Compared to the enormous numbers of wrestlers that were featured in other THQ wrestlers like SmackDown and Wrestlemania 2000, Royal Rumble’s line up is plain pitiful. The line up consists of twenty of the most popular wrestlers in the WWF, including The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Kane, X-Pac, Godfather, Al Snow and others. There are actually one or two characters that can be unlocked through the arcade mode, but regardless, this is one of the many areas where Royal Rumble shines through as a game meant for the arcades and not a full-blown console title. If the rest of the game were full of depth and gameplay to make up for the lack of wrestlers it would be another story entirely, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Look at any preview, advertisement and even the game’s own title for the most hyped of feature of Royal Rumble: nine characters in the ring at once. The main attraction of the game is its Royal Rumble mode where the player selects a character and takes on anywhere from 30 to 90 (can’t imagine who would want to do that, though) wrestlers that enter the ring at periodic intervals and continue to do so until there are nine in the ring at once. It’s actually a great technological achievement on Yukes’ part; there is absolutely no slowdown at all even when all nine characters are slugging away at each other and pulling off special moves. There is no doubt that it is pretty darn impressive. Problem is, however, that the ring is so small that when nine wrestlers actually are battling at the same time, it all comes down to slapping the directional pad in random directions while smashing the punch button over and over in hopes of pushing someone over the ropes. Even still, having four human players and five computer players all hitting away at the punch button at once is wildly still entertaining.

The worst offense that Royal Rumble brings to the table is that Yukes and THQ didn’t care enough to give Dreamcast gamers a wrestling game with any real depth - or this was rushed to make the…September gaming rush? Regardless, there are three basic choices of gameplay in the game: Arcade, VS and Royal Rumble. You do not have to rub your eyes; I’m not lying. That is all that is there. No create-a-wrestler, two on one, guest referee, anywhere fall – nothing. The Royal Rumble is more of a novelty than a mode that would bring back any player more than five or six times, versus is the same old same old and the arcade mode is so utterly easy that it’s almost laughable (it is not uncommon to defeat an opponent within the first thirty seconds of play by only hitting the punch button). You would think that there might be some hidden options that could be brought forth, but nope!

Is there a bright side? Somewhat. Royal Rumble’s graphics are clean and slick, though the character models are nothing spectacular in terms of animation or detail in any area. They’re comparable to the models from SmackDown on the PlayStation with the addition of visual filters and minor tweaks. Considering the fact there are nine men in the ring at once, however, the characters still look pretty good. Besides that, there are some extremely cool ideas that made it into the game that we are likely to see make their way into future wrestling titles like SmackDown 2. There is the implementation of “buddy moves” where by pressing two different buttons at once it triggers a picked partner to come in and perform a move. Sometimes the move don’t seem to trigger when you press them, but for the most part it is a great idea by Yukes and I hope to see it continue on.

Anyone who has had a chance to sit down with SmackDown on the PlayStation will feel right at home with the controls for Royal Rumble; for the most part, they work exactly the same. This is a good thing, though, since SmackDown’s control was spot on from day one, and I have really little complaints about it. Probably due to the fact that Royal Rumble was intended to be an arcade game, Yukes shifted the use of the special moves from putting the person into the grapple and hitting a button to only having to tap “R” when the special meter reaches full. Sure, it does make it easier for people who haven’t tried the game yet, but also takes away any challenge that would be associated with pulling off a special.

There is no way around it, Royal Rumble feels entirely half-assed. In fact, a more proper title for the game would probably be “1/3rd of WWF SmackDown With New Graphics”. There are some definite pluses to the game, and looking at THQ’s comments toward their support of the Dreamcast, there might not be another Dreamcast wrestler from them or Yukes in the future. Regardless, Royal Rumble is one THQ wrestler that shouldn’t be picked up until it hits the bargain bin; it isn’t worth the full retail price.