WWF Wrestlemania : The Arcade Game (Sega Genesis) - Quick Review
Yeah, that's right, WWF, not WWE. This game came out back in 1995, almost 7 years before that whole dispute came up. In a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game, you get to choose between one of eight wrestlers (Bam Bam Bigelow, Doink the Clown, Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, Bret "The Hitman" Heart, The Undertaker, Yokozuna, and Lex Luger) to climb your way up the ladder to be either the Intercontinental Champion or World Wrestling Federation Champion. Let's look at how this game holds up after two decades.
The Good
- Not only do you get to enjoy some of the biggest wrestling names of the era, you also get Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon as announcers and commentators. Now they won't be calling the matches like they do on tv, but they will call out random exclamations much like the commentators in NBA Jam.
- Despite the game clearly being modeled after Mortal Kombat, it still maintains it's wrestling touch. You fight inside of a ring, you can climb the turnbuckles for high-risk moves, you can even exit the ring and fight outside in front of the announce tables and crowd.
- All the moves are modeled to fit in with the character you're using, including some of their actual moves. Shawn Michaels can use his Sweet Chin Music, while Undertaker can summon an actual tombstone to whack his opponent with. You even have to pin your opponent to officially win the match, depleting their health bars wont be enough. It's a nice unique touch to set it apart from the games it's modeled after.
- The game can detect if you have the traditional three-button controller, or the later released six-button controller, and it adjusts your controls accordingly. To activate the special punch, special kick, and run moves, if you're using a three-button controller you have to press two buttons at once. Or if you're using the six-button controller, it separates these commands for you.
The Bad
- One of the last matches in the Intercontinental ladder pits you against three opponents. While I was playing this match, the game experienced some heavy lagging issues and couldn't keep up with how many things were going on at once on the screen. It wasn't until I was able to eliminate one of the three that this issue went away. It wouldn't have been so bad except this lag caused the game to not register many of the attack commands I was putting in. I'm not completely sure if this is a definite issue. It may have been because I don't have the 32x expansion for the Sega, or if it's only an issue on the Sega version and not the SNES version, but for the one I have it was a definite problem.
- Limited character selection was a bit of a let down too. Since this game draws heavily from the Mortal Kombat games I'm going to use them as a comparison on this point. In 1995 when this game was released, Mortal Kombat III was released. In that game the player could choose from fifteen characters to climb the ladders as. FIFTEEN. Plus an additional two characters that were locked in as bosses, making for a total of seventeen. WWF Wrestlemania featured half of that number. And with the big names they had in the business at the time, I can't see why they would just stop at including only eight of them. They had Diesel, Owen Hart, King Kong Bundy. Plenty of additional wrestlers that could have been included. But instead, you're left with a small cast of playable characters and you run into having to face an alternate-color clone of yourself no matter who you decide to play as.
Is It Worth It?
While it won't hold up as one of the best wrestling games, it will definitely shine as a good one. The graphics are really good for the time. Since they only had one level to fight in, the ring, they were able to use a lot of their programming space to heft a ton of detail into how it looked. The wrestlers themselves even look pretty good. Overall, I'd say it'd be worth it to pick up. It's a fun throwback to when the WWF started to boom in business and some of the big names that helped get the company on top. Even if you're not into wrestling, it's a fun fighting game to sit down and play for an hour or two. So if you stumble across a copy and begin to wonder about it, it is definitely worth grabbing.
The Good
- Not only do you get to enjoy some of the biggest wrestling names of the era, you also get Jerry Lawler and Vince McMahon as announcers and commentators. Now they won't be calling the matches like they do on tv, but they will call out random exclamations much like the commentators in NBA Jam.
- Despite the game clearly being modeled after Mortal Kombat, it still maintains it's wrestling touch. You fight inside of a ring, you can climb the turnbuckles for high-risk moves, you can even exit the ring and fight outside in front of the announce tables and crowd.
- All the moves are modeled to fit in with the character you're using, including some of their actual moves. Shawn Michaels can use his Sweet Chin Music, while Undertaker can summon an actual tombstone to whack his opponent with. You even have to pin your opponent to officially win the match, depleting their health bars wont be enough. It's a nice unique touch to set it apart from the games it's modeled after.
- The game can detect if you have the traditional three-button controller, or the later released six-button controller, and it adjusts your controls accordingly. To activate the special punch, special kick, and run moves, if you're using a three-button controller you have to press two buttons at once. Or if you're using the six-button controller, it separates these commands for you.
The Bad
- One of the last matches in the Intercontinental ladder pits you against three opponents. While I was playing this match, the game experienced some heavy lagging issues and couldn't keep up with how many things were going on at once on the screen. It wasn't until I was able to eliminate one of the three that this issue went away. It wouldn't have been so bad except this lag caused the game to not register many of the attack commands I was putting in. I'm not completely sure if this is a definite issue. It may have been because I don't have the 32x expansion for the Sega, or if it's only an issue on the Sega version and not the SNES version, but for the one I have it was a definite problem.
- Limited character selection was a bit of a let down too. Since this game draws heavily from the Mortal Kombat games I'm going to use them as a comparison on this point. In 1995 when this game was released, Mortal Kombat III was released. In that game the player could choose from fifteen characters to climb the ladders as. FIFTEEN. Plus an additional two characters that were locked in as bosses, making for a total of seventeen. WWF Wrestlemania featured half of that number. And with the big names they had in the business at the time, I can't see why they would just stop at including only eight of them. They had Diesel, Owen Hart, King Kong Bundy. Plenty of additional wrestlers that could have been included. But instead, you're left with a small cast of playable characters and you run into having to face an alternate-color clone of yourself no matter who you decide to play as.
Is It Worth It?
While it won't hold up as one of the best wrestling games, it will definitely shine as a good one. The graphics are really good for the time. Since they only had one level to fight in, the ring, they were able to use a lot of their programming space to heft a ton of detail into how it looked. The wrestlers themselves even look pretty good. Overall, I'd say it'd be worth it to pick up. It's a fun throwback to when the WWF started to boom in business and some of the big names that helped get the company on top. Even if you're not into wrestling, it's a fun fighting game to sit down and play for an hour or two. So if you stumble across a copy and begin to wonder about it, it is definitely worth grabbing.
