WWF Wrestlemania

Summer of 1992, and a friend brought over a floppy disk with Ultimate Warrior on the cover. Another hour disappeared somewhere between the monitors and the chair.

WWF Wrestlemania is a licensed wrestling game by Twilight studio for MS-DOS. It faithfully taps into the peak popularity of WWF at the time — the era when Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and company were filling arenas and flying off toy store shelves. The game offers a selection of wrestling stars from that golden age and puts you in the ring with the goal of forcing your opponent to submit to a pin or knock them down brutally enough to keep them there.

The controls are straightforward, maybe even too much so. Keyboard, a few directions, a few buttons, a set of basic strikes and holds. Nothing that would drive you to grab a notepad to jot down combo systems. Matches have their rhythm — you attack, your opponent defends, occasionally they throw you over the ropes — but the depth of the mechanics is shallow even by 1992 standards. After ten minutes, you've pretty much explored everything the game has to offer. The graphics match the era: characters are recognizable, animations acceptable, movement in the ring functional. Sound Blaster churns out a few sounds that in 1992 sounded like an actual wrestling match.

Today we remember it mainly because it existed. Wrestling as a genre on PC wasn't a given back then, and this game filled a gap, even if not entirely elegantly. Compared to console competition — say, the NES titles of that era — the PC port felt a bit thin. That's not a criticism of the developers, it's simply the reality of the platform. On the other hand: firing it up on your 486 and seeing Hulk Hogan in four EGA colors had its own special charm.

Who would enjoy it today? Fans of the golden age of WWF who want to step back to 1992 for a while and don't mind that the game has about as much content as a school break. You can explore it in a browser in twenty minutes and walk away with a nostalgic smile — or with the feeling that things really were different back then. Both reactions are legitimate.