Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation

"Shades of N64 glory"

At first glance, you'd be right to feel cautious approaching Ultimate Muscle. The game has dubious roots. On one hand, you have the original M.U.S.C.L.E. game for the NES, which was flat out horrible. On the other hand, it's developed by Aki, most notably of WWF No Mercy fame. Surprisingly, it's not just another cartoon license slapped onto a mediocre game.

Graphics - 9

I was pretty impressed with how the game looked right off the bat. All of the characters have a 'live' animation feel, and are well detailed to boot. The facial expressions are especially nice, both during plot scenes and during matches. It's fun to watch a character's eyes go wide when they are about to get dropped on their head. The only problems occur with some of the bigger characters like Wally Tusket and Sunshine. Other character models tend to pass through parts of the big characters, which looks sloppy. It's especially bad when the camera shows a close-up of a particular move, which only highlights the model 'bleed through'.

Sound - 7

Nothing special here. The music fits the series and the voices are true to form. However, nothing is really catchy. In addition, some of the voices are played too low in parts, and are drowned out by the music. The announcers are pretty good, though they get repetitive quickly.

Gameplay - 7

Don't let the 7 for gameplay fool you. The basic wrestling model is solid and can stand up to the best wrestling games. What hurts Ultimate Muscle is that not enough is done with that solid core. There are not very many character to choose from, and this would be ok if the move sets were more diverse. However, each character has at most two dozen moves, including special moves. This is a far cry from nearly every other wrestling game, where even the lowliest character has two to three times as many moves as the standard Ultimate Muscle character. About halfway through story mode, you'll have seen just about every move a character can pull off.

As an almost side note, Aki still hasn't learned from it's mistakes in past games. Blocking, reversals and escapes are STILL based more on luck than anything else. This can be frustrating when the computer puts you through a series of holds and slams, giving you no option but to sit back and watch (or flail helplessly on the buttons).

The Create a Wrestler mode is also disappointing. It offers no new moves, and all the visual pieces are simply slight modifications of existing characters. There's not much fun to be had by making a fighter that looks ALMOST like an existing one, differing only by a few polygons and slightly different moves. Bad show, Aki.

Control - 7

Once again, not much to be said here. The game manages to make decent use of the poor standard GC controller, but as there aren't many moves to pull off, this isn't difficult. One control issue I found annoying was the walking speed of the wrestlers. They move like molasses and there is no run option. There is a dash move, but that's only for short bursts and makes quick attacks and escapes very difficult to pull off.

Overall - 7

Ultimate Muscle has a lot going for it, but there's a lot of room for improvement. Aki needs to think about fine tuning their basic wrestling engine a little. If a sequel gets made, it will definitely need more characters, and more moves per character would be a huge improvement.

Regardless, this one's definitely worth a look if you've ever enjoyed any wrestling game on any platform. Don't go in expecting realism, just go in expecting to have fun.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/03