Manufacturer:
Year: 1991

WWF WrestleFest is certainly one of the most popular games emulated by Raine and many people have started to use this emulator thanks to this game. Let's carry on with a short description: This game has two types: one is "Saturday Night Main event" of the tug match mode, which is necessary for conventional professional wrestling games and the other is "Royal Rumble" of the battle royal mode, which has been introduced to video games for the first time. Both types are based on the WWF rules, so you can enjoy an atmosphere as if you are fighting professional wrestling in the US.

Saturday Night Main Event: Let's start play by selecting two favorite wrestlers out of ten wrestlers. The 3rd and 8th matches are gauge death match, so try to win using gauges effectively. The 5th match is a challenge to the champion team, so you become the champion if you defeat them. The matches following the 6th match are fought to defend the championship. Nobody to challenge you is not your equal.

Royal Rumble: In the battle royal mode, start the game by selecting a favorite wrestler. To win the match, turn wrestlers around you out of the ring or defeat them by three-count falls. Wrestlers come into the ring one after another. Wrestlers can reproduce all fight techniques and movements of professional wrestlers with combining joystick two buttons in different ways. Each wrestler has his own features and fighting techniques.

Here there are all the wrestlers:

Hulk Hogan

The Ultimate Warrior

Earthquake

 

The Big Boss Man

Sergeant Slaughter

Jake "The Snake" Roberts

 

Mr.Perfect

"The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase

The Demolition: Smash and Crush

 

The Legion Of Doom: Hawk and Animal

Ratings

PRESENTATION: 58%
It's the best part of the game.

GRAPHICS: 48%
Poor details and animations.

SOUND: 52%
There is even speech! But
overall it's nothing special.

ORIGINALITY: 63%
The idea is not too bad....

HOOKABILITY: 20%
Certainly attractive, but the
playability is poor.

LASTABILITY: 17%
Therefore the desire to replay
it is totally absent.

We find ourselves in front of a game with a very accurate presentation, famous name and popular characters. Of course a game like that is immediately attractive. By observing the demo we can recognize wrestlers during the interview, see the accurate emulation of the matches, each wrestler has his own fighting features, nice music... well, everything well-packed!
Once started to play we have to lead our wrestler and we notice immediately that WWF WrestleFest has no playability at all, so its best feature is to attract players, even having the possibility to choose between two kind of games. Also graphically the result is not convincing. It's a purely commercial operation by Technos, that certainly sold well its game without caring the essential part: the game!
Not worth a try.

Good!!! I must say that at last we have a game with a long satisfactory presentation: it gives information about the two different kind of games and wrestlers (the most popular in the last 80's). Its attractive power is quite strong, so that you don't notice the poor sound and the not too accurate graphics (included the strange relation between legs/chest in wrestlers). Although attraction is much, on your own after a while it becomes boring... But the thing that could kill the game is the enormous difficulty to find the wrestler movements: even tough presentation is well done there isn't trace about movements info (read "rev up by chance with your joystick and buttons to do something")... a real pity... but, fortunately, you have the possibility to play a double in the same couple or one against the other in the Royal Rumble... and that, together with a couple of beers and some jollity, liven up the game. I suggest you to play with a friend.
 

Impressive presentation. Everything else is absolutely to forget: game animation is low quality, not enough sprites, and the wrestler does everything by himself? You just have to press some buttons on your gamepad, but you don't rally understand what you are doing... for a moment I thought: but it's still the demo!