The wrestling game rundown adds another first for this blog: a Sega Mega CD review (or just Sega CD as it was known in the US!) Yes, once upon a time I actually had a Mega CD, and a few games on it to boot (it was my first exposure to Final Fight!) but Rage in the Cage wasn’t a highlight of my time with the Mega Drive add-on… In fact some of the decisions still annoy me to this day! Let’s take a look at it, anyway, shall we?
The wrestling game rundown reaches its first handheld with King of the Ring for the Gameboy, and despite never really having played it that much (I’ve never been much of a handheld gamer…), I said this would be a rundown of every wrestling game I’ve played, so… Here it is!
The Wrestling Game Rundown returns to Acclaim 16-bit games with Royal Rumble, a particular favourite of mine. It was the 1992 Royal Rumble that turned me from casual fan to diehard “must watch everything” fan, and getting to play the titular match type sitting in my bedroom was amazing… What’s it like now? Er, well, less amazing (and in fact common place now!) Let’s take a look!
The Wrestling Rundown reaches an awkward game, given that while I did own it and did indeed play it back in the day, I barely remember it. I believe I got it as a surprise gift after my mum found it in a car boot sale, but it was around the same time that I was first playing WWF Royal Rumble and therefore had no interest in a one-on-one only game with made up wrestlers in it. Not that anyone would know if I’d skipped it, but I would know that I’d technically left one out, and that would annoy me, so here we are!
The Wrestling Rundown moves forward into the 16-bit era with Super WrestleMania, the first game to use the Acclaim engine that would be used for the next three games after this. Does it get off to a strong start? Erm… no, not really.
An arcade game is next up on the wrestling rundown, the only one, in fact. Thanks to the lovely MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) I have spent a couple of hours replaying this fond memory… without spending any money! Hooray! Let’s take a look…
The rundown (finally) continues as the first licensed game appears. Again, I know there was a WWF game released before this (simply titled WrestleMania) and one after it (called Steel Cage Challenge) but as I said in entry one, this is all about the games I’ve played and can therefore give a then and now review on. I may later play some of the missed NES games and just give a “Now” review, but they won’t be apart of this rundown of Wrestling games I’ve played throughout my life. So, on to WrestleMania Challenge…
The rundown begins! In the first part of the soon-to-be-ongoing series, we look at Tecmo World Wrestling on the NES. It has to be said here that I never owned the iconic and simply named Pro-Wrestling (among other 8-bit and handheld wrestling games) and so it will be missed out here. Once it gets to the 16-bit era and beyond I brought pretty much every game in the Wrestling genre released here in the UK (and a few that weren’t!), so the Wrestling Rundown will start being a general rundown rather than my personal rundown quite quickly. Anyway, without further ado…
Hogan Reviews 