 I thought for a change of pace this week we'd take a look at the three classic WWF arcade games. There is a fourth WWF Royal Rumble that came out in 2000 and was ported to the Dreamcast, but for the life of me I cannot get the ROM to work, so I have to stick with these three. Sorry. The first being WWF Superstars, which came out in 1989, and yeah, as you can see this game actually has quite a bit going on with the gameplay despite how simple it looks. Yeah you punch and kick, but out of the grapple you can toss them, throw them into the ropes, or go into a headlock where you can do moves specific to your character, like Macho Man's Suplex, Hulk Hogan's Piledriver, or the Ultimate Warrior's Gorilla Press. So yeah, finishers are all here too. They're a bit tricky to pull off for some people, but most of them are pretty easy. What I really love about this game, however, is that you can fight outside the ring, you can pick up a freaking table and swing it at people. That is awesome. The best part of WWF Superstars, though, is the roster of wrestlers. This is just quintessential golden era WWF wrestling right here. With Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man, Honky Tonk Man, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and the Big Boss Man. You form a tag team with two of these guys, so yes of course this game is multiplayer, and you fight for the right to face the tag team champions, the Million Dollar Man Ted DeBiase and Andre the Giant. Sadly they're not playable characters, but you can monkey around with the rom and unlock them. However, do so at your own peril because it makes the game super glitchy. But yeah, WWF Superstars is a great time and a cool throwback to the golden age of wrestling. A few years later came WWF WrestleFest, and naturally the graphics, art style, and sound have all taken a massive leap forward. Ehh, except for these headshots here. Who thought it was a good idea to make Hulk Hogan look like he was sniffing glue? I know the guy was high strung, but jeez. Anyway, this game was developed by Technos Japan, the same people that made WWF Superstars, so the gameplay feels very similar. WrestleFest supports up to four players and vastly increases the variety of moves each guy can do, and even includes double team moves when you play as a tag team. Your partner on the apron can even power up and come into the ring a house of fire, just like the old days. That's fantastic. There's also the Royal Rumble mode, where you can have six wrestlers in the ring at once. If a guy is pinned, submits, or is thrown out of the ring, he's eliminated and somebody new comes down to take their place. I love the goofy picture in picture in the corner here. Mr. Perfect is making a duck face, I guess? What's wrong with him? WrestleFest has ten wrestlers to choose from, bringing back Hogan, Warrior, Boss Man, and D.B. Ossie, but sadly leaving out Macho Man, and my extreme bias for him means that I have to like the superstars roster better. Sorry, just how it is. There's also Sergeant Slaughter, Mr. Perfect, Jake the Snake, Roberts, and Demolition, and this time the tag team to beat to become champs are the Legion of Doom. So yeah, despite the regretful lack of Macho Man, Randy Savage, WrestleFest improves on superstars in pretty much every way. Seriously, this game is old time beat em up pro wrestling action at its best, and it's especially fun with a couple friends. Last week, we come to WrestleMania, the arcade game, and yeah, immediately you can tell this game is much, much different than the previous two games. But thankfully not in a bad way. The home console ports on Super Nintendo and Genesis may be kind of limited and get stale after a while. But the original arcade game is very lively, with a ton of energy, not to mention two extra playable characters in Yokozuna and Bam Bam Bigelow. The main selling points here are the digitized graphics, which are really impressive looking, but this game has a strange cartoony quality to it that might turn some people off. It's still really impressive looking nonetheless. There's all the crap that flies out of your character when you get hit, like hearts fly out of Bret Hart and razors and gold chains and shit come out of Razor Ramon. Sure, okay. There's also weird stuff like Doink the Clown pulling out a mallet out of nowhere, Bam Bam hitting you with fists and Gulf and Flame. That's really what the action is predicated on here. There's less of an emphasis on grappling and doing wrestling moves and all that. Some of that is here, but it's more geared toward just kicking the crap out of each other beat em up style, while upping your power meter so you can unleash a crazy special move. WrestleMania the arcade game came out in 1995, and the one thing this game definitely does well is capture how goofy wrestling was at the time during that whole next generation era. This game feels detached from the previous two games, and rightfully so, because wrestling at the time felt detached from anything else before it, and thankfully after it. I don't think too many people miss this particular time period, but hey, you can't fault the game for being unique. So there you have it. Each of these games all have their strengths. WrestleFest is four player compatible with a ton of moves and finishers. WrestleMania the arcade game perfectly sums up the mid 90s WWF and provides a surreal cartoony experience, and Superstars has, uh, well, it has Macho Man, okay? It doesn't need anything else. Alright, so that's it for now. Thanks for watching, and have a great rest of your day.