The 5 Best Old School Wrestling Video Games…Period

#2: WWF RAW (LJN/Acclaim)

(1994, Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

This was the third (and last) entry in the unofficial LJN WWF video game trilogy…and the series went out with a bang.

It first started, in 1992, with Super Wrestlemania which was your basic wrestling game. It was better on Genesis in regards to gameplay — the SNES had none of the signature moves which I never understood. The game, however, was gorgeous and featured entrance music for each guy.

Probably hearing the backlash from certain groups of fans, LJN released the far-superior “WWF Royal Rumble” for the SNES the following year, using the same graphics engine, adding signature moves, a better grapple system, cheating (you could actually “accidentally” make the ref take a bump and then eye gouge your opponent or — go outside, grab a chair and smack him over and over), and, of course, compete in the Royal Rumble.

Monday Night Raw aimed to top all of that…and they did.

How did it start? Check this out…

Doesn’t that just scream “great start”?

Anyhow, one of the other cool things was the inclusion of late WWF Womens Wrestler Luna Vachon. marking the first time a female wrestler was included in a WWF/WWE video game.

The game not only featured awesome gameplay, but also added a “Survivor Series” mode on top of all the usual refinements. On top of that, all the wrestlers involved had finishing moves AND special moves on top of that. The special moves weren’t wonderful and added a bit of arcade madness to the proceedings but some of them were just plain sweet, such as Doink the Clown’s Field Goal Kick and Diesel’s Caber Toss.

And one of the cooler things was the ability to add two more players to the proceedings so you could team up against the computer or have two friends vs. two friends.

This was, easily, the greatest wrestling game on the SNES.