Issue dated November 17 Monday evening damp on Netflix saw John Cena's final appearance on the program as an active wrestler. He also witnessed the return and confrontation between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns as they joined their groups for an upcoming 5 on 5 match at the stadium War games. Amid the excitement were surprises: AJ Lee helped Maxine Dupree win the Women's Intercontinental Championship and Dolph Ziggler returned. With such a packed show at Madison Square Garden, all eyes turned to Lil Yachty as he held up his silver PSP for the cameras to show him playing. Bring it down! vs Raw 2006.
Despite everything that happened in this historical Rawit was Lil Yachty and his PSP going viral. Is it because of pop culture's undying love for Sony's portable system? Is it because people fondly remember the greatness of SmackDown! against a raw franchise? Or is it because WWE fans don't care? new 2K games?
For those who don't know, Bring it down! vs Raw 2006 marked the series' debut on the PSP and was the final entry in Bring it down! vs raw the line will remain exclusive to PlayStation. The game shifted the franchise towards greater realism and authenticity, moving away from the arcade style of earlier games. It introduced a new momentum gauge to determine the progress of the match, replacing the previous “clean/dirty” and “SmackDown!” meters. Players could choose to fight “clean” with their face or “dirty” with their heels, with the stamina system depleting as matches became more intense; more vivid movements meant more rapid fatigue. Bring it down! vs Raw 2006 eventually becoming the best-selling PlayStation 2 game in the entire series.
The series began with WWF SmackDown! on the original PlayStation and continued to be released annually, with the exception of 2021. It remained a PlayStation exclusive until WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2007which brought the franchise to additional platforms. In 2013, the series was renamed WWE 2Kstarting from WWE 2K14.
Back on that day Bring it down! vs raw the games reigned supreme and felt like an evolution of N64-era games thanks to improved graphics. When the franchise moved to the PlayStation 2, this feeling only intensified as games gradually emerged with crisp graphics, new game modes, and role-playing storylines.
PSP version Bring it down! vs Raw 2006 adds features not found in its PS2 equivalent, including three exclusive mini-games available from the start. The first, “WWE Game Show,” offers players 500 wrestling questions, covering everything from music and finishers to history and feuds, sometimes using audio clips or video clips. The other two mini-games are a poker game and “Eugene's Airplane”, in which players fly Eugene (whose gimmick is being a mentally retarded wrestler) around the ring as quickly as possible.
The older Bring it down! vs raw the games were very strange, even if they strived for more realistic gameplay. The franchise moved to full-fledged simulations with games in 2K resolution, which lacked non-standard ideas their predecessors. But the old games also served as time capsules of some of our favorite eras of wrestling.
Perhaps fans are nostalgic for a similar, more “fun” time in their wrestling games. Perhaps the joy of seeing a celebrity extol the greatness of the PSP, like the rest of the Internet, has people screaming for Yachty. Or maybe Bring it down! vs Raw 2006 was truly that great and reflects an equally great era of wrestling dominated by John Cena, who will retire from in-ring competition on December 13 at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC.
