California man discovers never-released Nintendo game

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- You've never seen the Nintendo wrestling game UWC before.

Gamer and collector Stephan Reese hadn't either, until he bought the unknown game from a former Nintendo employee last week who clearly had never touched it.

Since then, Reese has been playing UWC nonstop.

"I got it in the mail and plugged it in and realized it was something I had never seen before. And I own every North American Nintendo game so I was like, 'I definitely know it's not something I have on my shelf.' This was a completely different game, completely different code base, completely different developer, everything was different about it," Reese said.

It's different because the game was never released.

It's now Reese's favorite Nintendo wrestling game because he says it plays faster and is more engaging. It features 1980s wrestling stars like Ric Flair, Sting, and The Road Warriors

"That it went all the way through submission and then not released and nobody's ever heard of it, that makes it exceptional even among games that hadn't been released where you would see them in magazines beforehand," Reese added.

Reese has been offered $10,000 by another collector to buy the game and not release it, but he wants the public to be able to play UWC.

"I definitely want to share it with the world and just figuring out how I want to go about that is the next piece of that," Reese said.

KABC-TV reached out to Nintendo to find out why the game was never released, but they couldn't be reached for comment.

WWE reports "UWC" likely stands for "Universal Wrestling Corporation," which was what World Championship Wrestling was founded as when media mogul Ted Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions in 1988.