Let me start off by stating that I am a wrestling fan, especially classic wrestling. The reason I mention this is because I don't want this review to seem like I am bashing sports entertainment as a medium. Instead I am going to give an honest, and sometimes humorous, review on this game
Legends of Wrestling gives you an answer to the age old question of "Who'd win if Hulk Hogan and "Superstar" Billy Graham fought in a tag team title match against the Road Warriors managed by "The Rock" Don Muraco" while Bret "The Hitman" Hart is refereeing the match.
The game starts off nice, gives you a warm feeling of wrestling's past with a black and white montage. Your starting selection of wrestlers is adequate with a mixture of wrestlers from the 70's, 80's and 90's. Some of the more notable wrestlers are missing from this list including "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Still, with those wrestlers missing you still have many of the greats including "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, Jerry "The King" Lawler and Hulk Hogan.
After that nice warm feeling passes, a cold and sickly feeling that may make you a bit queasy at times. There are some definite ups and downs to this title including graphical problems as well as function to game play issues. Not to mention huge sound problems and distortion that renders this game almost useless.
With that said, let's get into the details of why I say such things about Legends of Wrestling:
The graphics in general are good. The intro makes it look a bit more impressive than it really is, but that's the story with most wrestling games. There are some issues with graphics, especially in character animation jumps and weapon graphic distortions. The best graphics come with the character editor and how you can give your own wrestler his/her personal look. My wrestler carries around a pointy staff and wears a crown with a Mankind mask, how original is that?
The sound is what makes this game slip into the abyss of a bad review. The reason you may ask? Whomever was beta testing this game didn't notice that when you tinker in the Options or Character Select it likely causes the music and sound effects go crazy and start to make a loud and obnoxious skipping noise. The only solutions are to turn the system off or turn your volume down. An upside is that they allow you to listen to your stored music while wrestling. Still, you can't listen to anything with that loud and aggravating skipping noise in the background. It's not like the music was that interesting in the first place, the wrestlers don't even have their trademark music; with exception of "Superstar" Billy Graham.
Another downer of this game is the controls. They are clumsy and hard to control for things like running and walking in certain directions. Tagging a teammate is near impossible even when you're standing right next to him. This is where Road Warrior Hawk takes you away from the turnbuckle and proceeds to decimate you because you couldn't tag the immortal Hulk Hogan.
