It’s almost October, and with a second season of the intense Netflix animated series based on the classic video game franchise, we’re taking a look at all of the info confirmed for Castlevania Season 2!

1. When is it coming out?

Castlevania Season 2 will be premiering on Netflix in its entirety on October 26th, 2018. Season 1 dropped July 7, 2017, and while it was an action-packed addition to the summer, the new season coming just in time for Halloween warms our spooky hearts.

2. How long will it be?

Castlevania had a tumultuous journey to be the violent animated action we can stream today. It was originally intended to be a film, and the length of Season 1 reflects that. In fact, that’s a valid criticism of the first season. 4 episodes of 23 minutes each were nice, but it felt like it just didn’t tell enough of a story. The good news is that Castlevania Season 2 is going to be twice as long, with 8 episodes ordered. That’s enough to give it a proper season arc after what felt like a prelude.

3. Who is writing Castlevania Season 2?

As with Season 1, acclaimed comic book writer Warren Ellis will be writing Season 2. While Ellis is undoubtedly more known for his science fiction stories — of which he is likely one of the best living today — Season 1 proves how effectively he could tell a dark fantasy story. He also clearly has a love for the series, and the game this is based on in particular (aside from one character). He has been trying to get a Castlevania adaptation on screens since the mid-2000’s, so you can only imagine the passion he has for his work now.

4. Which video game is it based on?

Just like Season 1, Castlevania Season 2 will focus on the story of the 1989 classic Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. This makes sense from a narrative standpoint as it has three well-defined characters at the center and a great overarching story to tell. You might notice that visually, the Castlevania series doesn’t seem to match the aesthetic of the NES game. That’s because the animated series is stylistically modeled after the PlayStation classic Symphony of the Night, which forever changed the visual language of Castlevania.

That’s not all though. Based on the Season 2 trailer, we think that Curse of Darkness might be making its way into the season. We’ll talk more about that in a little bit.

5. Who are the main characters?

Trevor Belmont was undoubtedly the main character and focus on Season 1. Castlevania Season 2 has been confirmed to focus on the three characters united at the end of Season 1. While we are used to Trevor Belmont, we will get more time with Dracula’s son Adrien Tepes and the mage Sypha Belnades. Adrien Tepes, also called Alucard, is an extremely interesting character from the entire game franchise, so the greater focus on him could be a highlight of the entire season.

6. Who is the cast?

The cast will be the same in Season 2 as in Season 1. The primary voice actors being acclaimed English actor Richard Armitage, James Callis of multiple successful science fiction series, and Scottish actor Graham McTavish.

7. Will this be the final season?

Castlevania Season 2 wasn’t confirmed until Season 1 was released. We already have confirmation that Season 3 has been greenlit. With the team behind the show knowing that they have longer to tell their story, we can’t wait to see how much they are able to set up come October.

8. What about Grant?

Warren Ellis has said that Grant is his least favorite character from Dracula’s Curse, and his absence from Season 1 was noticed. We aren’t the biggest fans of Grant here either, so that was fine by us, but some fans took issue with it. The trailer shows what appears to be Grant attacking Trevor, so we’re left wondering if this will be a throwaway easter egg, or something more.

9. What about the Vampire Killer?

The Vampire Killer is the whip the Belmont family uses to slay Dracula throughout the centuries. In season 1 we saw it as a leather whip in the hands of Trevor Belmont. Warren Ellis proved excellent at showing the video game convention of a party of heroes coming together interpreted for a TV series, and the trailer clearly shoes Trevor with an upgraded, chain whip. It will be interesting to see how Season 2 handles the convention of weapon upgrades.

10. What was that about Curse of Darkness?

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2) is a sequel to Dracula’s Curse, taking place three years later. The main character of the game is Hector, a former ally of Dracula who betrayed his master. Promotional art from those involve confirmed that Hector will be a part of Castlevania Season 2. With Season 3 confirmed, we have to wonder if that is Ellis’ endgame for his show.

Check out the trailer and its synthwave inspired sounds here!

ITS THAT FUCKING BAAAAAAG AGAAAAAAIIIIIN

The entire early to mid 90s period was one of fierce competition. Companies competed to release successful games and dominate genres. A new burst of energy hit arcades as new cabinets and innovative titles went head to head for commercial success. I dare say the most pitched battle was at home; the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System locked horns for years for dominance of your living room TV set.

This often involved titles that were released for both platforms, since game developers and publishers were none too shy about exploiting the rivalry for more sales. Exclusivity was still occasionally a thing, but during the Genesis/SNES war, if you wanted a shot at big returns, it was out there if your game had enough hype behind it; just license it for both consoles and let both sets of partisans enjoy your work.

Today’s grab bag will take a look at a few of these games, some of which may have come down from the arcade palaces in port form, and some of which were developed just for console play. I kept it at 3, like I usually do for these articles, but narrowing it down was hard. Here’s three that stand out to me as typical of the era – colorful, far-flung, and even bizarre.

NBA Jam

Midway/Acclaim

1993 (Arcade),1994 (consoles)

In 1994, the Amusement & Music Operators Association reported that NBA Jam was the highest-earning arcade game of all time. It was a formula based (at least loosely) off of a previous Midway game, Arch Rivals, but utilizing the power and vibrancy of the Arcade Renaissance to give it new life and appeal.

I’m not even that big into basketball (I will sometimes watch UNC or Duke games with my family, but to me the family part far outstrips the hoops), and I love NBA Jam. However, I got familiar with it through the Genesis port. You don’t NEED to care a lick about basketball to enjoy it. It’s an extremely approachable setup, and once you figure out how the game works, it’s pretty damn fun whether you’re winning or losing. Imagine a 2 on 2 game with no ref and minimal rules. Shit gets raw out there.

Double clothesline. Classic basketball move.

My distinct memory of both versions (a neighbor had the SNES port) was unlocking goofy or cool alternate characters using the initials-entry screen as a password of sorts. You could get President Clinton, retired legends, mascots, or you could just do shit like make everyone’s heads big. It was secondary to the action, though; between the shoving, dodging, going hard in the paint, and even risky long-shots, this was some high-octane basketball. Both ports of the game got rave reviews just like their arcade daddy, and for good reason. With digitized speech and faithful graphics, both were excellent translations to home gaming from the arcade floor.

RoboCop vs Terminator

Virgin Games

1993 (SNES/Game Gear), 1994 (Genesis/Game Boy)

The logo looked like it could be on the bottom of a sneaker. Don’t get me wrong. I’d have worn those fucking sneakers. Who wouldn’t?

The idea of it is pure magic. I mean, both of these franchises, on their own, had done amazing in terms of draw and earning power. Why not combine them?

Well, I won’t take a dump on this game (either version) like a lot of its contemporary reviewers did, but I will say this: RoboCop vs Terminator was definitely a mixed bag. On the one hand, everything’s digitized or high-quality in some way. There’s a gruesome but tolerable level of blood and gore. It is pretty cool to play as RoboCop and wield a variety of lasers and flamethrowers against the enemy Terminators and gangsters. At least, while the game is still fresh.

The game has its appeal. It definitely picks up a second wind when you finally get to where you’re fighting T-800s as your main enemy instead of a slew of heterogeneous 90s gang members.

What keeps me from really loving it? Well, let’s start with how RoboCop (naturally) is as agile as a toddler wearing full riot gear, and is constantly assailed by walls of projectiles and other barely-avoidable hazards on a regular (read: constant) basis. For instance, RoboCop can fly up a ladder at a speed that boggles the mind, but walks and jumps as if his entire lower body is weighed down like a full diaper and he’s afraid to smush any of it together. Embarrassing, Murphy.

Then there’s Tommy Tallarico’s really strange techno-industrial-hip-hop score, which sounds to me like it belongs in some terrifying HR Giger porno film about virtual reality drug dealers or something. Some tracks are even downright grating, not even like Gnaw Their Tongues or other bands in that vein; this music is trying to be music but becomes harsh noise because it’s so smashed into itself.

So like I said, the game’s extremely half-and-half for me. I can’t seem to hate it, but there’s only so much to love. I reluctantly assert that the Genesis version has slightly “cleaner” sound, but that only helps so much.

Earthworm Jim

Shiny Entertainment

1994

Don’t worry. I love this one as much as you do. I have no plans to rip it up in front of you.

The game started out as an idea at Playmates Toys. They’d made so much money selling TMNT toys that they figured starting their own franchise could make them even more. Out the business-end comes a game that not only beautifully parodies its own genre, but innovates in ways that have become standard in platformers since.

This was exactly when I knew I was dealing with a legendary game.

Earthworm Jim is creativity set loose. It is quality on the level of late Apogee PC games for me: irreverent, loose, funny, dynamic, and outside-the-box. Jim has a cool set of moves and tricks at his disposal as an earthworm in an experimental suit, and he can use them to solve the often compounded problems you face on each level. Many of the tropes of formulaic video games are both utilized and mocked, but the focus is the gameplay. The race minigame is intense enough to be its own game, and no two levels present you with the same challenge. In 1994 it was a delight not to know what to expect at all from this game when we sat down to play it. And Tallarico even made up for some other work with a score that didn’t confuse and terrify me. At least, not in a bad way.

I tried to think of negatives to balance out this appraisal, but had trouble. I guess I could say that the game can be a bit unreasonably rudderless at times, but even I was able to get myself back on track again when I’d lose my way. This game is still exemplary of its type, 23 years later.

Ratings

NBA Jam – 7/10

RoboCop vs Terminator – 4/10

Earthworm Jim – 9/10

It’s time for us to cross the streams, true believers.

There’s a lot of talk about comics here on NRW, and rightly so. Joey has his own awesome strand of articles wherein he sheds light on the old and exposes us to the retro-new, and we love it, because Joey is to the medium of comics what I am to sitting on my ass in front of a CRT monitor with a controller in my hand: he’s a passionate expert on the subject. It’s worth diving into; when done well, the comic book or graphic novel is an art form capable of deftly transporting the reader to new worlds – some like our own, and some realities away from it.

What can’t be overlooked is how the comic book multiverse has been thrust into the colored-light beams and binary rows of the VG grinder time and time again in the plodding quest to juice franchises for more revenue. Here’s the dolorous stroke, folks: We’re going to take a look at how they’ve done this with one of Marvel’s undisputed icons, their bread-and-butter household name… Spider-Man. Peter Parker, the world’s most beloved wise-cracking web slinger, has been dipped in silicon and code frequently throughout video gaming’s history, with results that I will be kind and describe as “varied.”

I mean, he’s an icon. Some comics fans think he’s a pussy. Honestly, I do too. I’m more of a Punisher guy. No one can deny, however, that Peter Parker is one of the most luminous stars in comic book history. (Artwork by Michael Golden)

Everyone’s pretty familiar with Spidey’s origins and powers. He got bit by a radioactive spider, got some powers, lost his uncle to crime, and got serious about cleaning up the Big Apple (and sometimes beyond). The wall-crawler has made tons of friends and enemies since his appearance in the 60s, from goblins to murderous hunters to symbiotic aliens that abandoned him and sought out his unstable and disgruntled colleagues for revenge (Venom is the man!) Pete’s powers, coupled with his nifty web-shooting devices, make for the possibility of great dynamic gameplay if translated creatively into digital form. Right?

Ah, shit, kids… let’s just do this. I’m not gonna look at every game, but we’ll examine the prominent titles that most of us may have seen or played.

Spider-Man (1982)

Platform: Atari 2600

Culprits: Parker Brothers/Atari

Eh. It’s not great, but everything looked like this in 1982. At least we can tell which one’s Spider-Man.

You’ll probably expect me to be cruel here, because I do lean on the side of bastardry when it comes to the 2600. I mean… eh. Let’s stay in context… this isn’t bad for a 2600 game. Considering the limits of the system graphics- and sound-wise, you get a good representation of the key elements. Gameplay consists of getting up on top of the building and kicking Green Goblin’s ass, which to be fair, ate up a lot of Peter’s logged superhero hours in the 70s/80s either together or as separate activities. Using your web shooters is a little tedious, but once you’ve got the hang of how to do it in a rhythm and pull yourself up, it’s pretty fun. I suppose my only knock on this one is that it’s not enough to do. But then, not every 2600 game can be Burgertime and crush your soul with raw chaos.

The Amazing Spider-Man (1990)

Platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, PC Compatibles

Culprits: Oxford Digital/Paragon Software

Let me start off with something nice before I put my hands under the table and fucking lift. The Amiga has always stood out for its time as a system capable of audiovisual richness, and this game really turns her out. The ST and PC versions are decent in that regard too, although the audio quality varies.

“Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!”  I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

Now, let’s talk about HOW they chose to turn her out. The controls are pretty fucking far from intuitive; while I expect translating Spider-Man’s iconic means of locomotion to be a challenge for a game developer, this shit is just abyss you’ll keep falling into until you start being meticulously careful… which isn’t prudent in 90% of the situations you’ll be navigating. Move fast? Move really carefully? The answer to both is usually no. Again, I can’t knock the graphics, but there’s something inherently wrong about this image, seen during the intro. Something that reminds me of “non-Euclidean shapes,” “lightless gulfs across time and space,” and “red-haired woman being forcibly abducted by a fishbowl-headed mannequin.” Poor Mary Jane.

somebodys_fetish.jpg

Almost as bizarre is the choice to represent your life bar as a picture of Spider-Man that turns skeletal from the feet upward as you move closer to death.

He looks a little embarrassed. I don’t blame him.

Last gripe: the game is, at least to me, unreasonably goddamn long considering the tedium it is to play. You can watch a longplay here, and be sure to listen to the entire intro music, or at least sit through it for as long as you can before reaching for that little red track-bar to skip through it and save your sanity.

Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six (1992)

Platforms: NES, Game Gear, Master System

Culprits: LJN (OF COURSE), Flying Edge, Bits Studios

This game is mercifully short, but still feels like being hurled into a black hole and somehow kept alive to slowly lose one’s mind via time dilation. Spider-Man, despite being fully human height, has the same general proportions as Wee Man from Jackass. His ability to leap through the air is admirable, and the controls aren’t too bad… until you try to do any of the shit Spider-Man is known for doing in terms of movement. The graphics are candy-colored palettes of pure hell wherein men are depicted universally as shoeless mongoloids and no light seems to penetrate anything (despite the garish coloration of everything).

It’s like Willy Wonka took a massive shit all over everything, and really wasn’t feeling well when he did. I bumble forth, capable of great feats of agility but barely able to keep my goose neck from dropping my pumpkin head onto my barrel chest. As Spider-Man, I am the monster, and I belong here.

A small handful of farty, tooty pieces of music cycle as you penetrate deeper into the Sinister Six’s criminal kingdom, presenting a strange yet totally-LJN mix of jazzy swing and “I ate so many tabs I can’t even tell what genre this is.” The drums punch at the listener’s mind, almost as if they are intended to pummel you into accepting the rest of this musical affront as tolerable. It’s like a rave in a Civil War graveyard, and someone invited Dizzy Gillespie. Actually, fuck that… that’d rule. This doesn’t.

Again, I can’t flush this game completely; it’s a decent effort overall, but LJN had a tendency (with a scant few exceptions) to attach its name to something and then pile drive it into the floor until no amount of reconstructive surgery could fix it.

Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage (1994)

Platforms: Genesis. SNES

Culprits: LJN, Acclaim, Software Creations

We’re ending on a positive note. We have to. We owe it to ourselves.

I really liked the Maximum Carnage story arc in the comics. It’s held high by some and shit on by others, but there’s something about a villain so terrifying that two bitter enemies (not to mention a wild cross section of Marvel’s 90s line-up) combined forces to defeat him as he rampaged across New York with his own wrecking crew. I love big events, and I LOVE villains. And Carnage… well, he’s one burning hell of a villain.

Really, if anyone deserves this shit, it’s JJ. 

This effort did decent justice to the source material. I’ll keep this simple and just tick off some pros and cons.

PROS

-Venom is a playable character

-Morbius shows up, along with Deathlok, Black Cat, Iron Fist, and a few other underrated Marvel good guys

-it’s a beat-em-up, and not a bad one, either

-comic book style cut scenes, and they’re not done poorly

–pretty damn good music

-LJN didn’t set this one on fire and stand back playing pocket pool while it burned to slag

Really cool audio-visual presentation all around. It keeps true to the comic feel without burning that candle at both ends with a welding torch.

CONS

-The music did not sound as good in the Genesis version

-This game is also long; why the hell does Spider-Man mean “long fucking game” almost uniformly to game designers

-It’s incredibly unfair to put bad-ass characters like Black Cat, Iron Fist and Morbius in here and not have them as full-on playables

-I feel like a lot of the villains get undersold in terms of their powers and badass-ness

-Still, to make an understatement, a bit fucking cumbersome to do the web slinging thing, although it must be acknowledged that it’s better in this than in any predecessor

Overall, Maximum Carnage is fun as hell. I owned the Genesis cart as a kid and got a lot of replay value out of it. It’s a net win due to presentation and the choice of formatting it as a beat-em-up, which makes it approachable on a level far beyond its ancestors in Spidey’s video game library.

That brings us to 1994, folks, so I guess I’ll put the brakes on it here. Thanks for reading, and before I go, I suppose I owe you some number ratings on these hunks of pop media history.

Atari 2600: 6/10

Amiga: 5/10

NES: 3/10

Genesis/SNES: 7/10

See you at the end of the month, RetroFans! Excelsior!!!

As many JRPG fans know, when Final Fantasy II was released for the SNES in America in 1991, it was actually the fourth installment in the series. As all too often happens between here and there, the second and third titles weren’t released stateside until a long time after their inception. Nonetheless, US and European fans were pleased to have another entry in the loosely-connected saga of FF, and were blown away by its monumental quality.

The Japanese box art for the Super Famicom version. The characters depicted are more evocative of the first game than this one, and the art is of a cutesy “super-deformed” style now very popular in anime and manga.

Everyone who loves the classic Final Fantasy games has their favorite title… for many (perhaps most), it is Cloud and Tifa’s tale in VII, or maybe even the return to form seen in part IX. I have always loved IV more than any of them, for a slew of reasons. Firstly, it’s a fantastic, richly detailed story, ahead of its time by far. Secondly, I love any tale that strongly features redemption as a theme (spoilers). Thirdly, it is the first RPG video game I ever played that was truly character-driven.

The Red Wings on their way to beat some ass and steal a crystal. (SNES version)

FFIV revolves primarily around Cecil, a dark knight in the service of the Kingdom of Baron, leader of a group known as the Red Wings. The Red Wings have been tasked with collecting a set of powerful magical crystals, and have been instructed to do so no matter what they have to do. The game begins, in fact, with a cinematic sequence showing them doing just that. They slaughter a group of mages who barely resist to claim the Water Crystal for the King. Upon returning with it, Cecil questions the King’s motives and is stripped of his command. He and his friend Kain, a member of the King’s Dragoons, are sent on a quest to deliver a sinister magic ring to a village called Mist. This begins the story in earnest.

Cecil battles the Earth Fiend Scarmiglione with the help of the sage Tellah and the twin mages Palom and Porom. (GBA version)

In the process, Kain betrays and reconciles with Cecil, and the group of heroes expands to include others who reject the evil of the King. It is found that a villain named Golbez is behind all the wickedness afoot, and Cecil must step up to the plate and redeem himself to stop it. There’s so much more detail, and I really recommend you grab the game in one of its modern incarnations to play yourself… but we’ll get to that. In between, the player leads a changing crew of warriors, mages, healers and scoundrels across the world. The adventures go from ruined cities like Damcyan and exotic settings like the city of Fabul to strange locales such as the inside of a mechanical colossus and even the moon!

One of the more interesting battles, the CPU inside the mechanical Giant of Babil. You must destroy them in a certain sequence… (PSP version)

Squaresoft has refurbished and improved this title several times, beginning in 1997 with a PS1 version. It was later released for the Game Boy Advance and the PSP, again for the Nintendo DS. I’m currently replaying it via the incredible Android/iOS port, which is possibly the most easily found by modern gamers and is fairly affordable for such a detailed game. In 2014, FFIV was also released for Windows. The music, scored by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, is fully half of the immersion experience, and is often hauntingly beautiful. It ranks among his finest work in the series, which is truly saying something since Uematsu is easily among the masters in VG scoring. I have embedded the Nintendo DS version, but almost all the other versions can be found on YouTube if you wish to hear them.

I would rate Final Fantasy IV a strong 9/10. It is a benchmark in its genre’s history, not to mention a work of art that could easily stand on its own if not already part of gaming’s finest RPG series. Like many of its prequels and sequels, it remains popular and retains the attention of generations of gamers.

Here’s a glimpse of the final boss fight from the iOS/Android version. See you later, RetroFans!

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For tonight’s main event, I present one of my favorite sports games! Well, “sports entertainment” games, anyway.

If you’ve been a longtime reader of our site, then you may know that one of my guilty pleasures is classic pro wrestling, particularly from the mid 70s to the mid 90s. In the 80s and early 90s, the WWF was a parade of colorful, wild characters, and they seemed to live in their own self-contained realm. It was a world of impossible possibilities. The sports entertainment industry was engaged in a cold war during this era, which peaked during the Monday Night Wars (so called because WWF and WCW’s flagship shows both aired on Monday nights and thus competed for ratings). You may not know anything about that, and you may not even care. I respect that. However, if you played video games in the early 90s, you probably at least shook hands with WWF Royal Rumble on your Genesis or SNES.

SNES box art.

Box art for the Genesis version.

Royal Rumble is named after the popular event held every January by what is now known as the WWE. Unlike a typical pro wrestling match (two wrestlers or two tag teams competing to pin one another for a 3 count), the Rumble is an event that can include up to 40 (but usually 20-30) wrestlers. A wrestler is eliminated if he goes over the top rope for any reason. This general idea existed before, but it had every single wrestler in the ring as the match began… and made for one big visual clusterfuck for the fans. Longtime WWF employee Pat Patterson came up with the idea of having two wrestlers start off, then having new grapplers enter the ring at timed intervals. This allowed for a longer-lasting and more exciting product.

Magazine ad for the SNES game. It hit the shelves a couple months before the Genesis version.

This same excitement carries over pretty well into the video game, which was released for both the Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES. It was developed by Sculptured Software, a company that later assimilated into Acclaim. LJN published the game for both systems. While LJN is well-known among retro gamers as an infamous peddler of turd sandwiches (if you want an example, check out their NES cartridge for Back to the Future), they kept their hands off the nuts & bolts of this one. Royal Rumble is actually the middle game of a sort of trilogy; 1992’s Super Wrestlemania is a more basic version and a prequel, while WWF Raw came along in 1994 with a bit more detail and an updated roster. Ultimately, I prefer Royal Rumble. It captures most of the wrestlers I remember from the television shows, and it’s a good compromise between simplicity and innovative play design.

The game features 12 WWF Superstars, five of which depend on what console you use to rumble. Much like the Soul Calibur series features console-specific characters for today’s gamers, your roster in Royal Rumble was different if you were playing on a Genesis. If you were a Hulk Hogan fan, you wanted that version. If, like me, wanted to style and profile with Ric Flair, you went with the SNES version.  Both versions featured the big WWF names of the time: Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Lex Luger (known at that time as The Narcissist), Bam Bam Bigelow, Crush, and the immortal Macho Man Randy Savage. The SNES-specific roster was filled out by Flair, Tatanka, sumo villain Yokozuna, Mr. Perfect, and the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. The Genesis swaps those out for IRS (yes, a gimmick villain who works for the Internal Revenue Service), Rick Martel (The Model),  a voodoo-themed guy named Papa Shango, and my personal favorite when I was a kid, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

The complete roster for both versions. Top row, left to right: Bret Hart, Crush, Hulk Hogan, IRS, Jim Duggan, Lex Luger (Narcissist). Second row: Mr. Perfect, Papa Shango, Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, Ric Flair (WOOOOOO), Rick Martel (The Model). Bottom: Shawn Michaels, Tatanka, Ted DiBiase, Undertaker, Yokozuna.

Players can pick their favorite wrestlers and step into the squared circle with a friend or the CPU. Singles, tag teams, even three-man tag… you can do it all in exhibitions or tournaments, and the “brawl” game type allows you to duke it out with no referee and no holds barred! You can go for the belts that way, or you can select a grappler and go for the ultimate prize… winner of the Royal Rumble itself. The controls take a minute to figure out when you first sit down and plug this game in, but once you’ve got them, you’ve got them. Every wrestler has the same punches and kicks, and can run the ropes and “lock up” with an opponent using other buttons. There’s not a lot of complex combos or anything, which is nice if you like a break from other fighting games. Once you’ve locked up, pick a button and tap it as fast as you can to overpower your foe and hurl him to the mat with any of several moves. Wrestling fans will recognize the suplexes, body slams, and hip tosses they all know and love, and if these are used cleverly, you can even hurl the other guy out of the ring like a sack of potatoes. When you’re out there (or if you manage to conk out the ref for a minute), you can do some underhanded moves like choke your opponent or even thumb his eye. All participants in a match have “life bars” that represent how much damage and abuse they can handle before they’re all out of gas and the fight has left them. In “brawl” matches, the loser is the first one to lose all his meter, while all it does in refereed matches or the Rumble is make you tired and easier to pin or throw out. Finally, every wrestler has his own special move, just like the “real” thing! All of them are activated by pressing the R button (SNES) or the A+B buttons (Genesis, although if you had the 6 button pad you could press X). The moves require your foe to be beaten all the way down, or close to it, and each wrestler has to stand in a specific place or have things set up right to make it happen. For instance, Randy Savage’s famous elbow drop can only be done off the turnbuckle while your foe is prone nearby, and Ric Flair’s signature Figure Four requires you to press the button while standing at a prone opponent’s feet.

Gallery

The graphics for both versions are fairly good, although the SNES version looks slightly more polished. The sound effects are comical, involving a lot of grunts and moans of pain. They don’t vary from character to character. The music is comprised mainly of the wrestlers’ entrance themes; otherwise, there is no music while you sweat and bleed under the lights. There is only the monotone howling of the virtual crowd. I will say that while the SNES’s music will always sound goofy and “fluffy” to me, both versions do a good job of representing the actual pieces of music.

Odds are, you played this game (And maybe even liked it) even if you weren’t a fan of WWF or wrestling. I was a fan, and I loved it. I give Royal Rumble 7 out of 10. It’s a fun, easy-to-learn game with very adjustable difficulty, and it offers a lot of choices and control to the player. It’s not a legend or a must-have title, but I often see it underrated by others who review retro games.

Stay tuned, RetroManiacs! More action at the end of the month. 

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