Wrestling games have the same bad habit that sports games do: They’re the same thing every year. This couldn’t be more true than with this trio. Notice that I didn’t say that these games were bad, but they were just too similar for me to buy all three. The one I chose was Royal Rumble. How much did I play this game? Well, it’s been over a decade since I’ve played it (SNES version), and I can still list every character in the game in the order they appeared on the select screen from left to right: Randy Savage, Mr. Perfect, The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Tatanka, Krush, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Yokozuna, Lex Luger, and Ted DiBiase. FACE!
The Genesis version swapped 5 wrestlers, taking away Mr. Perfect, Ric Flair, Tatanka, Ted DiBiase, and Yokozuna in favor of Hulk Hogan, “The Model” Rick Martel, IRS, Jim Duggan, and Papa Shango, a far inferior roster, but solid nonetheless.
It wasn’t really anything spectacular. Standard 16-bit wrestling action. You got pretty much what you would expect. Although, I must say, I spent a lot of time at the wrestler select screen just so I could listen to the wrestler’s entrance themes, because they were the actually themes and not just 16-bit renditions. It was the first time I had ever seen that done, and it nearly blew my mind. You had your standard singles matches, tag matches, and they even threw in 3-on-3 matches. The funny thing about 3-on-3 matches was that, rather than have one member of the team in the ring, and the other two on the outside, instead you only had one, and you could literally transform your one partner into the other one with the Select button.
There was no ability to save champions, so during story mode (if you can call it that), you go through 11 matches, and at the end of the 11th match, a guy walked into the ring and lifted a belt above his head. That was it, that was all you got for your 30 minutes of hard work. Your character doesn’t even get to hold it, just some random *******.
Like most wrestling games that came before it, every wrestler had the same moves other than signature moves, but I don’t remember a time that Shawn Michaels’ signature move was a back suplex. Head butts, body slams, vertical suplexes, and hip tosses are all over the place in this game. Regardless of the move you perform, Vince McMahon and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan can be seen in the background acting like they‘re witnessing a woman giving birth to a wild boar. I never thought a video game NPC could overact, but LJN pulled it off.
Obviously, the main attraction in this game was the Royal Rumble mode. You select a character, and proceed to try and outlast the entire roster and be the last man standing at the end. You can get 6 men in the ring at a time, which is impressive considering the amount of technology available at the time. My only complaint is that the only way to eliminate someone from the Rumble is to shoot them off the ropes and hip toss them out of the ring or use an atomic drop near the ropes and throw them out on their *****. Once again, it’s fine for the technology, but I’ve been a wrestling fan for almost my entire life, and been in the business for half a decade, and I’ve never seen anybody get hip tossed or atomic dropped out of a ring.
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