Thankfully, there weren’t any bad wrestling games on the Sega Dreamcast. North America got screwed over with this genre of games as the best wrestling games didn’t make it out of Japan. I’m unsure if they were released in Europe, so let me know if they were.

I went back and took a second look at WWF Royal Rumble. It has the best controls, graphics, and gameplay of the four games. While it lacks game modes, it is a better experience than the three Acclaim wrestling games, so I moved it up.

There aren’t any bad games in this group. Granted, if you didn’t like WWF Warzone’s control scheme, you’ll probably dislike most of the wrestling games on the Dreamcast. What we have are some average games and one solid port of an arcade game.

Bottom Line up Front: A Small group of Average Wrestling games on the Sega Dreamcast.

WWF Attitude

Developer: Acclaim

Genre: Wrestling Simulation

Review Score: 7.5/10

The Dreamcast version of WWF Attitude is pretty rough. When I started playing this version of the game, I didn’t know about a few things, and my initial thoughts weren’t too different from those of the PS1 and N64 versions. I thought it looked okay, and the controls were a little awkward. Then, I learned about the rushed development.

Acclaim was about to lose the license for the WWF, and they rushed this port to market. The only thing they were able to change had to do with the graphics. I didn’t notice a significant difference in the graphics. The controls felt off to me. They were a little more awkward than the PS1 and N64 versions.

This is the worst version of WWF Attitude. It isn’t too bad, but it is an inferior version. One-quarter of the roster wasn’t with the WWF by the time this game came out, which shows how little time the developers had.

ECW Hardcore Revolution

Developer: Acclaim

Genre: Wrestling Simulation

Review Score: 7.5/10

This is the best version of ECW Hardcore Revolution. The controls are very good, the graphics are okay, and there are a ton of game modes. It seems like the developer got the time to make this game better than the WWF Attitude port.

This is a reskin of WWF Attitude, but this port wasn’t rushed. Acclaim was about to lose the WWF license, and they rushed the Dreamcast port to market. Once they got the ECW license, the developer had the time to fix the problems from Attitude to Hardcore Revolution.

Everything I said about the other ports of ECW Hardcore Revolution applies here. This isn’t a bad game. The problem is that the engine was very old by this time, and the other wrestling games had surpassed what Acclaim was doing. Changes were made to make ECW Hardcore Revolution stand out, but they weren’t enough to elevate the game.

ECW Anarchy Rulz

Developer: Acclaim

Genre: Simulation Wrestling

Review Score: 7.5/10

This is the best of the three Acclaim games. It is saddled with the awkward gameplay of the other games, and the WWF Warzone engine was showing its age at this point. The graphics are much better, and it feels like an ECW game.

Like the other Acclaim games, if you enjoyed WWF Warzone, you might like this one. The developers made some changes to the engine, but it plays the same as the other games. It felt like many of the changes were to the graphics and game modes because the controls were almost identical.

This is the last game from ECW and for this run of wrestling games from Acclaim. The publisher would return with the Legends of Wrestling series, which I’ll look at eventually. This was a nice game for ECW to finish, but it would’ve been nice if they had a third to iron out some of the problems.

WWF Royal Rumble

Developer: Yuke’s

Genre: Arcade Wrestling

Review Score: 8/10 (Revisited Score)

This is the best-looking wrestling game I’ve played so far. The gameplay is great, but there isn’t much to do. The developer didn’t do much to add value to this port of an arcade game.

WWF Royal Rumble was originally an arcade game. Sega developed the arcade version, and Yuke’s ported it to the Dreamcast. Yuke’s is the same developer that would make the Smackdown games. WWF Royal Rumble plays like one of the Smackdown games but only has two game modes. If there was more to the game, this would’ve been the best wrestling game on the system.

I was very disappointed with this game. Although the controls, gameplay, and graphics are amazing, there just isn’t much to do in the game. I wish the developers had been able to add more to it because it is a shallow experience.

The Reviews

Reviewers were very harsh when they reviewed the games. I got the impression that reviewers were tired of the Acclaim wrestling games, and while I understand where they were coming from, I think they were too hard on the games. There were also some baffling reviews for these games.

The reviews were often written by people who hated wrestling or watched only one promotion. The second is understandable, but why would someone who didn’t like wrestling review a wrestling game? I don’t understand why the editor would assign the game to them and why the reviewer would agree to review the game. Here are some examples (PlanetDreamCast, CWG).

The mainstream publications were more reasonable in their reviews. Except for Game Informer, none of them called for the developers to be killed. I found GameSpot and IGN to be very reasonable when reviewing the game, even if IGN tended to pad their reviews with unnecessary fluff.

I was surprised by many of the reviews for these games. While the games weren’t great, they were much better than the scores they received. The ECW games received harsher treatment than they deserved, mostly because the reviewers knew nothing about the company, the wrestlers, or the style of wrestling they were doing.

Conclusion

Looking back at these games was fascinating. It was mostly the same games from the N64 and PS1, but there was only one exclusive, and none of the WCW games made it over. I was a little surprised by that because I couldn’t find a reason for it.

I don’t think WCW Mayhem would’ve been any better on the Dreamcast, but playing something different from the Acclaim games would have been nice. This is one of the cases where I might want to look into this more closely. I might not find an answer, but it would be fun to look for it.

Thankfully, there weren’t any bad games on this shortlist. I wish some of the Japanese wrestling games could’ve been released in North America, but that is what imports are for. They might also be available online.

If you like this list, please check out my ranking lists of the N64 and PS1 wrestling games.