6.8 /10 1 Votes
5.2/10 IGN Initial release date 1 August 2000 Publisher THQ Developers Sega, Yuke's | 4.2/5 Emuparadise Distributor(s) Sega Arcade system Sega NAOMI Platforms Arcade game, Dreamcast | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer Cabinet Standard upright, two-screen version CPU Hitachi SH-4 32-bit RISC CPU Sound ARM7 Yamaha AICA 45 MHz Display Raster, medium resolution Genres Fighting game, Sports game Similar WWF WrestleMania: The Arca, WWF Superstars, WWF Super WrestleMania, WWF Attitude, WWF in Your House | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WWF Royal Rumble is a professional wrestling video game released in 2000 for arcades and the Dreamcast. THQ published the title for the Dreamcast while Sega released it for arcades. It is based on the World Wrestling Federation professional wrestling promotion and its yearly Royal Rumble event. Yuke's, creators of the WWF SmackDown! series developed Royal Rumble, which had several unique features including support for up to nine wrestlers on the screen simultaneously.
Contents
The Dreamcast version was released to mixed reviews that faulted its small roster and lack of gameplay modes.
Gameplay
The game has two modes, Exhibition and Royal Rumble. In Exhibition mode, the player chooses a wrestler along with a partner and wrestles a series of singles matches. The player's partner can interfere on the player's behalf on command. These partner moves can be used any number of times during the match, but must be recharged before they can be used again. The object of each match is to wear down the opponent using various attacks and grappling maneuvers, decreasing their life bar before ending the match by pinfall or knockout.
Royal Rumble mode involves a multi-wrestler match in which the player must eliminate a certain number of opponents from the match within a time limit by sending them over the top rope and onto the floor. Eliminating opponents adds more time to the player's clock; eliminating larger wrestlers offers a higher time bonus. Due to size of the game's roster, wrestlers appear multiple times in the same Royal Rumble match.
Each player has a super meter that fills up during the course of the match. When it fills up, the player receives an "S" icon, which can be used to instantly recover from pin attempts in Exhibition mode or re-enter the ring during a Royal Rumble match.
Reception
The Dreamcast version received "average" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.
One of the biggest criticisms was of the small number of playable characters, which IGN called "paper thin" and GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann called "confining." The game's lack of modes was also criticized. IGN recommended other Japanese Dreamcast wrestling titles such as Toukon Retsuden and Giant Gram over Royal Rumble. The earliest review came from PlanetDreamcast, which gave it a low score of four out of ten over a month before the game was released. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40.