WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling

We’ve already covered two 16-bit World Wrestling Federation games, and they were pretty solid, though unspectacular. But they weren’t the only show in town at the time, obviously. I mean, come on, can you imagine what wrestling would’ve been like if Vince McMahon held a virtual monopoly in the industry? Oh…right. Anywho, back in ’94, it was time for WCW to jump into the 16-bit ring with today’s offering, WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling.

It starts out promisingly enough, with a shot of the control room that zooms in on the title as a decent voice sample of WCW play-by-play man/total shill Tony Schiavone welcoming us to the game. The menu screens feature (badly, but again, 1994) digitized photos of wrestling action, and of course, this is the game that features what is undoubtedly the most famous character selection screen is the history of wrestling games.

No, it's not that special. They give you a belt for winning ANY match.
No, it’s not that special. They give you a belt for winning ANY match.

There’s the 12-man roster as federally mandated for mid-’90s wrestling games, and it’s not bad, as it features WCW stalwarts as Ric Flair, Sting, and Vader, as well as big names like Rick Rude, the Steiner Brothers, and Brian Pillman, who was still in his “Flyin’ Brian” persona instead of his awesome, batshit insane Loose Cannon gimmick. Instead of simple static images like Raw or Royal Rumble, the characters “move”, although it resembles a GIF that didn’t quite load properly. Even more disturbing, they’ll randomly pop out of the frame to blurt out their catchphrase, and hilariously, it seems like only a handful of the boys could be bothered to head to the studio at all. Brian Pillman’s seemed legit, as no other human being could project that kind of throat-cancer induced rasp, but Ric Flair’s “Whooo!” was probably voiced by Randy in Accounts Payable.

When (or more realistically, if) you can tear yourself from the character select screen long enough to actually pick somebody, you’ll head down to the ring. It’s presented in an isometric view, similar to the Fire Pro series, but right about there is where the similarities end. Unlike Fire Pro, which utilizes a timing-based grappling system, or the LJN WWF games, which used good, old-fashioned button mashing to settle grapples, SuperBrawl eschewed grappling entirely and revolved their engine around a revolutionary new system where you…just kinda do moves. Y throws dropkicks, B throws a variety of strikes depending on which direction you’re pressing, and although none of those strikes do any sort of appreciable damage, that won’t stop the computer from punching you into the corner and relentlessly spamming you with the jumping elbow bash. Meanwhile, X and A do power moves, depending on which direction you’re holding, you can deliver piledrivers, atomic drops, back suplexes, and even the old Airplane Spin.

You can also run the ropes with L and R and climb the turnbuckles, although you’ll probably have no use for either, and while your opponent’s down you can pin them or stomp on them. However, as lame as it sounds so far, it takes a dramatic step down when it comes to finishing moves. You would think that, since part of the appeal of a wrestling game is to bust out your favorite character’s signature move, that the designers would put a little bit of care and effort into those moves. That is decidedly not the case here. For one, some of the moves are just flat out incorrect; Vader is supposed to have a powerbomb, instead he has a powerslam. Barry Windham’s superplex is now just a delayed vertical suplex. Some moves don’t quite make sense. Ric Flair has his Figure Four Leglock, but it’s not triggered while the opponent is down, instead, when you push Y and B to launch a special move, he throws a punch…and THEN applies the most discombobulated-looking Figure Four you’ve ever seen, although, on the upside, you CAN make opponents submit to it, instead of having to get up again and pin them. And then some finishers just suck; Johnny B. Badd’s is a punch, and you’re probably not going to land Brian Pillman’s Flying Sunset Flip unless someone literally sits there and takes it on purpose. You can also save up to four special moves in reserve, which is good, because if you attempt one and miss, you lose one regardless.

The ref has no idea what to make of this.
The ref has no idea what to make of this.

You’ll also notice a few other quirks during the matches. You have two health bars, one marked Health and the other marked Stamina. What the difference is between the two, I have no idea. I’m not even sure they mean sod-all, anyway, as I’ve seen both guys kicking out of pins with both bars empty and guys getting pinned while both meters were pretty much full. Even if they do matter, you’ll have a total sumbitch of a time getting them all the way down, as they refill extremely quickly, so unless you’re unleashing a torrential downpour of offense on your opponent, they’ll be back up to snuff in seconds.

During the match, you’ll also periodically see and hear Tony Schiavone pop up and provide little snippets of commentary. Granted, they’re not more insightful than “He’s going for the cover!” or “He’s got him up!”, but you can at least tell what he’s saying and it’s not terribly intrusive. Sadly, this game was made before the Vince Russo era of WCW, so we never got Digital Tony to spout off “It’s a shoot!” or deride Mick Foley.

There’s also a referee in the ring with you, who has a digitized voice for counting pins or countouts, although in tag team matches, he gets relegated to an inset picture like Schiavone. Sadly, though, you can’t knock him down or make him bail on the match like WWF Raw. Which brings me to an important point, actually. One of the biggest reasons this game doesn’t stack up against Raw and Royal Rumble is that there’s simply not that much to do. Raw featured wild modes like the Royal Rumble and Bedlam (Tornado Tag) matches, and you could do awesome stuff like toss your opponent out of the ring and blast them with a steel chair. There’s no such fun to be had here; there’s singles and tag modes, and a match can be two-out-of-three falls or an Iron Man match, and the usual tournament mode, but that’s really about it. Granted, that’s not entirely the designers’ fault, as WCW really wasn’t doing a lot of gimmick matches at the time, so it really wouldn’t have made too much sense to have those matches in the game, but after playing Raw, it’s kind of a letdown.

Y'see kids, Scott Steiner used to look a LOT different.
Y’see kids, Scott Steiner used to look a LOT different.

As I mentioned, this game loves it some digitized voice samples, and although they’re 1994-quality, they’re probably the highlight of the presentation end of the deal. There’s literally no music to be found here a’tall, no wrestler theme songs, no background music during matches, not even some generic dreck on menu screens. Punches and dropkicks connect with a sound akin to snapping your fingers, and yes, there’s plenty of grunting here, as well, and it somehow, it sounds even more carnal in nature than the WWF games.

Wrestlers barely look like who they’re supposed to portray; if it wasn’t for Vader’s mask, you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was him or King Kong Bundy. The Steiner Brothers and Rick Rude also feature ring outfits so garish your rods and cones will beg for darkness, and the wrestlers’ faces are a blob that resemble a cross between The Scream and the robot from Queen’s News of the World album, and they all move rather hamfistedly. The animations for moves aren’t much better, as once you’ve picked one, you shift into the first frame of its animation and stay locked there until either your opponent walks into it or the game just decides to unfreeze you, not to mention the pins, where the wrestlers appear to trip and fall onto the opponent.

I’m just going to sum things up here by saying SuperBrawl just isn’t very good. It’s not completely horrible, by any means, and there’s some fun to be had here, but again, it just doesn’t stack up to the WWF games, let alone Fire Pro, and unless you were a diehard WCW fan, you’d be better off getting one of those instead. It might have looked bleak for WCW partisans in terms of getting a quality game for their favorite promotion, but just a couple years later, they’d be rewarded for their patience with a game that redefined video game wrestling.

 

The Good

Being the only WCW game on Super Nintendo is worth some mileage, and the digitized voice samples work pretty well, and a character select screen chock full of unintentional comedy.

The Bad

Terrible fighting engine, and everything looks just…off. Much shallower than its WWF counterparts.

 

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12 thoughts on “WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling

  1. I’m curious about what, in super “Wrestling for Dummies” terms, is the real difference between 90s era WWF and WCW. Like, was one “flashier” than the other? Did one have better storylines? That kind of stuff. Is there a even a difference, or was one just the Pepsi to the other’s Coke?

    I look at names like “Rick Rude” and “Johnny B. Badd” and get the sense that one might be… shall we say… less creative than the other.

    1. Well, basically, throughout the ’80s and up to the mid-’90s, WWF was basically “Wrestling as a Circus” and WCW was “Wrestling as a Sport”. WWF had the superhero characters (Hogan, Warrior, Andre the Giant, etc.) While WCW had the more believable wrestlers.

      Ironically enough, Rick Rude was came over from the WWF, where he was REALLY good as a bad guy. As for Johnny B. Badd, the character was LITERALLY a really gay Little Richard.

    2. There wasn’t a true difference between WCW and WWF in the 90’s. Ever since WCW started in 1988 (Before it was Jim Crockett Promotions and presented Wrestling as a legit sport) they started to copy WWF. Just as them, they had their emphasis on colorful characters (like Sting, Great Mutah, Vader) and storylines (like that horrible Black Scorpion storyline). They even brought in Robocop at Capitol Combat 1990 to save Sting from the Four Horsemen.

      WWF was a lot flashier production-wise and wasn’t run by morons, unlike WCW which suffered from idiots being put into the leadership position, who had no clue about wrestling. Jim Herd was despised by all wrestlers for his retarded ideas like the “Ding-Dongs” (a Tag-Team wearing bells), the “Hunchbacks” (A proposed Tag-Team of guys with hunchbacks…so nobody could ever pin them!) and his idea of turning Ric Flair (who was already a legend at the time) into a bald-headed roman gladiator named Spartacus. Flair found the idea so horrible that he instantly left for WWF.
      Later they had Bill Watts as head booker and he turned WCW “old school” which just didn’t work. Top Rope Moves weren’t allowed, throwing your opponent over the Top Rope resulted in a disqualification,

      In late 1993 Eric Bischoff took over from Bill Watts and turned the product around. He started a working agreement with New Japan Pro Wrestling which brought in great talents like Jushin Thunder Liger, Kensuke Sasaki and others. He brought in all the mexican wrestlers like Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero or La Parka and laid a bigger emphasis on technical and cruiserweight wrestlers (guys like Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko), something WWF didn’t because Vince still thought he needed either big fat guys or big muscular guys. In 1994 WCW was miles ahead of WWF when it comes to the quality of the product they showed.

    3. I watched both WWF and WCW (plus some ECW) in the middle and late 90’s (and beyond) and it seemed to me that the WWF took more risks, was indeed flashier in some regards, had better wrestlers and a better lineup (e.g. Mick Foley as Mankind, The Undertaker, Kane, Paul Bearer, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The “evil” Vince McMahon, his two adult kids Shane and Stephanie plus his stooges, etc.)

      Though I did like some WCW (and ECW) wrestlers like Vader, Sting and Bill Goldberg, plus some others as well plus the ECW’s matches.

      In other areas like writing and story lines (even announcers like Jerry “The King” Lawler and Jim Ross) The WWF had more of an advantage, edge and took more risks, even better and more creative angles and matches too plus PPV events, etc.

      p.s. WWF, WCW and ECW would eventually fight each other (ECW and WCW joined forces against the WWF, that storyline was great btw).

      1. I’d say from a pure technical standpoint, WCW had the better Wrestlers in the late 90’s with all the mexicans and japanese wrestlers, the cruiserweights and even a few guys in the main event were pretty decent (DDP for example) whereas the WWF had a great Main Event division with the guys you named but a very mediocre Midcard and no real Cruiserweight Division at all. When you compare the PPVs at the time, WCW had a great under- and midcard, usually a lame main event, whereas the WWF had a great main event but a very weak undercard.

        I agree that in the other parts the WWF was way better.

        Though i also disagree about the WWF vs. WCW/ECW storyline. That could have been a storyline for the ages, with about 2 years of great events. Instead WWF refused to buy-out the big stars, turned other guys into horrible characters (DDP stalking Undertakers wife) and completely botched everything by making the ECW/WCW guys look like fools.
        Jim Cornette did a fine job of re-booking the whole thing on the Guest Booker series from Kayfabe Commentaries

  2. Well said ShadowAngel, I don’t know what more I can add to that here other then I too was a bit disappointed by some of the WWF/WCW/ECW storyline but loved some story arcs and scenes like Stone Cold Steve Austin spraying milk all over the WCW/ECW guys in the ring that one night on RAW (or something similar) and how they invaded the WWF during that one night as well.

  3. Just Games Retro: Where a review of a lousy wrestling game from 1994 becomes a high-level wrestling history discussion.

    1. Haha, sorry it my ramblings where a bit too much, i was just trying to help The J Man out on his quest of discovering 90’s Wrestling 😀

      1. Which I appreciate! 😀

        I think Dave was just marveling at how we’re almost becoming a legitimate source of knowledge and discourse. I know someone’s used a review as a reference in a university paper. That’s… hard to believe!

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