WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game (レッスルマニア・ジ・アーケードゲーム) is a 1995 wrestling game developed by Midway for the arcades. Sculptured Software was licensed to produce ports to various home consoles, including the Sega Mega Drive, Sega 32X and Sega Saturn; Acclaim published these versions in 1995 and 1996.
Unlike most wrestling games, WrestleMania is a one-on-one versus fighter, similar to the likes of Mortal Kombat. Both games were originally developed by Midway. Later a sequel called WWF In Your House was released for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and DOS.
Gameplay
The game plays more like a standard fighter than the wrestling games that would follow it. Attacks are quick and each character has special moves and can perform combos. Rather than a single match the fight is broken up into rounds with two wins needed to become the victor. Single player game modes include Intercontinental Championship and the WWF Championship. Multi-player game modes include Head to Head and Cooperative. Commentary is provided by Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler, who can be seen sitting in the background at the announcers table.
Playable characters are: Bam Bam Bigelow, Bret Hart, Doink the Clown, Lex Luger, Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker and Yokozuna.
Ports
In comparison to the SNES version the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis port contains all 8 characters instead of 6. It also allows 4 characters onscreen at once but with slowdown, but not as much as found in the SNES port. Most of the voice and commentary is present although much of Jerry Lawlers commentary is dropped.
The 32X port was an enhanced Mega Drive port thus is not as close to the arcade as it could have been if it were built from the ground up. The graphics and audio was improved somewhat but the frame rate was reduced to 30 FPS instead of the 60 FPS found in other versions. This does however help to avoid slowdown issues.
The CD-ROM versions (including Saturn) is more accurate to the arcade version than other ports. Graphically it is similar although not as sharp and the sprites are slightly smaller. There is no in-game music. Loading time is of course, increased, this includes when loading the next character in a Battle Royal.
Physical Scans
Mega Drive Version
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| Mega Drive, EU
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32X Version
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Saturn Version
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79
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Sega Retro Average
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