WWE

Game Description: This game has been licensed by the World Wrestling Foundation (WWF) to bring all of the wrestlers, matches, and moves of the real thing to your Nintendo 64. Battle with the likes of the Rock and Triple H, or create your own wrestler. The Ladder Match has been added to other game modes, such as King of the Ring and Royal Rumble. Battle up the runway, and pull weapons, like the Singapore Cane, out of the crowd. Earn points to unlock wrestlers and costumes in the SmackDown Mall.

Despite having an identical rating, Dale and I arrived at the same destination rather differently. Dale notes in his review of WWF No Mercy that there are moderately remarkable improvements over its predecessors, but doesn't seem think these updates are anything ground-breaking. I disagree with that, but not entirely.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence, Suggestive Themes

WWF Royal Rumble is the perfect game if you have a dollar to blow and half an hour left on your lunch break. Its entire design is such that it can be picked up quickly and mastered before it is over. It also features some great body crunching action that has been missing in the wrestling games of late. However, such a scarcity of features need to be balanced by a lot more than Royal Rumble has to offer when it comes to the home market.

Game Description: You've seen one on one, tag teams, doubles, and whatnot, but this is crazy! In WWF Royal Rumble, you'll get yourself into a brawl simultaneously involving up to nine wrestlers and one helpless referee (with this kind of fighting, what power are rules anyway?). This free-for-all madness even spills out of the ring into the parking lot, where you'll have to avoid getting hit by passing cars. Developed in tandem with the coin-op version of the same game, WWF Royal Rumble is free of career managing and wrestler creation and concentrates instead on dynamic group mayhem. Go ahead and punch one wrestler and then leave him to put another in a lock; it's entirely up to you. You can even partner with another wrestler and have him execute moves on your behalf—valuable when your face is being pushed into the canvas.

WWF Royal Rumble is an underachiever, plain and simple. If there were ever a game that I thought would be a guarantee lock for ratings gold, it would have been this one. But like Dale, I was totally shocked at how the developers excluded so many standard home features and still thought they would have a serious market contender.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes

In the end, the graphics and sound may be lacking, but Smackdown! shows up where it counts the most, in the amount of features and the rock-solid gameplay. It's not without a bit of irony that at a time when wrestling game developers are trying to complicate a player's actions in a misguided attempt to create some sort of wrestling simulation, Smackdown! manages to do just that with a far simpler style.

So in Smackdown!, the ability to grow my character and further adjust his arsenal of moves with choices that only become available after I've reached certain levels of ability really caught my attention—hook, line and sinker. I simply couldn't stop playing there after, and Smackdown! became just plain smack for me.

Game Description: Lay the SmackDown! on your enemies with your own created jabroni or as one of the World Wrestling Federation's top superstars. Make friends and then break them as you roam backstage from the boiler room to the kitchen. Call upon your allies for help and then climb over them as you kick, grapple, and People's Elbow your way to the top. Just remember that backstage politics can work against you—don't let The Rock run-ins, well-placed metal chairs, and McMahon-appointed guest referees get you in the end.