WWF Super Wrestlemania

"An ancient wrestling game that kills time and maybe brain cells."

WWF Smackdown. ECW Anarchy Rulz. WWF No Mercy. WCW Backstage Assault. Nowadays, wrestling games are filled with Hell in a Cell, ladder matches, table matches, hardcore matches, falls count anywhere matches, and four way matches. Back in the day of ''old school'' wrestling games, a good game had finishers.

WWF Super Wrestlemania was one of the first wrestling games for the SNES, and it did not feature finishers. The moves you could do were:
-drop kicks, running off the rope
-suplexes
-power bombs
-headbutts
-elbow drops, off the rope and off the top rope
-punches
-kicks

Wrestling was limited back in 1991-93, but WWF Super Wrestlemania displayed three types of matches: one-on-one, tag matches, and four-on-four matches. Picking from ten wrestlers, from Hulk Hogan to Ted Dibiase, you could execute any mixture of the seven available moves onto whoever you wanted. If you wanted to decimate your opponent, so be it. If you wanted a quick finish, fine.

However, even back then, attention spans were a bit short, so people who played the game a lot more than others grew old of it quickly. The game is weak in replay value and variety. However, it has its good sides. You can kill some time by beating the living hell out of Jake ''The Snake'' Roberts with 400+ pound Earthquake. If you're waiting for Final Fantasy X to arrive at your local Media Play, pop it in and give Hulk Hogan the beating he deserves. If you can't stand the wait for the next Zelda game, let Randy Savage taste The Undertaker's big boot.

I, personally, found another good point. In a Survivor Series match, you can beat the hell out of someone and try to pause the game in time to catch a good shot of Hawk from the Legion of Doom to slam into Typhoon with an elbow drop. With the right timing, you can make Sid Justice's drop kick into Randy Savage resemble more of a mule kick. Some more fun that I had as a young boy was trying to pin my opponent in a tag match, and then, during the pin attempt, control my partner to run into the opponent's partner at high speeds. That was always fun at 7 years old.

It kills time, but it doesn't do much else. WWF Super Wrestlemania has been overshadowed by the great wrestling games of today, and, like this review, is old and stale. Try before you buy, if you try or buy at all.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/27/01, Updated 07/27/01