Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game (Sega 32X, 1995)

It's time to cover a classic fighting game with outlandish arcade-style action. Shawn looks so hip here. When I was a kid, I saw this game and went "Who are all those guys? Where are Hogan and Macho?" I saw the WWF New Generation as a bunch of midcarders, even when I wasn't watching wrestling yet. Even if I had been, the company itself did such a bad job passing any kind of torch from the old guard that most of the top New Generation guys WERE midcarders until they pulled themselves up by working against each other for several years.

Now I've got a much greater appreciation of this 1995 era of rasslin' and like it a lot, with Shawn Michaels being my favorite of the bunch. So now when I look at this game, I just go "where's Diesel?" ...because Diesel is strangely missing from this game, despite being the world champion for months when the game came out. They left Diesel out and included Doink? Was The Mountie not available?

Originally posted April 2020, now redone with a lot more New Generation knowledge

R.I.P. Sabu

Got ourselves a shiny 32X title screen. This system didn't do that great in the grand scheme of things and didn't last long, but it was probably a little more powerful than the Super NES graphically.

Your commentators for tonight's WrestleMania action: Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler!

"Where are the puppies?" says Jerry before getting up and leaving.

Shawn Michaels is the future king of the WWF, but at this point he hadn't ever won the world title yet. I remember being surprised that this midcard guy was WWF champion circa early 1998, and opted to watch the show with Hogan, Macho, Flair, etc instead.

Also helps that Sting was the biggest thing on the planet wrestling-wise until Starrcade '97 muddied things up and then Wrestlemania '14 catapulted Steve Austin (showing them how it's done).

While Shawn is the fastest character in the game, Bret Hart is another fast character. He and Shawn are so evenly-matched that they're destined to battle forever. Or at least until 1997.

Lex Luger has a sky-high strength rating and can pretty much demolish anybody with his attacks. He's also a BIG AMERICAN BEEFY LAD. So much BEEF.

Scott Hall, or rather Razor Ramon, is a well-rounded fighter who doesn't excel in any category. It's easy to forget that this dude is six foot seven because he spent his entire career standing next to the super-tall Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan. Put him next to literally anybody else and he would have dwarfed them.

DOINK. Easily the lowest-card guy out of the game's selectable characters, but I see why they included him. He has a bunch of very comical attacks, like bonking his opponent with a mallet or zapping them with a joy buzzer, and fits with this game.

Speaking of tall, here's the mighty Undertaker. He's lumbering and a bit slow, but he can fire ghost-projectiles from his hands. That's right, this pro wrestling game takes place in Matt Hardy's Broken Universe.

 R.I.P. Bam Bam Bigelow. Main evented WrestleMania itself in 1995, this guy did. Never won the world title though. He's a guy that nobody ever had anything bad to say about, and should be in that "top talent who never won the WWF title" conversation with Piper, Luger, and Hall.

 Also R.I.P. Yokozuna, the Majin Buu of the WWF. He's the slowest character in the game, but he can absorb a ton of punishment and he hits hard.

The two difficulty levels are named after title belts, which is a great idea. The IC title has fewer and easier fights. Some of the late-90's WWF games would do this kind of thing again, with the European Title being the easiest difficulty and so on.

This game has almost all of the New Generation roster's heavy hitters...and Doink. It's worth noting that almost zero of these guys were actually put over by the previous generation's main eventers / world champions.

Yokozuna and Undertaker both got really tainted (i.e. massive cheating) wins over Hulk Hogan and that's it, that's the closest the previous top tier of champions got to actually putting over the new crop of main eventers. Oh, and Ted DiBiase put over Razor Ramon before he left / Ric Flair put over Bret Hart before he left. However, the true top tier of the previous gen was Hogan, Warrior, and Macho, and aside from Hogan putting over Yokozuna and going 50/50 with Undertaker, that group did basically nothing to establish the New Gen. They did make Sid Justice look pretty good, only to have him leave lol.

Once again, there's an odd lack of Diesel, considering he was the WWF world champion for most of 1995. You could also make an argument for Owen Hart and Mr. Perfect being included. Adding the two of them as Diesel as the final boss (unlockable with a code) would have made this game the perfect WWF New Generation game.

Know who else would have been great in this game, if he wasn't back in WCW by this point? Ric Flair.

Mongo: "GOOD KNEE BAD KNEE IT DOESN'T MATTER MY FRIEND. WHEN RIC FLAIR LOCKS ON THAT FIGURE FOUR, IT'S LIGHTS OUT MY FRIEND."

Check out these digitized characters. They used similar technology to the motion-capture used in Mortal Kombat, and it really shows. Just an awesome-looking game here, the first pro wrestling game to really have wrestlers that looked spot-on to their real life counterparts. It'd be the last wrestling game with photorealistic characters for a while, too, as this was right about when the industry was shifting towards 3D for fighting games.

You can do several kinds of fights. Tag-team mode gives you a CPU-controlled ally (or second player) as CHAOS UNFOLDS. ...is that Jesus in the front row?

I go with Bam Bam Bigelow, because I've got a wrong to put right for Bammer. The "story mode" pits you against multiple enemy fighters at a time, which turns these battles into a real brawl.

You can get uppercutted like ten feet into the air, and when someone launches you out of the ring, you soar like twenty feet.

After a few brief fights, our final match for the title is against... the team of Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart? Are they both co-champion? Did Shawn just politick his way into Bam Bam vs Bret?

Bam Bam Bigelow wins the world title! I said I had a wrong to put right.

Now to beat the game as Shawn. He has an uphill climb for the title, as his final boss is...Bam Bam, Yokozuna, and Lex Luger in a 1-on-3 handicap match. Check out Shawn's "ooh scary" taunt.

One of the great things about this game is that characters have Mortal Kombat style special moves they can break out, and they get pretty wild. Shawn attacks with a devastating overhand baseball bat swing, seen here leveling Doink. Undertaker can throw shadow magic, Razor swings an actual large knife, etc.

They really got the poses in this game, I'll say that. Solid motion-capture and digitization. This game is great, can't believe it took me this long to take a look at it.

One thing I wish they would have done is have Diesel be the final boss, sort of the Eyedol of the game, and pose a big endgame threat, given that he was the current WWF Champion when the game came out (and had been for a while). Without any sort of final boss, the game just kinda goes on until it ends.

Doink's surprise joy buzzer attack is a real shock for opponents.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Super NES and Sega 32X versions of the game. The 32X version is higher-res, but where it really stands out is the much better animation. You can see Undertaker's ghost projectiles here too, as they unleash testicular punishment on Bret.

It's worth noting that the Super NES version has two fewer characters than the 32X version. The Genesis version has eight characters despite also being 16-bit, so not sure what the issue was with the SNES version. I'd say it's the inferior version by a good margin for that reason alone. The two missing characters? Yokozuna and Bam Bam.

Another SNES version shot, as Shawn Michaels unleashes a devastating punt to the groin on Lex Luger! Hasn't Lex been through enough?

That's about it for this game. There isn't really anything else to it. It's a great game, but I wish it had Diesel and that the fights were all one on one instead of handicap matches. Definitely a classic that you can't go wrong with, though, and anyone who likes the New Generation will have a blast with it.

Here's the magazine ad, which I also remember from that era. What's Bret trying to do here? Trying to sweep an arcade machine is like trying to powerbomb Kidman.

One last thing, the digitized themes in this game are awesome, and here's my favorite of the bunch.

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