 When I get burnt out on other stuff, I like to turn to the good ol' Game Boy, so hey what the hell, let's take a look at every WWF game on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, starting with WWF Superstars developed by Rare. I'll always be really fond of this one because it was one of the 6 or 7 Game Boy games that my older brother owned that he would not share with me under any circumstances. All younger siblings out there can relate to that. So yeah, I'm a bit biased toward this one. On the surface you might not expect a lot from the gameplay here, but there's actually a bit more than meets the eye. Yeah, it sucks there's only 5 characters here, but it's the absolute cream of the crop. I'm talking Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man, Million Dollar Man, and Mr. Perfect. And the gameplay is actually well done considering the limitations here. It's A to punch and kick, and B to do a body slam, and while your opponent is down, press A to either stomp or drop an elbow depending on who you picked. If you catch your opponent getting up from the mat at just the right time, you can grab them in a headlock by pressing B and a direction on the D pad, and either do a snap mare, a pile driver, or a suplex, or just plain beat the crap out of them with a barrage of punches. And hey, if you're the one getting up and your opponent tries something like this on you, just hit the B button and you'll do kind of a double leg takedown. You can also double tap left or right to run, press A to do a drop kick, or B to deliver a clothesline, or drop a devastating running elbow if your opponent is down. In addition to all of that, you can also press select at just the right time and toss your opponent out of the ring entirely. You can even climb up to the top rope and do a huge flying elbow, it's crazy. Back when I played this as a kid, I had no idea you could even do that. Despite the surprising amount of stuff you can do in the ring, WWF Superstars is obviously pretty dang limited. There's only one game mode, just a one-on-one match, and you pick one fall or best two out of three. You pick the time limit and that's it. Also the computer AI here can be really cheap. They'll throw you out of the ring at a moment's notice and before you know what's what, you'll get counted out and lose the match. The real star of the show with this game though is the presentation and the music. I love the cutscenes of trash talk before and after each match. They do a nice job capturing that old early 90s WWF vibe. And the soundtrack was done by none other than David Wise. The main theme here is some of my favorite music in any game ever. Also each wrestler's theme is here as well, although the million dollar man's appears to be made up from scratch, but even then it's a great sounding tune. So yeah surprisingly WWF Superstars is pretty dang good for what it is, especially for a Game Boy game made in 1991. The amount of stuff he can do in the ring is great, each wrestler looks like themselves, and again the music is just so good. While my brother had that game, I had to settle for WWF Superstars 2. This one was developed by Sculptured Software instead of Rare, but it's still pretty dang good for a wee little Game Boy title. The roster now has 6 wrestlers, Hulk Hogan, Macho Man, Jake the Snake, Sid Justice, The Undertaker, and… The Mountie? Look, I like Jacques Rugeau, but as a kid, The Mountie was just really annoying. I would have rather been playing as Bret Hart or the British Bulldog. In this game, there's a tag team mode and a tournament mode in addition to one on one, and you can also fight in a steel cage, which is really what sold this game for me as a kid. The cage removes the ropes entirely, so instead of throwing your opponent into the ropes, he just bounces off the cage. It's pretty funny. But yeah, as you can see, the sprite animation here is surprisingly impressive. The presentation is pretty cool too, since you see each wrestler get introduced before each match. Plus I love how when you win a cage match, you just climb the cage and do a pose on top. The gameplay is quite a bit different than the first game. A punches, B kicks, and left or right on the D-pad near your opponent will have them grapple. From there, A is a headbutt, B is some kind of weird power bomb? The hell is that? A and up is a suplex, A and left or right will send them into the ropes, and B and up will send your opponent out of the ring entirely. The ground moves and running moves are all the same, but what's kind of neat here is that there's a ton of room to brawl outside the ring, and that's always fun. While the music here isn't as good as the first game, it's still really solid and a good representation of each wrestler's theme. So yeah, both WWF Superstars games play differently, but they're both surprisingly pretty well made for what they are. Next there's WWF King of the Ring, and this one is actually pretty similar to its NES counterpart, despite having come out before that one did. And both were made by the same developer, Eastridge Technology. Here you've got Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Lex Luger, Mr. Perfect, Razor Ramon, Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, Yokozuna, and you! There's a creator wrestler mode where you can put your own name and adjust your speed, strength, and stamina. The gameplay is a lot more basic than the previous two games. It's punch, kick, and grapple, hold a direction pad, and A and B to do a suplex, or a hip toss, or a body slam, similar to Superstars 2. But man, oh man, the sound design here is so bad. There's no music during gameplay, and uh, ugh. Each character's entrance theme is here, and they sound okay, but the sound effects here are just like jabbing ice picks into your ears. Also the sprites here are uh, just a little goofy looking, and the animation and frame rate are pretty bad. For game modes there's tag team and a king of the ring tournament, but that's it, no cage or brawl mode or anything. So yeah, other than the create a wrestler mode, king of the ring is a decided step back from the previous two games. WWF Raw was made by real time associates, and once again we've got eight wrestlers here, Lex Luger, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Diesel, Doink, Undertaker, and Yokozuna, and their entrance themes are again captured pretty well. I swear, when you're a kid playing these games, sometimes it was something as simple as that that makes or breaks a game. The gameplay is very similar to the previous games in this video, only they introduced a grappling meter so you can see how hard you have to mash buttons I guess. The big problem with this one is how freaking tiny the sprites are. They still kind of look like who they're supposed to, but smaller sprites like this don't let themselves very well to a wrestling game. I think that's why this game's biggest problem is the hit detection. It is incredibly frustrating here. Come on, come on already, geez. This game does have brawl, tag team, and 4 on 4 survivor series modes, as well as tournaments you can play through, so that's cool, but the actual gameplay here is a chore, and it makes this game a stay away. WWF Warzone is more commonly known as a crappy wrestling game on N64 and PlayStation, but it's also a crappy game on Game Boy. Yup, that's right, this game got a Game Boy port in 1998 developed by Pro of Entertainment. I will say it's pretty surreal seeing guys from the Attitude era in an original Game Boy game like Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kane Ken Shamrock, Gold Dust Farouk, Triple H, Mankind Rocky Myvia, as opposed to The Rock, Ahmed Johnson, along with British Bulldog Owen Hart, Sean Michaels and The Undertaker, and to this game's credit, this roster is huge. It's just that, well, yeah, this game sucks out loud. The visuals here don't even try. I mean, come on, that's Owen Hart, that's Ron Simmons. To the game's credit, there are tournaments, cage matches and a tag team mode, and there are finishers here for each wrestler. But other than that, this game really has nothing going for it. As you can see, the controls are stiff, the hit detection sucks, and I cannot get over how bad the visuals are. So yeah, definitely avoid this one. Next we move on to Game Boy Color with WWF Attitude developed by Crawfish Interactive, and there's a whopping 19 wrestlers here, including guys like Takamishinoku, so you gotta love that. This one's interesting because in addition to the usual stuff like tournaments, cage matches and a tag team mode, this is the first WWF Game Boy game to offer a career mode. No, it's nowhere near as in-depth as console wrestling games, but I could absolutely see myself getting into this if I had this game as a kid. The major downside here is that there's no battery saved, just long-ass passwords. Ugh. The problem again with this is the actual gameplay, which is pretty much the same as Warzone with the same viewpoint and similar sprites. I will say it's a little more polished, it's not as slow and sluggish as Warzone, each wrestler has their own finisher, and they kinda sorta look like they're supposed to, but the hit detection is still wonky, and when that's the case, sometimes it feels easier to just button mash until something, anything happens. This is another one of those cases where the developer was like, hey, how about we throw together a Game Boy Colorport in a couple weeks? Attitude is a step in the right direction with the career mode, but the nuts and bolts of the gameplay here just don't feel polished at all, so I'd avoid this one. WWF WrestleMania 2000 also received a Game Boy Colorport, and this one was developed by Natsume. It's mostly the same roster as Attitude, and there's Tag Team, Survivor Series, and Gauntlet modes available, and there's a career mode here as well, complete with a presentation that includes promos and one-liners, with Vince McMahon, of course, being the final boss, so to speak. Sadly, however, there's still a password system, so that sucks. It's another huge roster of wrestlers, while huge by Game Boy standards, and the sprites in animation here are actually halfway decent. I mean, it's light years ahead of Warzone. The gameplay and grappling system is pretty much the same as it's been for the past few games here, just beat a kick or punch and A plus a direction on the D-pad during a grapple to do something, but the action in this one is just slow. The hit detection isn't as bad, but everything feels like it's moving in slow motion by comparison. Again, this is another game I'm sure I would have eaten up with a spoon if I were a kid, but playing it now, it's hard to have the patience for something like this. As it is, it's just an interesting relic and not much else. And finally, there's WWF Betrayal. The game starts in the menu immediately prompts for you to pick one of four wrestlers, Rock, Austin, Triple H, and Undertaker. Then you're transported to a story sequence? Wait, what the hell is going on? Stephanie McMahon has been kidnapped, and Vince will give the WWF title to anyone who can bring her back. Only you don't do this through a series of matches or whatever. The game is actually a side-scrolling beat-em-up, and it's made by WayForward, the same folks behind the Chante series. And I guess this game isn't that bad for what it is, but man, oh man, it's gonna take me a while to get over that premise. It's just way too funny. And the sprite work here just makes me laugh out loud. I'm sorry, I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, I just find it really goofy. You get different dialogue depending on who you pick, but each character controls the same, the only uniqueness from a gameplay standpoint being that each guy can do their own finisher after you fill up your combo meter if you're able to land a series of punches. And in true pro wrestling fashion, you fight an endless number of flunkies, referees, and random backstage jabronies. You get four lives to get through six levels, with unlimited continues and a password system. There's weapons that enemies drop that you can use, and all in all, it's actually kind of a solid game. The only issue here is one that you'll find with a lot of beat-em-ups, and that's that you can get caught in a damaged loop pretty easily, where you'll run into these enemies with frickin' guns shooting at you, and you end up getting stuck. Also, there's no checkpoints here, which is a bummer, so when you die, you start from the beginning of the level, and the boss fights are the three other wrestlers that you didn't pick, and they are really tough. But yeah, I think one way to describe this would be like the attitude equivalent of the old rock and wrestling cartoon, only in video game form. It's really a pretty decent beat-em-up for a Game Boy Color game. It's just, I mean, that story is just way too funny to me, and it's really the last thing I expected from a WWF video game. Alright, that's all for now. I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.