This game was released in arcades after Pro Wrestling on NES, but this was the first wrestling game I ever played. The graphics remind me of a more cartoonish version of the recent Legends of WrestleMania, the characters are depicted as larger than life, because that’s the way we remembered them as kids. It also features something very common in the late 80s: COLOR! Does anyone else remember when games had color?
The character selection was standard fare for WWF circa 1989: Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Big Boss Man, Honky Tonk Man, Jim Duggan, and Randy Savage. The story mode requires you to choose two wrestlers as a tag team, and after winning three matches, you then get to face the team of Ted DiBiase and Andre the Giant. If you win, you’ll be rewarded with your team’s faces being slapped on the cover of a newspaper, praising the new Tag Team Champions. The story mode continues in a similar fashion as Ghosts N Goblins, where you basically just go through the game twice without being defeated to truly win.
The game featured a pretty simplistic move set. Every wrestler had standard strikes, running attacks, top rope moves, etc. The grappling system gave you three options: an irish whip, or two different moves specific to each character.
Instead of the wrestlers making boring entrances, they took a page out of the WrestleMania 3 playbook and had each wrestler being carted to the ring on tiny wrestling rings.
When I was a kid, if I happened to find myself in an arcade, this was the game I tried to find. If that particular arcade had it, then it’s the only game I played until I ran out of quarters.
No comments:
Post a Comment