that happen while fighting Psycho Mantis, such as the room appearing to tilt. This is not unlike a feature of another Gamecube title, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, where the main characters would begin to hallucinate as they lose their sanity.
In the Science Lab, where Snake must fight the Cyborg Ninja to a standstill, before meeting Otacon, there is a Playstation Console with a plugged in controller (interestingly, digital rather than Dualshock analogue), visible to those who care to scan the work surfaces in the centre of the room.
In The Twin Snakes, the Playstation is replaced with a Nintendo Gamecube and a Wavebird.
Early in the game, the Codec frequency for Meryl (140.15) can only be found on the back of the game's box or jewel case. This was initially commissioned in an effort to curb piracy, as without contacting Meryl, the player cannot progress in the game. However, this trick could be side-tracked (possibly for those who lost their case) by calling Campbell via Codec five times in a row (or by doing it the slow way and running through each possible frequency until she answers). This puzzle is not original to Metal Gear Solid however, as its predecessor Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX2 also required the player to look behind the game's packaging when Campbell changes frequency number.

Solid Snake (right) speaks with Mei Ling (left) on his Codec two-way radio.In the conversation with Mei Ling, pictured below at right, Mei Ling tells the player (via Snake) that they should be thankful that they have enough time to play video games.
Just before Snake is captured and tortured, Mei Ling contacts Snake by Codec and says "Snake, wouldn't now be a good time to save your mission?"
In fact, Mei Ling's very presence in the game breaks the fourth wall, the same way Rosemary's presence and Otacon's alternative Codec number do. Rosemary and Mei Ling are dubbed 'Systems Analysts', although their only effect on the player is to save the game, which they announce openly across Codec. Otacon however, is the only person that Snake communicates to on the Tanker chapter, and so only one number would be needed where he can contact Otacon. Snake openly breaks the fourth wall however, after he asks 'How can I check in and save my progress?'. Otacon then continues to destroy the fourth wall by saying that he has a second frequency for that task.
During the battle with the Hind D, the Colonel advises Snake that he can determine the gunship's position by following the sound of its rotors. However, if the player has set the game's sound to monaural mode, Campbell and Mei Ling will express pity.
During the Revolver Ocelot torture sequence, he warns about the player using a controller with an auto-fire function; if the game detects an unlikely number of controller inputs, the player hits a game over. And in the Gamecube update, Ocelot actually adresses the player directly, warning the player not to go into first person mode. After the first two torture sessions, Naomi Hunter, in a Codec conversation, comforts Snake's wounds—the player's sore arm after the torture sequence—by asking the player to place the controller on his shoulder. The controller then vibrates, under the guise that it is the nanomachines in Snake's blood that are easing his tense muscles. If the game is played without the DualShock controller, however, this feature is not present.
Master Miller also gives advice which is obviously intended for the player rather than Snake. For instance he warns that people's reaction speed decreases around 3 AM (obviously warning players not to play in the middle of the night) and that if you feel tired you should get some rest. At one point he also tells Snake to trust his instincts "as a soldier, as a gamer".
[edit]
Alternate versions
[edit]
Japanese release

Japanese Premium Package box and contents.Two versions of Metal Gear Solid were initially released in Japan; a stand-alone version contai