The 5 Best Old School Wrestling Video Games…Period

#3: WWF Wrestlefest (Technos)

(1991, Arcade)

In 1989, Technos released WWF Superstars…which was nice but a bit on the bland side.

The action was more generic and featured little more than tag team showdowns which culminated in a “main event”, of sorts, with The Mega-Bucks (Ted DiBiase & Andre the Giant). I was so bored, I wouldn’t play past the second tag team.

A couple years later, Technos released the far-superior “Wrestlefest”.

This game even had Mike McGuirk as a ring announcer.

The game cut out Macho Man but featured rare video game versions of Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter, Demolition, and Jake Roberts. The Legion of Doom was even feature, albeit, they weren’t playable unless you had some post-modern cheat codes and an emulator to do it.

Nearly every finisher was here, too — as well as pre-move TAUNTS. I used to love doing Earthquake’s Quake Splash in the arcade and seeing the ring shake when he landed. Despite the cartoonish look, it’s incredibly authentic.

But one of the coolest things about the games is that it was four players AND, on top of trying for the Tag Titles, you could be in the Royal Rumble against the computer and two other CPU opponents. Six guys in the ring at the same time wasn’t a thing back in the day and made for a really chaotic matches that, when played with friends, made you feel like you were really in the ring.

THQ released an updated version of it for Apple’s iOS featuring a fairly current roster (such as John Cena, Randy Orton and The Undertaker) but it wasn’t the same. The game vanished from the App Store after THQ went out of business.