WWF WrestleMania 2000 on the Game Boy

WWF WrestleMania 2000 is a spectacular wrestling game on the N64. I’ve never played the Game Boy port, so I hope this one is as good as Hal Wrestling. It has to be better than WWF Warzone or the LJN games for the Game Boy.

Surprisingly, this game wasn’t one of the exclusive games for the Game Boy Color. It was compatible with all the versions of the original Game Boy, and this scares me a bit. I’m not totally sure what I’m getting into here.

I’m going to do my best to keep an open mind about this. This version of the game was released very late in the Game Boy’s life, which means the developers knew how to get the most out of both versions of the handheld. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

TLDR: Good Graphics, Decent Controls, and A lot of game modes.

Narrative

There isn’t a story mode in this version of the game. You have a challenge mode, which acts as a gauntlet match for the WWF Championship. I don’t have a problem with this.

Gameplay

The controls are fine. WrestleMania 2000 uses a grapple-heavy system, which is similar to Hal Wrestling. You can punch, but there isn’t much of a reason to do so.

The roster took a hit when the game was ported to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. It is a good roster of wrestlers, but also noticeably smaller than the N64 version. Most of the wrestlers in the game are the more popular ones, aside from Jeff Jarrett.

Each wrestler has roughly the same moves. I’m not going to fault the developers for this. It is a necessary concession for a game like this. My biggest problem with the gameplay has to do with how slow your character moves.

It is one of the more annoying parts of the game. This is also the only thing I can point to as being bad. It makes lining up moves, getting into the right spot, or climbing the turnbuckles difficult.

More often than not, I found myself remaining in one place and letting my opponent do all the work for me. Then I’d lock up and do one of the moves. Aside from moving around the ring, the controls are good enough for a game like this.

There are quite a few game modes in WrestleMania 2000. It isn’t exactly the same as the console version, but it is what you would want for a Game Boy game.

The cage matches are a little dumb. You beat your opponent down, climb to the top of the cage, and then it just stops. I’m not sure what else they could’ve done, so I guess they did everything they could. I just don’t like this match in the game.

The gameplay does get a little repetitive. It isn’t too bad, and I do like what is here, but like other wrestling games, you can fall into a pattern. There are enough matches to keep you entertained for a while, but at the end of the day, it makes you want to play the N64 game.

Overall, this is a good port of a console game. The developers made a very good game, and it is better than many of the other games on the handheld. I still like the gameplay in Hal Wrestling more than this one.

Visuals

This is a rather impressive Game Boy game. The developers were able to put a lot into this, and it feels closer to what you would expect from a wrestling game from 1999. For the most part, it looks very good!

I’ll start with the bad first. The digitized photos don’t look great. I’m playing this on a Retro 5, so it defaults to color graphics. If you were trying to play this on a Game Boy or Game Boy Pocket, then they would look much worse.

Everything else is very good! Wrestlers have short ring entrances, they have their catch phrases, and the animations for the moves look good. The ring and the crowd are also pretty good-looking.

The character sprites look good enough. I’m not looking for anything amazing. I want them to be close enough to tell the wrestlers apart, and I can do that. Having the names and photos helps, but not as much as necessary.

The developers made an attempt at having entrance videos. It is what you should expect from a Game Boy game, and it isn’t all that impressive. It is a short animation, if you can even call it that, and then the character’s name. I’m glad they tried it, even if it isn’t that good.

The cage matches look okay. It isn’t anything amazing, but they look good enough for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. It looks similar to how the cages look in the NES games.

I like the graphics overall. It isn’t going to amaze anyone, but the game looks good given the limitations of the hardware.

Reviews at the Time

This game received considerably lower scores than the N64 game. I can understand it, because it was getting compared to the home console version for better or worse. I think it is better than the 6s and 7s it received.

I also find it to be much better than the 2/5 that AllGame gave it. The reviewer seemed not to understand that he was playing a Game Boy game and lacked an understanding of the limitations of the system. I got the impression that he wanted it to be the N64 game, which it was never going to be.

I agree with what many of the reviewers said. This isn’t as good as the console version, but it was never going to be. Holding that against the game doesn’t make much sense.

8/10. This is a very good Game Boy port of a great console game. It isn’t perfect, there are some problems with the controls, and not everything looks that good, but it is very good. I like this game more than most of the other wrestling games on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

Pros

• Good Graphics
• Decent Controls
• Good Roster
• Lots of Game Modes

Cons

• Repetitive
• Issues with moving around the screen

Conclusion

I like this game, but it wasn’t as good as Hal Wrestling. The two games are similar, but there is something about this one that is holding it back. It might be the controls or the repetitive gameplay, but I’m not too sure.

The biggest knock against this game is that I would rather be playing the N64 game. If this were all I had back in 1999, I might’ve been happy. This is something I could say about many of the wrestling games on the Game Boy.

This isn’t a bad game. It has limitations, and you have to put up with a lot of crap if you wanted to play multiplayer. I would rather play one of the console games than this one. That might be what holds it back from being as good as the handheld exclusives like Hal Wrestling.

If you liked this post, please check out my other reviews, like Hal Wrestling or WWF Attitude.