WCW World Championship Wrestling (NES, 1990)

As usual, with Wrestlemania this weekend I review a wrestling game. My pick this year was motivated by the below ad that I saw in a comic book. I already had the game, so I figured I should review it.

The Game

Something seems wrong about Michael Hayes getting Ricky Steamboat in a submission hold.

It’s just as indecipherable to me as any other wrestling game that isn’t Wrestlemania Arcade or In Your House. I played two matches, and managed to last longer in the second match but not only is the computer merciless I am pretty sure it has a longer range than the player.

First you pick what sort of match you are going for, then you pick your wrestler, then you pick 4 moves for your wrestler. These moves are assigned to arrows on the D-Pad, but they don’t come into play until you start grappling with another wrestler. I don’t have a manual so I can’t tell you how to do it, but I did manage to do it once on my second match and got a nice backdrop in.

You can also take the action out of the ring, but I’m not sure how that is achieved because each time it happened because I was thrown out by the computer. Getting back in is easy though, just walk up to the ring while mashing buttons. Like in wrestling (except today’s stuff, especially on AEW) there is a countdown when you’re out of the ring and if you stay out too long you are disqualified.

There are two things interesting to me here- first is the smoothness of movement. I don’t mean fighting animations, what I mean is how you glide across the ring. In the SNES wrestling games I’ve played and in others it feels like you’re really pushing it to move, but here you glide along. The second is their use of voice recordings. Uncommon in NES titles, they managed to cram distorted ring announcer and staticky crowd noises onto this cartridge.

My Opinion

It’s the only WCW game on the NES, so of course if you like WCW then buy it. It’s usually pretty cheap, and probably a lot funner to play against someone else who is a WCW fan and has no idea how the controls work than it is to play against the computer. Actually, older WWE fans might like it too as it features wrestlers who either had or would eventually wrestle for them.