If you were a wrestling fan and a gamer growing up in the early 1990s, you definitely saw the advert of the Ultimate Warrior holding a Nintendo Game Boy in an old edition of WWF Magazine. No doubt you dreamed of being able to enjoy some WWF action on the go. Thanks to WWF Superstars, the first portable WWF game, you could Slam and Jam your evenings away whilst on holiday or in the car.
It’s time for part 2 of the Slam Jam Wrestling Video Game Retrospective, so let’s get ready to rumble!
As an early WWF game, I have to admit that WWF Superstars is pretty good. Sure, it’s not got a huge roster, and yeah there’s not a lot on content compared to wrestling games these days, but just in terms of a game that lets you experience a gaming wrestling match, the game is pretty fun.
Developed by Rareware, and yes that is that the same Rareware that would go on to create Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye and in recent times Sea of Thieves, the game has signs of Rare’s good quality years before they became most famous for it.
The game features Hulk Hogan, Macho King Randy Savage, and yes this is a rare example of a game released during the short period where he was the Macho King and not just the Macho Man, The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase, Mr Perfect and The Ultimate Warrior. That’s it. Literally all the wrestlers in the game are featured on the title screen! That tells you how small this roster is.
A super small roster, but as a kid in this era, this was more than enough. Hogan and Warrior were the two top favourites of the time, and Macho Man, Million Dollar Man and Mr Perfect were all the heels.
Yeah, it would have been nice if there were more wrestlers in the game, and the likes of Jake the Snake Roberts, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Andre the Giant and others would have been great additions, but this was a different era where there wasn’t much expectation of many wrestlers being included. Everything was Hogan and Warrior. They’d be featured in all the early games, have the most action figures, be the subject of the earliest home video releases and everyone else was lucky to get a T-shirt based on them if that. It would still be common for wrestling games to have between eight and twelve wrestlers on the roster up to 1997, so it didn’t even really cross my mind that this game didn’t feature the Rockers or Brutus the Barber Beefcake.
The game reminds me of WWF WrestleMania for the Amiga that I covered in part 1 of this retrospective, but this game is infinitely a better game to play. Even though this game is called WWF Superstars, it’s its own game and not directly a version of the precursor to WWF Wrestlefest which was also called WWF Superstars. That isn’t to say that perhaps the game wasn’t inspired by it, and the likes of Wrestlefest, as there are some similarities.
The main one that jumps out to me is the change of camera angle when you exit the ring. Instead of the camera just scrolling to show you the outside of the ring when you exit, there is a change of camera angle which is jarring, and really makes the match out there feel separate from the rest of the match.
Like WWF WrestleMania on the Amiga, the game can be dominated with a flurry of double taps left or right then a press of the kick button to pull out a drop kick and if you want to get some major damage in, you’ll head to the top rope often. The downside of top rope attacks once again is that you can easily gain damage to yourself if your opponent is too near to the ropes to be hit cleanly. The game lets you grapple and with a punch and kick button there are more options for moves than you can pull off on the one button focussed gameplay of WrestleMania.
The wrestlers all pretty much play identically, but for one move that is unique to each wrestler. This is a sign of the early era of fighting games in general though.
One thing I’m not keen on is that like many early wrestling games, you can tell that not everyone involved in making it must have been a wrestling fan as the piledrivers in the game don’t look like actual pile drivers. I can’t think why this would be the case as other moves like suplexes and slams show the animation to resemble how it does in real life.
I really like that you can grab an opponents legs and take them down to the mat jug as you’re trying to get up. If you’ve been knocked down this feels like a reversal of sorts a you can make your being down an advantage if played smartly.
Graphically the game is simple, but a vast improvement over the look of the wrestlers in the NES WrestleMania and WrestleMania Challenge games.
Much like other games from the era including WrestleFest, WrestleMania and WWF European Rampage Challenge, the game features promos with the wrestlers before the matches. This gives you a sense of the character even if you weren’t a WWF fan going into playing the game. After the matches the game features Vince McMahon who gives some comments on who won or lost. It’s amazing how important a part of WWF wrestling the promos are, but they seemed to disappear from the games for years after being established in many of the early games.
The sound on the game is serviceable. I like that they included versions of the wrestlers themes on the character select screen. This said I really struggle to see how the Million Dollar Man theme is meant to be his actual theme as it sounds more like it should be for Honky Tonk Man.
If you win all matches against the opponents, you see a framed photo…well a framed image of your wrestler and you hear some genetic music.
The game lets you choose either a one fall or three fall match and you can set the time limit for the matches too, but that’s literally it in terms of the match customisation or variety.
I don’t mind that the game has such limited content. It wasn’t drastically limited by the standards of the day, and for the hardware it’s on it’s actually very playable. Easy controls and easy to have fun with for a a short burst.
Many would say that although this was the first WWF game on the Nintendo Game Boy that it remained the best one too. I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve been through them all as part of this retrospective. But from my time with WWF Superstars today, I feel this is probably going to be tough to top, as this was good and more playable than I could remember a Game Boy wrestling game being.
What would you rate this game?
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