WWF Wrestlemania (NES) Playthrough
376A playthrough of Acclaim's 1989 license-based wrestling game for the NES, WWF Wrestlemania.
This video shows two runs through the tournament mode. I begin with Hulk Hogan, and at 8:41 I switch to Andre the Giant.
When it came out in 1989, WWF Wrestlemania wasn't the first game to leverage the WWF branding - that honor goes to MicroLeague Wrestling for computers (https://youtu.be/LAcECt0ybmU) but it was the first to be released for a console.
The WWF was really coming into its own in the late eighties, and I loved it just as much as I did my Saturday morning cartoons when I was an elementary schooler.
Between the Nintendo Power preview and the endless advertisements running for it in magazines and comic books, I was super hyped for the game. I adored Pro Wrestling (https://youtu.be/2E8XOw8ed-s), but the promise of playing as my favorite WWF superstars made this one seem like it would be even better than Nintendo's classic.
And I have to admit, when it came out, I did think it was pretty much the best thing ever. My tastes in games as a seven-year-old were clearly a bit misguided, but that intro psyched me up every single time. The music was fantastic and that cottage cheese-wrapped-in-melanoma portrait of the Hulkster used to get me bouncing on the floor in excitement. Having the option to play as Hulk Hogan, The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase, The Honky Tonk Man, Macho Man Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, and Bam Bam Bigelow was like a dream come true.
BIGGER. BETTER. BADDER.
The gameplay is about what you'd expect: the move sets differ slightly between wrestlers, but most get a punch and a kick, a running attack, a throw, and a flashy off-the-turnbuckle maneuver, and they all differ in terms of reach, strength, and speed. They can get "angry" when they take too many hits, which gives a temporary boost in power, and they can regain lost energy by collecting the little icons that occasionally bounce along the top of ring.
But in practice, the awkward controls mean that matches quickly devolve into bouts of mindless button mashing. Too many commands are shoehorned into button combinations that require precise timing and are way too difficult to reliably pull off.
For example, if you want to run, you have to hold left or right, hit and hold down A, and then let go of the d-pad. Once you're running, you can then release A and quickly tap it again to do a move, or you can hit B to jump up on a turnbuckle. It sounds simple on paper, but it requires a whole lot of coordination and muscle memory to do these moves in the middle of a match. Pinning is probably the most frustrating: once your opponent is down, you have to scooch up close, hold up and hit B, and then hit down the instant the pin animation begins. For all the hours we spent on this game way back, my friends and I always struggled to finish matches because we couldn't nail the pin.
As I got older, I started to see the flaws in WWF Wrestlemania. It's one of Rare's weakest efforts on the NES, but the sense of nostalgia is still strong with this one, and I can't help but to crack a smile still now when I play it.
Do I find it entertaining? Yup.
Would I recommend it to anyone that didn't first play it thirty years ago? No. Absolutely not.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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