Retromania - World Championship Wrestling (NES)

There have been many many wrestling games since the dawn of the arcade. From the arcade's The Big Pro Wrestling in 1983 to the most recent WWE 12, it's been 28 years and the number of wrestling games that have been given to the public is astounding. In this feature we're going to take a look back at some of the classics that have been majorly overlooked (or rightfully buried) in the past. Our first subject is WCW World Championship Wrestling for the NES.

This is about as basic as a wrestling video game gets. There are 12 wrestlers to choose from, each brilliantly laid out stunning 8-bit text on a black screen. You’ve got all the biggies at the time, Ric Flair, Lex Luger, a couple warriors and at least 1 Steamboat in all their 8-bit glory. Once you’ve chosen your muscle bound warrior of the 80s, pick his or her (yeah right, there is no her) special moves, you’re thrust into the pastel pink and blue ring, just like in a real WCW match.

Combat is pretty simple. B punches and A kicks, although forget about pressing B because punching is completely useless since your opponent almost always kicks and legs are longer than arms so your punches will never connect. The key to fighting in this game is kicking your opponent enough so that he gets fatigued, then pressing A to lock up. Then you can pull off one of the four special moves you’ve chosen by pressing A and a direction on the D-Pad. That’s pretty much it. You can also irish-whip your opponent from a lockup, preform a few submission maneuvers and throw your opponent out of the ring, nothing revolutionary by today’s standards, but for an NES wrestling game from 1990 it’s pretty impressive.

WCW World Championship Wrestling is a decent NES grappler. The graphics are very simple and the colors are bizarre, there is a digitized voice at the beginning that announces the name which is surprisingly decent quality for the time, and although it feels like a wild button mash-fest a lot of the time the controls are surprisingly solid once you figure out how to use them. I can’t imagine paying full price for a game this simple, but I guess there wasn’t much to choose from at the time, so if you were just dying to know who would win in a match between Mike Rotunda and Steve Williams, I guess you were stuck with this.

 I give WCW Championship Wrestling 3 Flair faces out of 5.

Posted in: 80's,Lex Luger,LOD,Mike Rotunda,NES,Nintendo,Ric Flair,Road Warriors,Steve Williams,The Basement Vagrants,Video Games,WCW,Wrestling