Instead of capitalizing on everything that they'd built during the last round of software wars, the massive publishing houses chose to 'start over.' They rushed through the production cycle, half-assing features and cheap-shitting the basic engines the games ran on. They put on a supportive face to the public and promised great things, then delivered the kind of screw job that even politicians turn their noses down on. They played the public by telling them what they wanted to hear, then crapped out a round of titles that were nothing short of embarrassing. They glitched. They were outdated. They weren't even worthy of comparing to the games that had preceded them.

The fan reaction was bizarre, to say the least. There was no denying that the public had been screwed. Hard and dry. But how to deal with this grand betrayal was another issue altogether; fans had been voicing their complaints about getting short-sticked by wrestling game publishers since the dawning of the genre. Message boards such as GameFAQS bristled with angry sentiment and disappointment, but the question of how to make a change was one that nobody seemed to have an answer for. The voice was loud. It was screaming. But all fans could do was carpet-bomb the automated e-mail addresses they were offered by the companies they trusted, spit their bitter thoughts into a void.

Then Dave Wishnowski came along, and it all got messy.

This isn't intended to be some blowhard propaganda piece about the greatness of the guy who started this militant march towards god-knows-what, but it's hard to paint all the dirty details without the appreciation that he deserves. Dave's just a humble bastard who wanted a better game. In the nicest terms possible, without ever stooping to banging a pulpit or letting loose with a rallying cry, Dave offered up a simple solution to what was ailing the wrestling fan community: a union.

Unlike anything that had ever been done before. This union wasn't marching for wages or selfish, unrealistic demands. All it was about was getting our due as consumers, and not being pissed on as dumb kids who didn't know a bullshit game from a quality piece of software. Dave collected signatures and turned a simple idea into a grassroots cause, which swelled to thousands of gamers who were mad as hell and wanted those pimping their lackluster titles to know it. For the first time in the history of the video game industry, the fans came together and flexed their democratic muscle. They demanded something better.

And the over-inflated mega corporations publishing their cash-cow products refused to listen. Outright. Calls were shunted off to answering services, sheafs of petition signatures went completely ignored. The people made it clear that they had their own ideas about what a wrestling game entailed, and those with their hands on the quality controls made it clear that they weren't interested in hearing about it. They knew what was best. And what was best was scrapping one of the most popular sports titles to ever grace a home console, and sending the developer who had made them millions and endeared a generation of new fans to their products to the unemployment shed.

At this point, it would have been easy to cut losses. It had been a valiant effort and had briefly tasted at times like the start of something almost like a revolution, but nobody's neck was ever really on the line. We were just a collective of angry, frustrated gaming fans who had high hopes. And we'd done our best.

Or had we?