11. "WWF Super Wrestlemania" (SNES/Genesis) 1992
With the introduction of the 16 Bit games consoles, came much improved wrestling games. First, came one of the more famous WWF games in "Super Wrestlemania" for the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. As expected, Nintendo and SEGA took a different approach to the games. To make their game stand out, SEGA sacrificed having extra wrestlers in order to add the advantage of giving the wrestlers their own signature moves. This meant that the Nintendo version had a larger roster, which seems like a plus point, but is it really when all the wrestlers control the exact same way? The Genesis also had a WWF Championship mode where (you guessed it) you choose one wrestler and beat everyone else until you're WWF Champion. Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Ted DiBiase appear in both versions of the games while Nintendo added the Natural Disasters, LOD, Sid, Jake Roberts and the Undertaker. Instead, the Genesis took British Bulldog, IRS, Papa Shango, Shawn Michaels and the Ultimate Warrior. Most notably though, Super Wrestlemania introduced the "tug of war" grappling system, where you hooked up with your opponent and whoever rattled their buttons faster got to pull off their move. It seemed a novel addition at the time, but the button bashing quickly became tiresome as it was used heavily in the next few major releases as well. Super Wrestlemania was seemingly an attempt to modernize the NES version of Wrestlemania, and was indeed a huge improvement. Character design was massively improved and gameplay and controls were a joy compared to the NES string of games. Admittedly though, it is not a great game to revisit. Though a step above the games that came before it at the time, it doesn't hold up as well by today's standards, which is understandable. It's one of those games that's remembered as being more fun than it is. Its worth a revisit for nostalgia's sake, but it doesn't take long before the lack of variety makes it lose its appeal quite quickly.