A playthrough of the boss tag team The Legion of Doom (Road Warriors) in Technos Japan's WWF Wrestlefest.

*To tag in this game: go to the upper-left corner of the screen and press the punch button. This is difficult to do and I screw it up quite a lot in the playthrough, as you'll see*

Wrestlefest is the spiritual successor to Superstars, and it's significantly better. The graphics have been improved considerably, with bigger sprites and better animation. The character roster has been improved to 10 playable character, including Ted DiBiase returning as a playable character. Opponents can be thrown out of the ring, and outside of the ring weapons can be used too. There are cage matches present, in which the opponent can be thrown into the cage for additional damage. Also, tag teams now have team up moves, such as holding the opponent on the floor while the tag partner pummels them and your tag partner holding your opponent as you jump from the top ropes.

Possibly the best change however was the laughable disparity of a team Megabucks being replaced as bosses by easily the greatest wrestling tag team in history, the Legion of Doom. For a start, with their menacing persona they actually make sense as a boss team, considering they're actually somewhat intimidating and has a really climatic team to boot. They also do additional damage over the other characters, and have 2.5 times as many health as them too, meaning that battles against them are considerably longer and more intense. All this comes together to make Wrestlefest a fantastic wrestling game. It's a shame Technos didn't make another game in this spiritual series, but Midway's Wrestlemania the Arcade Game did somewhat make up for that (but had no bosses, which is my biggest gripe about it, particularly considering this was the same company who made Mortal Kombat.)

The Legion of Doom don't suffer the same glitches that Megabucks did, thankfully, as a playthrough with them is not only smooth but relatively easy, at least until you face the Legion of Doom themselves. The only major glitch in the game occurs with Animal, and when you use the B button with him. The Legion of Doom's signature move was the Doomsday Device; a move when Animal would put the opponent on top of his shoulders, and Hawk would then jump off the top rope, thereby clotheslining the opponent and causing him to fall to the ground. Attempting to, or accidentally performing the Doomsday Device with Animal when he's not close enough to Hawk at the ropes will cause both characters to freeze and/or disappear from the match, leaving the player helpless until the time runs out. As a result of this, I used Hawk more than Animal, and when using Animal didn't try to use any B button moves with him. Besides, it felt more respectful playing as Hawk, if only to honour his memory more.

This game has one major improvement which really helps it. When an opponent is low on health, they'll fall on the ground in a diagonal position, as opposed to the usual horizontal position. If the player performs a ground attack on them, it will be a significantly more powerful move than usual, usually an eldow drop or some such. A couple of these against the opponent, and they'll almost certainly be able to pin them afterwards. It's a great way to let you know that your opponent is nearly defeated, and significantly improved over the first game in that respect.

All in all, I really enjoy this game, and especially getting to play as my favourite wrestlers. This was one of the games which inspired to start doing these videos in fact, as I remember years ago being frustrated at the fact that I could not play as the Legion of Doom. The last wrestling game to look at is Capcom's Saturday Night Slam Masters, which I'll be uploading in the next couple of days.

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