I. INTRODUCTION

Where to begin...

This hack is really mostly for me. It's nothing new conceptually in that both WWF and AJPW wrestlers feature in it (a la SUMMIT), with the main selling point being that the WWF are essentially roster additions instead of roster replacements. There is no theme to the hack (as in La Fin Du Tour), as it serves as a benchmark of where we are in terms of hacking Revenge. Anything I included is purely for my own entertainment.

As always, this project doesn't get made without freem, SK Stylez, or Melonbread. Over the course of developing this hack, Melon's research yielded some astounding discoveries, such as running specials, which have been restored in Salvo for those who had it, as well as the WWF roster additions.

Before we continue, here are some things for you to note:
1) Playing this game on emulator is fine except for one pretty critical issue: when playing with more than two people on screen (i.e. tag team partners, managers, people interrupting, etc.) results in a slowdown not unlike that of No Mercy. There is no known solution to this, as it manifests the second you modify a Revenge ROM. Playing this game on a 64Drive is known to yield the best results, as there are no framerate issues. 
2) nWo Sting, Ric Flair, Wrath, Stone Cold, HBK, Undertaker, Kane, Misawa, and Vader all replace managers; as a result of managers sitting outside of SRAM, any attire changes you make won't be saved for whenever you play next. This mostly affects people playing on console. On emulator, using save states or reloading your previous session should negate this. This applies to renaming as well.
3) I don't intend to update this project now that it's been released.

II. WHAT'S CHANGED

Section A: Surface Level

Firstly, everyone is unlocked for your convenience, so you don't have to toil to get everyone on the roster.

A lot of people have moved from one stable to another in an attempt to organize them more into large-scale factions. One-time Wolfpac members, for example, are now considered part of the stable. Here are the stables (won't go into who is in which stable, you can play the game to check it out):
1) White (nWo Hollywood)
2) Red (nWo Wolfpac)
3) Flock (Raven's Flock)
4) WWF
5) WCW 1
6) WCW 2
7) WCW 3
8) AJPW
9) Free (Freelancers from across FMW, WAR, etc.)

The following people have been added to the roster, for the most part at the expense of the lost managers like Sister Sherri or "Ted Debisas":
1) Ric Flair (WCW 1)
2) nWo Sting (nWo White) - was already in-game, now restored with his own character slot and costume
3) Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWF)
4) Shawn Michaels (WWF)
5) The Undertaker (WWF) - both Ministry Taker and the American Badass are featured; the former uses one of his two beta "Revenge-style" faces buried within WWF Wrestlemania 2000
6) The Rock (WWF) - like the Undertaker, he uses one of two beta faces buried within the ROM, though the one used is arguably better known and fits the notion of "Revenge-style"; replaces Sick Boy
7) Kane (WWF) - based on his WWF No Mercy attire, although the masks were custom-made by me to resemble his latter-half-of-2000 mask; the black mask is just so that you can freely give him something that's not red for an additional attire
8) Cactus Jack (WWF) - an unmasked 1996-era Mankind costume serves as his P2 costume, while Dude Love is his P3 costume; replaces Riggs
9) Wrath (WCW 2) - technically not 'added', as he was already in-game, but he's now accessible without any additional modifications required; now with his own costume, and with Hawk and Animal as his P2 and P4 costumes respectively (see FAQs for why)
10) Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW) - uses his VPW64 moveset; doesn't replace AKI Man, if you're curious
11) Vader (AJPW) - uses his VPW64 moveset

The WWF roster additions use movesets based on their WM2K movesets, while Vader and Misawa were better suited to using their VPW64 movesets, due to the similarity in styles and the large amount of moves already being present in Revenge.

I had planned on keeping AKI Man around, but with the case of adding two new wrestlers, his being half Misawa when Misawa was already present, and with Sick Boy and Riggs already being so similar, it just made sense to convert AKI Man into shared Sick Boy/Riggs slot, though the height, weight, and moves all belong to Sick Boy.

All the DAW and AJPW wrestlers have been recostumed to reflect who they're supposed to be. A lot of head reassignment had to be done to facilitate adding Ric Flair, Austin, HBK, Undertaker, and Kane into the game. Kawada, Kobashi, Taue, and Tenryu all share head definitions now, so technically you can just swap appearances between them willy-nilly. 

The following are notes on costume replacements that you should know about, in case you wanted to know and/or consider alternate costumes to be additional characters, depending on the context:
1) Scott Norton - now only has his 'bald' hair style and uses a couple of other colors to round out his costumes; his 'two-head' head definition went to Scott Steiner
2) Scott Steiner - now only has the 'shades' head and his classic head, as his 'three-head' head definition went to Wrath; a white version of his already-present classic red outfit has been included
3) Billy Kidman - shares his 'seven-head' head definition with Juvi to facilitate the inclusion of Matt and Jeff Hardy (P4 and P2 respectively) as alternate costumes; Juvi loses some extra masks as a result
4) Worth stating here: La Parka also loses four masks to allow for Kane and Undertaker to have two heads each
5) Bret Hart - no longer has shades, as his 'two-head' head definition was given to Glacier
6) Glacier - now has Hiroshi Hase as P2 and P4
7) Wrath - now has Hawk and Animal as P2 and P4 respectively, and has a completely fixed moveset
8) Psychosis - now has Syxx in an nWo Hollywood t-shirt and jeans as a P4
9) Rey Mysterio - now has Great Sasuke (as he appeared in VPW64) and Taka Michinoku (as he appeared in VPW2, costume-corrected) as P3 and P4 respectively
10) Ultimo Dragon - no new characters per se, just a rather extreme makeover in line with what I'm relatively certain he was supposed to look like
11) Executioner - though he is now Kenta Kobashi, his P2 and P4 are now Jun Akiyama
12) Dr. Frank - though he is now Jumbo Tsuruta, his P2 is Stan Hansen, his P3 is Terry Gordy, and his P4 is Bruiser Brody.
13) Hayabusa - this is more for your reference, but P1 and P2 are Hayabusa, P3 is H (Hayabusa unmasked), and P4 is Tiger Mask 3 (Koji Kanemoto, immediately after his loss to Jushin Liger)

The following are people you can recreate via some bonus heads I included with certain characters:
1) Rey Mysterio - Black Ninja (color-corrected from World Tour), Dos Caras (updated from VPW64), Mil Mascaras (updated from VPW64), El Samurai (updated form VPW64)
2) Dr. Frank - Giant Baba (from VPW2)
3) Han Zo Mon - Jinsei Shinzaki (from VPW2)

Section B: Under the Hood

This section goes into more detail about what I learned and what I did.

Ric Flair's moveset is identical to how it was in World Tour, save for:
- His spinning punch, which is the canonical replacement for the World Tour spinning punch
- His corner taunt, which is generic, as World Tour didn't have the equivalent move
- His taunts, which were made for this game but would only be seen in VPW2 (AKI talked about having already developed Flair's animations on their website)

nWo Sting was actually buried in the ROM in the exact same way Wrath was, but was missing somewhat crucial information to make him visible to players back in the late 1990s. He has been restored for your use, with my sole contribution being the recreation of his threads from World Tour. Interestingly, his moveset has distinct similarities with his (and Sting's) moveset in World Tour, and is different from the regular Sting's moveset in Revenge. They share the same parameters, but notably, nWo Sting's rivals correspond to the ID4s of the first five nWo members. Those members, in the final game, sit across both nWo Hollywood and nWo Wolfpac. What this suggests is that nWo Sting is a reflection of the original Sting at a point in time when both were to have the same moveset (possibly), and prior to the nWo splitting in two (i.e. sometime in May 1998). nWo Sting's head is also legitimately his own in spite of looking identical to the regular Sting's, as they don't reference the same files. Even more curiously, he's the only character in the game who readily has running specials, as he was cut at a point in time where those were still being worked on. Accessing him in vanilla Revenge confirms this. Thus, the way I would think of nWo Sting is "Sting '97".

The following have had their running specials restored to them, with the moves having the correct sound and visual effects (Toki1s):
- Buff Bagwell
- Bret Hart
- DDP
- Disco Inferno
- Ultimo Dragon
- Eddy Guerrero
- Juvi
- Billy Kidman
- Dean Malenko
- Rey Mysterio
- nWo Sting
- Psicosis
- Perry Saturn
- Randy Savage
- Sting

Dean Malenko and Hayabusa also have their turnbuckle specials (Super Powerbomb) returned to them, as they were dummied out for whatever reason.

With regard to the wrestlers in the WWF, they all have running specials and Irish Whip finishers to boot.

Ultimo Dragon's params indicate that he wants to use the Dragon Attack flying move as his finisher. However, Revenge doesn't allow you to have a pinning turnbuckle move and a non-pinning one at the same time, so he never gets to use it. I switched the byte in his params to make him use his non-pinning Dragon Attack so that he can hit it freely, as God intended. (Side note: Regarding his costume, it's kind of bizarre how they got so many things deliberately off about it -- not just in terms of him being chunky, but he has white skin when his head and neck textures imply he's supposed to be tan).

In a similar fashion, Hollywood Hogan's params state his 'running stomp' is his chosen special, so I gave him a running legdrop instead of keeping the running stomp.

There are 55 "Hase Hip Swivel" taunts in Revenge. In the hacking community, we view these moves as gold because they're usually representative of lost moves (like reversals to Irish Whip Grapples), but more importantly, because they allow us to import moves that weren't in Revenge to begin with. Thus, here is a mostly accurate list of what I chose to import in no particular order:
1) Stone Cold Stunner
2) Sweet Chin Music
3) Tombstone Piledriver
4) Undertaker's Entrance Taunt
5) Undertaker's In-Match Taunt
6) Undertaker's Ducking Taunt
7) Undertaker's/Kane's Special Taunt (well aware there's an odd sound effect here, but at this point, too tired to change it)
8) Stone Cold's In-Match Taunt
9) Stone Cold's Special Taunt
10) Stone Cold's Ducking Taunt
11) HBK's Entrance Taunt (though there is no mechanism for in-ring pyro nor the loop for him to hold the pose)
12) HBK's In-Match Taunt
13) Cactus Jack's In-Match Taunt
14) Kane's In-Match Taunt
15) Kane's Entrance Taunt
16) The Rock's In-Match Taunt
17) The Rock's Special Taunt
18) The Rock's Entrance Taunt
19) The Rock Bottom
20) The People's Elbow (the actual move, not the setup that you perform as a face up upper body submission)
21) Kane's diving clothesline
22) Cactus Jack's double arm DDT
23) Three of Vader's missing combo moves and their respective reversals
24) All of Ric Flair's taunts that were in VPW2
25) Austin's punch
26) Undertaker's punch
27) Kane's "Bossman" uppercut
28) The Rock's punch
29) The Rock's stomp
30) Stone Cold's elbow drop/forearm to downed opponent
31) The Hopping Rolling Clutch Pin from VPW2 (in order to complete the running special)

I know that doesn't add up to 55, but P1 and P2 animations are considered individual animations, with consideration of loops, etc. There's also the fact that one of them causes problems when you try and use it in someone's moveset so...trust me, it adds up. (One of these actually belonged to Maya Inca Boy but I needed to use it so, the taunt is now entirely absent)

Also a relatively minor point, but I renamed Yuji Nagata and Larry Zbyszko so their names are spelled properly.

III. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: Why isn't [INSERT WRESTLER HERE] in the hack?
A: For anyone who undertakes the creation of a hack, the only motivation they have, usually, is to see things that they want to see. The roster here is full of people that I wanted to see, and I wasn't thinking about anyone else while making it.

As usual, it didn't start out with the intention of being an "All Stars" type mod. I still don't really think that's what this is. It started with freem cracking default costume definitions in Revenge, which meant I now had a way to recostume the DAW and EWF rosters. In the process of doing that, I found out nWo Sting was hidden in the game. And then, as it always does, it snowballs to what the 'next thing' is. I've pushed Revenge, and myself, to its limit, and I feel like that's what the main takeaway is here. If there's any theme, it's "check out what Revenge can do!". There's still so much left to showcase that I wasn't able to, like whatever the shoot fighter style is (haven't tried making such a moveset yet), making a proper Great Sasuke moveset so we can see the Space Flying Tiger Drop param in action, Muta's mist, etc.

Q: Why does Vader have a jackhammer for a finisher?
A: He already has a snap powerbomb, and I didn't want to waste a hip swivel trying to get his specific powerbomb in. In VPW2, he uses this as a super special.

Q: Why is Undertaker's face slightly pink/why is the Rock whiter than he's supposed to be?
A: It's the exact texture as I found it in WM2K. I didn't want to edit it, as I feel like this is the only chance you'd get to be able to use it as-found.

Q: Why didn't you import Old School/Austin's Lou Thesz Press/The People's Elbow/etc.?
A: 55 hip swivels is a lot fewer than you might think. I had to be strategic in terms of what I could import and how good I could make it look. The People's Elbow being omitted, for example, is because Revenge doesn't have a mechanism for a move to end in a 'run'. So when that move animation ends and he's supposed to begin running the ropes, there's no way for the game to make that happen because that mechanism didn't exist until WM2K. You can still do the actual elbow, just not with the theatrics.

Q: Why is there a framerate slowdown when more than two people are on screen?
A: I don't actually know. It just happens when you modify the Revenge ROM I suppose.

Q: Can you work with RetroRandyPrice to do more things, like add tables, more characters, solve the framerate issue, etc.?
A: Randy's the coolest, but no. I did ask him about the framerate issue, but the cause is not the same as it was in No Mercy, and therefore the same fix can't be applied. He's doing wonderful work in his area of expertise and I wouldn't bother him to do anything he wasn't already planning on doing.

Q: I saw Melonbread post about Muta's mist in Revenge, can we see it in this game?
A: Not in this hack. I had progressed a bit too far to be able to include it in this project by the time he found it. That said, running specials are in, so that should hopefully address at least some of that.

Q: Why does Kane have a black mask? Why didn't you give him his '98 attire?
A: Not enough free textures to use, given all the costumes I had to create. The No Mercy costume being in Revenge was always an amusing goal of mine (for no reason other than liking the attire), but at the time I was building it, it seemed the more economical choice. The black mask is, as stated before, more to give people an option for giving Kane a color that isn't red. I picked the light blue/cyanic color because I liked how it played off the black mask. You can change it from blue to whatever you want and I think it'd still work.

Q: Why did you make references to things that happened after 1998? e.g. American Badass Undertaker
A: I had done up an ABA Taker conversion from No Mercy to VPW2 very early on in my hacking days. I thought it was nice to make use of things I already had on hand and give them purpose. Similar principle behind the Ric Flair face -- that one was probably one of the first I ever made, and freem once used a version of it for VPW2 Freem Edition. It's nice to be able to give it a proper home in one of my own projects now.

Q: Why Koji Kanemoto (Tiger Mask 3) over Satoru Sayama?
A: Honestly...I wasn't happy with how any of the head polys made Sayama look. So I scrapped him entirely. He's still in SUMMIT though if you want to get your Tiger Mask 1 fix. Also worth noting that in VPW2, the extra poly masks use are considered a 'fourth' poly. Revenge doesn't support that.

Q: What is the best intended way to play?
A: As stated earlier on, it appears that 64Drive (If you're lucky enough to have one) is the most surefire way to play this with zero errors. I can also confirm it works on Everdrive, but haven't heard anything about whether or not the frame rate issue persists there (it doesn't on 64Drive). If you intend to play it on emulator, you can do so without issues so long as it's a singles match between two wrestlers. I suggest turning off interferences if you can.

Q: Will there be future updates?
A: No.

Q: Are there any arena changes?
A: No. I did that with REVENJI (just textures), but I generally speaking don't really enjoy it and furthermore didn't see the need to do so. Revenge is a game well-loved as it is so I didn't want to change too much.

Q: Any glitches/bugs?
A: Honestly I did my best to test for all of them and I think they're mostly gone. I know there's an odd sound effect that plays during Taker's/Kane's special taunt, but it's past the point of my wanting to change that. I will say, if you're on emulator, and you've equipped the Always Special code before the match begins, you will crash the game. I have no idea what the deal is here, or if that's even a problem with my hack.

Q: What about theme hacks? Why not change anything?
A: Assuming this is about there not being any entrance themes in this game: Revenge didn't have anything in it to indicate what wrestlers would get which theme. It comes down to entry order and nothing else. I think you could hypothetically replace the MIDI themes with streamed themes (not sure of the sampling rate), but it doesn't fix the core problem.

Q: Were any championships changed to accommodate the new wrestlers?
A: None whatsoever.

Q: How come Disco Inferno and La Parka aren't in Cruiserweight mode anymore?
A: The Cruiserweights are considered two stables in the game. That means, technically, cruiserweight get two identical slots. In order to let Misawa and Vader exist as their own characters, I took the duplicate slots for La Parka and Disco Inferno (they're both over the limit anyway), and pulled them into the AJPW stable, assigning "DRIVER" and "WHITE" the slots instead. In this way, I was able to bring two new characters to life. La Parka and Disco Inferno are still accessible in literally every other mode, and you can still fight them in the Cruiserweight championship mode.

Q: Why are Hiroshi Hase and the Road Warriors alternate costumes for Glacier and Wrath respectively?
A: Little known fact, but almost all of the VPW64 roster's movesets (in various states of completion) are locked away in World Tour. There are only two exceptions to this: Hiroshi Hase and Road Warrior Hawk/Animal. Who replaced them? You guessed it: Glacier and Wrath. It's a niche reference, but this hack's full of stuff like that.

Q: Why does Atsushi Onita have a Bret Hart costume?
A: He wore a version of Bret's attire while a member of the ZEN stable around the time this game came out.