Before WWE 13: The History of Wrestling Video Games

The New Generation

With the dawn of the 16-bit generation of consoles came wrestling games with vastly improved graphics. Gameplay however didn€™t evolve quite as well. Wrestlemania on the Amiga and Atari ST arrived with detailed graphics and large sprites, but only featured eight wrestlers with only three playable; Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and The British Bulldog. The game was a mere shadow of the highly regarded WWF Wrestlefest which had been released in arcades. Consoles started with Super Wrestlemania, which featured better graphics then the 8-bit games, but scarcely better gameplay. As would be the case for the majority of wrestling games ever released you could kick, and punch with most other moves being performed out of a lockup. Early 16-bit games introduced rosters of up to twelve Superstars, the ability to use steel chairs, knock out the referee and speciality matches such as Royal Rumble. Despite a steady flow of improvements, the scene of the fighting game genre had been changed by Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The latter game especially would influence the next couple of WWF games heavily. As much as McMahon wanted fans to believe that Hulk Hogan and Lex Luger were superheroes and that the Undertaker has supernatural powers, none of them could ever produce fireballs from their palms in the ring like Ryu or Johnny Cage could in a video game. Their video game counterparts however could. Starting with WWF Raw on SNES and Megadrive the wrestlers could perform €˜Mega Moves€™ which went beyond sports and was pure entertainment. This was a sign of things to come and with the release of Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game, the genre was more than a little influenced by Mortal Kombat. Featuring digitised recordings of the actual WWF Superstars the graphics were as lifelike as you would get in 1995, and even though traditional moves such as leg drops and tombstone piledrivers could be performed, they were minor compared to Doink unleashing skeleton revealing hand buzzers and Undertaker sending ghosts into his opponents. The game was certainly refreshing, but unfortunately the success was short lived. A direct follow up €˜WWF In Your House€™ followed with an expanded roster, themed arenas (The first appearance of the Hart family dungeon in a video game) and was the debut first original WWF game made for 32-bit consoles. Unfortunately just as Mortal Kombat had been the €˜Let's-go-Cena€™ of 1993 it had become the €˜Cena-sucks€™ of 96. The new generation of consoles belonged to Virtua Fighter and Tekken, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy seemed outdated, so what chance did a below average Mortal Kombat clone have in this era? The answer is none, and In Your House ranks as one of the least memorable WWF games of all time (Although it did let you play as Triple H for the first time in a wrestling game). Click "next" below to read part 3...