How About That Thing?

Yeah, we’re talking about this guy. You probably saw the title and thought we were talking about that guy who worked on the Street Fighter games, but nope. We’re diving even deeper into obscurity, and we’re talking about THIS AKI Man.

Long ago, in the distant year of 1999, we were introduced to this video game.

WCW/NWO Revenge was many things. For me personally, it was my gateway into the WCW fandom. And whew boy, did I pick a bad time to check in and see what the big deal was. Seriously, I could write all about WCW’s dying days… But someone beat me to it years ago.

For many others, it was, and depending on who you talk to, still is widely regarded as one of, if not THE best wrestling video game ever made. Even I thoroughly enjoyed it as an awkward middle schooler, and this is coming from someone who was hardcore WWF during The Monday Night Wars. If you can accomplish something like that, then you have earned the right to call yourself a legend in the business.

In WCW/NWO Revenge, you could play as a generous handful of WCW’s finest. Or you could play as a member of the NWO black and white. Or as a member of the NWO black and red.

Yeah, there were technically two NWO factions at the time. And yes, It’s exactly as confusing and convoluted as you think it is.

You could also play as a member of Raven’s flock, who may not have been as big of a deal as either NWO faction, but there were enough members to warrant having their own section on the select screen.

And then, there were the oddities: DAW, and EWF. I have no idea what either of those stand for… I mean I can guess the W stands for wrestling, and EWF is some sort of wrestling federation, but that’s about as close as I can get. I can also assume that both of these organizations didn’t exist IRL. I mean someone probably used those initials for their promotion, or even their E-fed later, but in 1999, that was not the case.

Within the confines of the DAW and EWF sections of the select screen, you can choose from several wrestlers that, near as I can tell, don’t exist in real life. And among that generous handful, there was none other than the legend himself: AKI Man.

I admit, a lot of my time with Revenge wasn’t spent playing the original characters. However, when I did play as any of the originals, I almost always picked AKI Man. For starters, just look at the guy! That outfit looks absolutely ridiculous, even by pro-wrestling standards.

Also, AKI Man was clearly designed for fans of what we in the wrestling community call “flippydoos”. IE, a lot of their style is based less on power and strength, and is based more around speed and agility. You know, that style Jim Cornette absolutely hates with a passion because the people performing it are shorter than six-foot-six, weigh less than 300 lbs, and therefore look like children who have no business being in the wrestling business.

SIDE NOTE: Yeah, I’m done with Jim Cornette. I was willing to agree to disagree when it came to his podcast turning into him basically hate-watching AEW for three straight hours, and I did eventually come around and see his points regarding “garbage wrestling” like FMW and XPW… But the moment he showed support for Logan fucking Paul… Yeah, respect withdrawn. I think I’ll stick with Dutch Mantell’s podcast from now on.

I’ll admit, as a kid, I was more into hardcore shit, and a lot of the matches I put on in just about every wrestling game that’d allow me were bloodbaths. However, if teenage-me had to pick a second favorite subgenre of wrestling, the flippydoo style would definitely be it. Even bloodthirsty teenager me could respect anybody who can pull off any sort of high risk move like the moonsault, the 450 splash, the phoenix splash, etc. And that’s pretty much AKI Man in summation.

As WCW parted ways with THQ and AKI Corporation, and WWF picked up where Revenge left off, though, AKI Man’s memory lived on.

In WWF Wrestlemania 2000, as well as WWF No Mercy, the pieces to create AKI Man were readily available to recreate him in the create-a-wrestler mode. In WWF No Mercy, you could even create AKI Woman… But let’s face it, women’s wrestling in 2001 wasn’t in a great place, and I wouldn’t be shocked if people chose to ignore that option in favor of making women wrestlers wear one of the string bikinis available as outfits, and give each other the stinkface.

While I didn’t do it for Wrestlemania 2000, I DID recreate AKI Man in No Mercy. Kinda. I basically created a version of AKI Man where in he was possessed by a symbiot from Spiderman, and he called himself Poison. He had Tajiri’s green mist as a finisher instead of the legendary tiger driver, and his suit was black and white instead of white and blue, but everything else was AKI Man through and through.

Then the AKI engine was abandoned in favor of the one they used for the Smackdown franchise. And boy, did that system take some getting used to. But that rant is for another day.

As for AKI Man… Well, the official version may have been retired, and AKI Corporation renamed themselves Sin Sophia for… Some reason. But the memory of AKI Man lived on.

YouTube eventually came into existence, and with it, E-feds entered the next level. Most people would record gameplay footage from that year’s Smackdown game, or that year’s Day of reckoning game, or whatever WWE game happened to be popular at the moment, and make their own promotion using it. In the early days of YouTube, I even followed a couple of the promotions. Some were based on video games, others were based on anime, and still others were based on original creations.

Hell, even I tried getting into the E-fed game early on… Unfortunately, I could never get the capture card to work, and I quickly got discouraged. But I digress.

In the magical world of E-feds, AKI Man has seen a second life. He appears in some of the most popular E-feds to this day. Hell, apparently he even died in one of them, if the fan wiki is anything to go by.

Suffice to say, AKI Man had a definite impact on the wrestling game community. Perhaps more than even I was truly aware.

The odds of him ever making an official return are about as likely as me ever getting a book published somewhere other than KDP or some other vanity press. However, it seems like the fandom at large is more than willing to keep the legacy alive. Even if it means he has to spend the rest of his days wrestling The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Wolverine on some fifteen-year-old kids’ YouTube channel for the rest of his days.