As much as I keep telling myself they’re in a box in the garage somewhere, three house moves on from when I originally flattened them to save shelf space, I’ll soon have to accept that I have absolutely no idea where all my Game Boy and Game Boy Advance game boxes ever went! I’ve still got all the instructions to hand though, which is something I suppose, carefully stacked in a box that’s to hand right now, alongside the two consoles and a pile of mostly loose cartridges, which have been chucked in with far less concern about their wellbeing! They’re fine though – Nintendo stuff was always built to last, and it’s not like that box has seen much action over the past nine years since it got put where it is, aside from getting it out whenever I’ve fancied a go on them, which is increasingly less frequently given the lack of backlight on both, and my eyes not exactly being what they once were… Such a performance, with a selection of glasses in hand, trying to position myself with the necessary light as bright as the Sun over my shoulder, especially for the GBA, which is the very cool clamshell SP model but with the rubbish in-built screen-light that was still such a godsend at the time after that dreadful original console! I’ll have to look into those magnifying Light Boy things I always scoffed at!

At least I’ve also got the option of using emulation nowadays, and on one of those nice handhelds that play all sorts but obviously do handheld stuff really well (although as I write, PlayStation Portable performance is still always variable). Marginally better screenshots for you to look at here too! Anyway, WWF Superstars, which wasn’t only the first World Wrestling Federation (as it was known at the time) title to appear on the Game Boy when it was released back in 1991, but was also my first WWF game anywhere. I think I’d had a lucky escape with the very primitive FMV-based, text command-driven and totally dreadful MicroLeague Wrestling (pictured above), their first game on anything back in 1989, which was also when I got my Atari ST, but despite it looking spectacular in magazine adverts, I just never saw it in the wild. No escaping the WWF WrestleMania arcade game when that also launched the same year though, but by the time the home ports came along, I was at university and without my Atari ST most of the time; lucky I always had my Game Boy with me! WWF Superstars was developed by Rare and published by Acclaim in the US and Europe, and Hot B in Japan – you can see their more extravagant version of the box art I’m now missing in the picture below, taken from Game Boy: The Box Art Collection by Bitmap Books.

The US release came first, in April 1991, and the Japanese one followed later in February 1992, but I’m struggling to find a more precise European release date, which would in turn remind me when I got it. However, on the basis it was reviewed in the January 1992 issue of Computer & Video Games magazine, I’m guessing it arrived in time for Christmas 1991, which puts me one semester into my second year of university and just back from several months studying in France, so I reckon I’d have been given it as a present because by then I was already up to my ears in student loans, despite being one of those still lucky enough to receive a grant at the time… Stupid expensive engineering books and, er, beer and stuff! Anyway, no chance I was buying it for myself but also no chance I could have been without it! I’d been a wrestling fan since Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks on ITV on Saturday afternoons in the seventies, but easy access to the far more showbiz and over the top American variety by then took things to a whole new level! I’ll get to the cast of this game in a sec but they were now very personal to me as well – I’d been lucky enough to see WWF’s first live event in the UK (which would later be known as WWF Rampage) at the London Arena back in 1989, where Hulk Hogan had beaten Macho Man Randy Savage (my all-time favourite wrestler!) for the title, and there was Bret Hart, The Rockers, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Honky Tonk Man and loads more of these now-legendary, larger than life (literally) superstars, all in their prime and all in the flesh (again, literally!)… And now here they were in the palm of my hand, which was almost as mind-blowing!

“Step into the ring and experience all the bodyslamming action of WWF wrestling! Take on 5 of the most popular WWF Superstars-both in and out of the ring-with bone-crunching moves like the piledriver, suplex and the incredible flying dropkick. If you’ve always dreamed of being the WWF champ…THIS IS YOUR GAME!!! You can also go head-to-head with a friend by using the Game Link.™” Ah, that mythical Game Link cable for your mythical friend with a Game Boy… As usual, wrong demographic, I guess, but I’m all in on the grappling action! I’ve not really played a new WWF (or WWE since the big panda claimed the original name) game properly since WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 on PSP but even by those standards, a choice of five wrestlers Superstars probably seems pretty limited! Actually, back in 1985, Rock ‘n Wrestle on the ZX Spectrum offered ten (and twenty-five moves on a joystick with a single button)! Anyway, we’re stuck with just five here, but they’re not a bad bunch, with Mr Perfect, Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase, Macho Man Randy Savage (in his Macho King phase), Ultimate Warrior and, of course, Hulk Hogan. I don’t think there’s a massive amount between them in terms of characteristics though – possibly a bit of speed versus power, with Savage at one end of the spectrum and Hogan at the other, but it’s barely noticeable whoever you go for. 

Unfortunately, that also goes for their move-sets, and specifically, I’m talking about their finishing moves, or lack of, which the instructions happily rub your nose in despite their absence, with all this talk of Perfect-Plexes and the like, and are the one thing that would have made five otherwise almost identical repertoires perfectly acceptable, even by modern standards! Instead, the only differentiation is in what they call a “power move,” where you successfully land three punches in one combo, and the fourth then automatically becomes one of these. For Perfect it’s a knee lift, for Dibiase it’s a kick to the shins, Savage has his bionic elbow, Warrior does a headbutt, and the Hulkster does an uppercut. And they’re all equally underwhelming when they could easily have been a Big Leg or Flying Elbow instead! And that’s where they really shove your nose right in it because all the wrestlers can also climb the turnbuckles for a high risk jumping attack off the top ropes, and for every one of them except one, that’s a flying elbow, and of course that “one” is Savage, presumably because that’s also his finisher and we’re not allowed those, so he gets a flying knee instead!

I think that’s my only real problem with the game though, so let’s get into what we are allowed to do! Once you’re past the title screen, you’re presented with a choice of each wrestler to play as, with a little portrait on a rotating star effect in the background, accompanied by their individual entrance music, and let me tell you something, brother, the music in this game is fantastic! Macho King’s Land of Hope and Glory is particularly majestic, but the high-energy renditions of Unstable (Warrior’s theme) and Hogan’s Real American are just irresistible, really going to town on their distinctive melodies with that almost haunting and unmistakably Game Boy chiptune instrumentation in contrasting layers over thumping basslines and typically white-noisy drums. The other two’s aren’t quite so impactful, although with Perfect’s I think that’s the nature of what’s trying to be replicated more than anything, while with Dibiase’s, they haven’t even bothered and seem to have gone for some generic thing instead. Business picks up again for the in-match music though, with an original piece that’s full of movement and impact, which sounds pretty well- suited to a wrestling game! The sound effects less so, but it’s all to be expected – scratchy thuds for punches and kicks, another for hitting the deck, a few beeps for counting ring-outs and pins and so on. Perfectly functional is a nice way of putting it, I think!

Once you’ve picked your wrestler, you then set the conditions for each bout, with a further choice of one or three falls, and a time limit of five minutes, ten minutes or no limit, and then it’s onto the pre-match war of words between the two opponents! This is the kind of thing you’ll watch once for each combination of wrestlers then skip forever after but it’s fun while it lasts, with each taking turns to fire a personalised taunt at the other, so for Mr Perfect versus Million Dollar Man, for example, you’ll get stuff like “perfection comes at a price and that price is defeat” followed by “I tip big and here’s my tip for you – go home Mr Perfect!” It’s a nice touch to set the scene for the match, and that scene is a stylish, meticulously detailed and fully WWF-branded squared circle, with the main play area spanning about two screens wide, which scroll with the action at a slight stutter (but only when you’re deliberately looking for it), so you’re effectively fighting at one end of the ring or the other, or in the middle. Should the action spill outside the ring, that’s going to take place on the same scale but on the padded floor mat things in front of the ring, and while they’re not exactly exciting in and of themselves, together with the elevated ring and general depth of field, they do create a really nice 3D effect towards the “crowds” in the background, which aren’t crowds at all and that’s probably for the best! Instead, they’re random camera flashes coming from the darkness, and they have exactly the desired effect.

At some point I promise I will get into the gameplay, but while we’re talking visuals, I might as well finish on them… Obviously, we’re talking a few layers of green and black on the original Game Boy, and they’re used to excellent effect, with thoughtfully-lit edges and highlights bringing the game’s handful of solid “colours” to life, and I’m really not sure you could ask for much more of a wrestling environment on a tiny little monochrome screen. If I had to level one more criticism on WWF Superstars though, it’s the lack of fanfare either side of a match. The promo packages beforehand are fine but from there, you’re just dumped straight into the ring with your opponent already heading in your direction and off you go. Okay, you would have been skipping entrances quicker than the promos, but I’d have liked the option for them to give things a bit of spectacle all the same. And that counts double at the other end of the bout, where, similar to the pre-match cutscenes, you’ve got Vince McMahon (for better or worse!) giving a snappy summary of the match as soon as the ref’s count has hit three, and they’re once again personalised depending on who won and who lost, but how about giving me a chance to bathe in some glory before I’m taken back to the title screen? Especially if I’ve just made it through all the other wrestlers and become the champion! Instead, what you get there is a higher-definition digitised portrait of your wrestler to celebrate your victory. That’s it! 

During the match itself though, no complaints about how the wrestlers perform! They’re like little cartoon versions of their larger than life counterparts, with plenty of tone and shade and expressive detail, and somehow even the illusion of colour behind the black and green overlay! They’re just the right size to keep convey the wrestler’s trademark looks and personalities too, while also keeping things as pacey and action-packed as the screen will allow. There is a little “confusion” when the wrestlers come at each other from certain angles, with pixels blending into pixels, but on the whole their movement is top-notch too, with plenty of frames of animation assigned to both the transition to and from each move, and the move itself, making them completely natural-looking, distinguishable and impactful. Coming back to the near-identical move-sets though, that does obviously also result in the same animations being applied to each wrestler for everything, even if there are plenty of them to keep things mixed-up enough to mostly disguise it!

Regular movement is on the d-pad, while a quick double-tap left or right will make you run, and from there, the A button will do a dropkick and B a clothesline (and you can bounce off the ropes for a bit of extra flourish). When you’re not running, B will grab your opponent for a body-slam, while A will punch them, and do that four times in succession and you get that power move from earlier. Getting your opponent on the mat then gives you a couple more options, where one button will drop an elbow (or a knee) on them, while the other either lets you go for a pin-fall, or put them in a headlock if you press it as they’re getting up again, and from there, A will viciously punch them in the face while they’re still in the headlock, pressing left will do a suplex, and right will do a piledriver (and the multi-phase animation for someone’s head bouncing off the mat after that is the best of the lot)! There’s a bit of defence available too, from rolling out of the way when you’re down to mashing both buttons if you’re in a headlock or pinned. Once per match you can also press Select to throw your opponent out of the ring, where you’ve got a very fast ten count to get back in again, but once you’re on the out of the ring screen, you can keep going in and out, and fighting on the floor or just inside the ropes, for as long as you stay in this view. 

All of these moves have varying effects on your respective energy bars, although if you can actually keep landing three punches and a power move in succession, I reckon that’s probably doing the quickest damage, and dropkicks are a pretty reliable tactic too. The throwing out of the ring move can be a bit finicky but is a nice way of depleting their energy a bunch while giving yours a chance to automatically replenish a bit, and finally, attacking from the top rope will also do serious damage, but good luck connecting if they’ve got any more than zero energy left, in which case you might as well have just pinned them! You can get lucky regardless but the chances of them getting up off the mat before you’ve climbed to the top turnbuckle are high, and from there you might still hit them all the same but likely not! Overall, it’s a nice balance of variety of moves versus not being overwhelming, and this is complemented by an aggressive but fair computer AI, which can go a bit hard on the rolling out of the way when you knock them down, but apart from that also contributes to a really nice flow to each match, especially when you throw in a time limit and best of three falls stipulation for a bit of tension on top! Difficulty does pick up as you go through each wrestler, where they’ll move a bit faster and attack a bit quicker, but you’ll soon be winning your first championship, then losing it, then trying with someone else, and before you know it, some nice “storylines” can also evolve if your imagination lets them!

Which is for the best when there’s only one game mode to sink your teeth into, unless you’re able to set up a match with a friend, of course, but in the absence of any of those right now, that sounds like a very good place to quickly touch on the sequel, WWF Superstars 2… It arrived on the Game Boy in 1992, and I think bought it mail order with birthday money this time. And on paper at least, it should have been the game you’ve been reading about instead, and not just for all the additional game modes! On top of regular one-on-one matches, tag team matches and tournaments, with a choice of three difficulty levels, you’ve now also got the mouth-watering option of regular or cage matches, all with a bit more spectacle in general, as well as six wrestlers, mostly new, and excitingly (for me at least) including The Undertaker! Even less moves though, which are now completely identical for all characters with the removal of even those individual power moves. And speaking of moves, it doesn’t move great in action at all. The new grapple-based control scheme is several steps backward too, and it all adds up to more to keep you occupied but less fun doing so. It’s not terrible by any means though, but it’s not by Rare anymore either, and it shows. And although there were a few more WWF games still to come on the Game Boy, that was me done with wrestling on there, at least until WWE Survivor Series on the Game Boy Advance in 2004, but that’s a story for another day, and I’m not sure any of them that followed had quite the impact of the first WWF Superstars anyway! There’d been wrestling games before, of course, but this was the real thing, and it was authentic and polished and accessible, and it was in your hands… And that was pretty amazing!

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