WWF Royal Rumble for Dreamcast

I don't know what your mood is right now, but generally speaking, you're either optimistic or pessimistic. Having said this, this is either good or bad news for you- WWF Royal Rumble is another arcade perfect translation for your Dreamcast. If you played it in arcades, you'll unfortunately realize it's the latter.

Isn't this game by THQ, the same gaming gods who brought us Smackdown!?
Yes, but there's no denying that this is such a horrible game nevertheless. At first, WWF Royal Rumble looks like an awesome game, but it's really meant for the arcades, or at the laundromat while you wait for your undies to be washed. Even WWF Attitude is a much better game.

WWF Royal Rumble is nothing more than its title says. Sure, there's a really poor Exhibition mode, but the real fun of the game is the Royal Rumble itself.

Didn't I just fight this guy a few minutes ago?
Royal Rumble's small roster of wrestlers is really a slap to the face. It only has the really famous characters, and if you're expecting tag teams to be here, you may be surprised to find the other half missing (or the whole team not here at all!). Thanks to this, you're gonna have to face the same wrestlers over and over until the Rumble's over.

Well, if we're gonna see the same ugly mugs and sweaty bodys over and over, might as well have fun, right? Thanks to the Dreamcast's potential, the game could support up to 9 wrestlers in the same ring without any slow-downs! Of course, only 4 can be human controlled and you'll need to buy each controller individually, but it's well worth it if you plan to invite friends over regularly.

Let's quicky review the rules of a Royal Rumble match. You want to throw out as many wrestlers as you possibly can, but you want to be the last man in there. While beating them until they fall out of the ring is logical, Irish whipping them when you're near the ropes is more effective. As wrestlers get eliminated, new and fresh ones replace them, and by the time you get to the end, you're already tired from button mashing and because your character ran out of health. If you happen to get thrown out, don't worry- most of the time your character will grab the ropes and hang on. You just have to mash the buttons to pull yourself back in.

What about the Exhibition mode?
It's very straight-forward with one new stipulation (if you choose to add it in)- interference! Not the, "Oh, I'm too cowardly to fight so I'll jump so and so back stage" kind that you find in the Season mode of WWF Smackdown, but the one where an ally assaults your opponent during a match. Your ally can do a lot of things to help you, from basic attacking, to doing their finishers, to double-team moves, or even throwing in weapons, which actually deform when it makes contact with your opponent's head. Just don't expect your partner to do all the dirty work for you, you'll have to wait some time before he's allowed to attack again.

Also newly added, there's actually a referee! Not that they really change anything, but it's nice to see that there's no invisible man with a loud voice counting to three. It'd be really cool if you could actually attack him like in the days of 16-bit, where the p*ssed ref would storm out of the arena leaving the wrestlers to beat the tar out of each other......

There's also a few backstages, where you'll find deadly weapons. When the light goes out, you're never sure where you'll end up. How about the parking lot where you could act out Stone Cold's incident with Rikishi some years ago? And who knew frozen meat on a conveyor belt would hurt?

What's the "S" for?
That's your special. You can hold up to 5. Essentially, whoever holds the most wins. Not only can you do finishers, you could use them to immediately recover or break a pin. Everytime a wrestler gives or receives damage, the special meter fills up. If you fill it up, you get one S and can start your second one. Taunts fill up your meter the quickest.

Speaking of meters, this game features life bars so you really know when you're losing. You'll have to mash the buttons to get up quicker, and it gets harder and harder if you have less health. This is definitely not a position you want to be in.

Graphics
The graphics are nothing to laugh at, but they're just basically touched-up Smackdown! graphics. While it's nice that the wrestlers look more realistic than ever, the intros have been cut short (very short, only two seconds at most) and there's no TitanTron footage at all (except at the title screen and the credits). Camera angles are generally okay, but you never face your opponent the right way, and you have to manually face him. If he's standing right in front of you and you press another direction while you swing, you'll miss for sure.

Sound
You'd think that there'd be a lot of sound in wrestling, but this game hardly has any, and even worse, they don't sound good at all. The announcer sounds dead, and even though you see the announcers, they don't say anything (funny... Lawler never seems to shut up). The music is very faint too and should just be muted completely. Wanna hear the sound of a car while it hits you? Thud. Not even a THUD or exclamation point.

Control
Royal Rumble's controls are very Smackdown!-ish. They're easy to pick up, and that's the way they should be. One button's for punching and kicking, another for grappling, another one for taunt, another for special, and another for Irish whipping, running, climbing, and pinning. Can't get more simple than that.

If you press different directions while you grapple, you'll do a different move. There's even more moves depending on where you are- in front of your opponent, in back, while your opponent's on the floor, etc. Nothing Smackdown! fans haven't seen.

Overall
WWF Royal Rumble is the worst wrestling game out right now, unless you actually have friends to play this with. Buy No Mercy, Attitude, or Smackdown! instead, anything but this game. You'd probably have more fun trying to save Stephanie McMahon Helmsly in that horrible GBC game....