WWE SmackDown! (formerly WWF SmackDown!) is a series of professional wrestling video games released by THQ. The franchise takes its name from World Wrestling Entertainment's weekly Friday night (previously Thursday night) television program of the same name. The game is developed by Japanese developer YUKE's Future Media Creators, who had previously developed the popular Toukon Retsuden series of Japanese wrestling games. In Japan, the series has also been released as Exciting Pro Wrestling. The series as a whole has sold quite well, with WWE claiming total sales in excess of 26 million units for the whole series.
After SmackDown! vs. RAW, the series took a shift of focus from its original arcade-like roots to more of a realistic wrestling simulation game. With this shift, the next game in the series was called SmackDown! vs. RAW 2006, matching the naming scheme of other sports games such as the Madden NFL series.
The show is taped Tuesday nights and broadcast Friday nights. Their 11 September 2001 event was canceled due to the terrorist attacks. On 13 September 2001, Smackdown was broadcast live as the first major and televised event since the attacks as thousands were in attendance. The ring ropes are usually blue for the Smackdown shows but were red, white and blue for this night; these colors were commonly used during the 1980s.
