WWF Royal Rumble

"Just got this game and all I can say is...wow"

I recently got a copy of this game from a very good friend of mine and being a WWF fan I was told to give it a go, that it was enjoyable. Wha? It's a SNES game....a SNES WWF game...it's gonna be pants....but I was wrong. From the moment you turn on your SNES and you see the pictures of the wrestlers come up on the screen, old greats like YokoZuna (RIP) and Bret Hart, you just know it's going to be something special.

Graphics 8/10

As soon as you start your first match you'll be amazed that your puny little SNES can produce graphics of this caliber. The wrestlers (for the most part) look like their counter parts....,obviously they look positively primitive when compared to WWF Raw for the Microsoft X-Box or WrestleMania X-8 for the Nintendo GameCube, but they still look nice. The finishing moves look sweet and the little referee reacts great to a running clothesline....that's if you can catch the wily bastard :) . The crowd is decent enough and you can take you opponent outside and throw him onto the lovely looking steel guard rail...so the graphics are sweet...we've established that (sorry I've realised I've started to ramble so let's go onto the sound.)

Sound 6/10

Out of all the 12 wrestlers in this game, the only theme tune that sounds....decent is the Yokozuna theme, obviously with limited power they had this was the best they could do...fair play to them....

hitting your opponent over the head will get the obvious sound effect but SFX like punching and kicking sound...strange...and the grunts and groans get tiresome after your first match-up. I think I'm the only person who was disappointed with the sound...guess I should've reviewed this five years ago

GamePlay 6/10

You can't really get simpler than this really. You have a grapple button and you press it and and a little bar appears in the top centre of the screen. You then have to press one of the action buttons really quickly in order to fill that bar on your side, the first to win it executes the move that corresponds to the button you were bashing....erm....did you get that? Basically it's a button basher and if you have a auto-fire pad then you can kiss goodbye any sort of ''difficulty'' this game can claim to have. For some reason I found picking up the chair and bringing it into the ring a chore...guess I'm just crap ^_^. The moves in this game are really generic and they all have the same set...rack of the eyes/back, atomic drop, twisting senton splash...oh wait scratch that last one...but you get the idea...it gets old really quickly, get a friend for maximum enjoyment.

Replay 9/10

Multiplayer is the name of the game here (well that was a lie it's actually WWf Royal Rumble but I was just trying to be clever) and if you're not some lonely fellow them you'll have lots of fun with this game. There is an excellent six man tag team match up which is something todays developers seem to be unable to do, instead of having three men on either side, the developers of WWF Royal Rumble instead had two on each side and there is a button to press if you want to change partners brilliant.

The Royal Rumble mode (yes their is one in here!) is....well...it's really easy. Not much to say about it really except you get a cool ending screen showing you the stats of the Rumble, how many you eliminated etc...

So basically get a friend if you want this game to last.

Overall 8/10

Still with me? Don't worry it'll all be over soon...minor flaws like sound issues and the way you can complete it within two solid days of gaming don't make this a bad game, you just need a friend to extract full enjoyment from it (have I already said that? Meh...). So go out and get it form your local second hand shop if you can...just don't get the ROM...that's naughty.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/21/02, Updated 02/21/02