Having attended pro wrestling school as the wrestling business exploded in the mid-Nineties, Mike Archer was uniquely positioned to not only handle Acclaim’s wrestling licences, but steer WWE’s very own games division

Words by Hareth Al Bustani

What were your main passions growing up?

I was born in Lindenhurst, Long Island, and I always found solace in sports. When I was around ten years old, I discovered professional wrestling – this was back in the day when wrestling was ‘real’, or as ‘real’ as we thought it was. It was always a constant in my life, and I actually played baseball in Division 2 at Mercy College.

After graduating college, you joined Johnny Rodz’s pro wrestling school – what was that like?

I graduated when I was about 21 or 22, and I don’t know if anybody wants to say it, but everybody wants to be like Hulk Hogan, and then you take your first wrestling ‘bump’ and you go, ‘Oh, wait a second.’ I’d been through college baseball and football, some really gruelling sports, but it’s just nothing compared to what you go through. They would say, ‘You’ve got a three-minute match,’ and you go like, ‘Three minutes?’ And then by three minutes in, you were on your hands and knees… you couldn’t breathe. That’s how I met Tommy Dreamer, who later in life would come back to help me get the ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) licence. I’d never call myself a ‘wrestler’ though, it was so hard to do.

How did you go from wrestling school to joining Acclaim Entertainment?

I answered an ad in the New York Times, which was how you used to get jobs. There was this ad in the Sunday classified ads, and you had to love wrestling and sports – it was almost like it was written for me. I went in and a week later I got called back. There’s a certain point in your life where things just click. I had some incredible bosses, some super-talented people around me, and I learned a lot quickly. Gaming was at its very early stages – nowadays, when you’re 23 or 24 you’re a baby, but I felt like I was the old man trying to figure it out. But I had these two passions, wrestling and baseball, and before you know it, videogames became a passion, too.

Did you have any programming experience before you joined?

No, I learned while I was there. You have to remember it was early days, so when I first started at Acclaim, I didn’t even have a PC on my desk. You tested for bugs, you wrote things out longhand and then you typed it up afterwards. The programming and heavy coding was done with the developers; I could never be knee-deep in coding, but I could see from the top-down, where we were going. Although I wouldn’t say I was the most technically sound, it was more about management structure. I saw the whole product, timelines, budgets, marketing, PR, sales, anything I could do to help.

How long did it take to learn the ropes?

My first job at Acclaim was an analyst, so I was testing games. You name it, I tested it – Maximum Carnage and all the Marvel products, The Simpsons, it was a lot of fun. It was just a great place – good people, smart people, creative people, and it allowed me to grow at a rapid rate.