I’m going to play these games in order, unlike what I did with the SNES trilogy of games. WWF Super WrestleMania doesn’t look as good on the Genesis as it does on the SNES, and it uses the same button-mashing control scheme. I wouldn’t say that I like this game that much.
I had a good idea of what I was getting into this time. This isn’t a bad game, but it has bad parts. This is looking at the game retrospectively, and I would’ve liked this game back in the 90s.
It has the same problems as the game’s SNES version, but it has worse graphics than that version. I wouldn’t say I like this game all that much. I would rather play WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game or Saturday Night Slam Masters.
TLDR: This game looks better on the SNES, and I still don’t like the controls.
Narrative
Like all of these games, this one doesn’t have a story. It was up to you to develop a story for the game, but there was also a limited roster. I’ll stop putting this section in these reviews.
Gameplay
The gameplay is fine. It is what you would expect from the three games published on the SNES and Genesis. I didn’t notice too much difference between the games on the consoles.
Let’s start by going over the roster. It is all right, and I love that Papa Shango is in the game. Here is a list of the wrestlers in the game:
- Ultimate Warrior
- Hulk Hogan
- Ted Dibiase
- Shawn Michaels
- Randy Savage
- Irwin R. Schyster
- British Bulldog
- Papa Shango
There are a decent amount of game modes. There are no special matches. I would’ve liked to have a steel cage match or a tournament. All you have is the gauntlet match for the WWF Championship. Here are the Single and Two-Player modes:
Single-player Game Modes
- One on One
- Tag Team
- Survivor Series
- WWF Championship
Two-Player Game Modes
- One on One
- Tag Team
- Survivor Series
The controls are okay. There are special moves for each character, but each of them has the same basic moves. However, the Genesis three-button controller makes this a little cumbersome, especially when trying to pin your opponent. This could’ve been a bad controller, but it didn’t feel like it when I was playing.
Just like the SNES version, I don’t like the control scheme. It is basic button mashing, and each character has the same basic moves. The Genesis controller also makes this a little awkward by having you press some combination of A, B, and C at the same time to do a move.
Overall, the gameplay is okay but somewhat repetitive. You do have some options for playing, but it isn’t anything other than average. I don’t have much more to say than it has average gameplay.
Visuals
There is something off about the way this version of the game looks. It doesn’t look as good as the SNES version. WWF Super WrestleMania has many issues I’ve had with the SNES games.
The character sprites are hit-and-miss. Some of them look okay, while others look terrible. The Ultimate Warrior stands out for me. His face looks like a blob of a single color. I wasn’t expecting all the colors you might see from videos or pictures. I would say the NES did a better job of showing Ultimate Warrior than this game did.
Every character sprite is the same. The developers swapped the graphics on one model to make the characters. This creates odd moments where the 300-pound Hulk Hogan has the same body as the 240-pound Shawn Michels.
Overall, the graphics look good, but the more you look at them, the more flaws you see. You can copy and paste what I said about the graphics from the SNES games into this one, except the graphics look a little worse because of the Genesis hardware. Not every Sega Genesis game looks worse than the SNES, but this one does.
6.5/10. The gameplay is average, but the visuals are worse than the SNES version. I also like the SNES roster more than this game.
Pros
- Pick-up and Play
- Simple Controls
- Decent Gameplay
Cons
- No Story
- Repetitive
- Average to Bad Graphics
Conclusion
The SNES version of this game is better. I like this version’s roster of wrestlers, but they don’t look as good as the SNES character sprites. The control scheme is the same as the SNES version, and I still wouldn’t say I like it even though I understand it much better.
The character sprites look a little worse in this version of the game. Sometimes, they’re okay, but most look bad due to the reuse of one character model. It is similar to what I felt about Steel Cage Challenge on the NES. Thanks for including these characters, but they are all the same.
The wrestlers all have the same moves, except their finishing moves. I’m a little surprised that finishing moves are in the game because they don’t add much to the game, and it is more likely that you’ll get beat while trying to pull one off.
The Genesis and the SNES games are a product of their time. They would’ve been fun to play in the early 90s. As wrestling games got better, these older games look worse than what they are.