Showdown boasts about 70 wrestling icons, but most surprising was how many I could think of that didn't make the list. As with any list, complaints about who made it and who didn't are inevitable, but in this case it's fair to say the game has most of the wrestlers you'll remember. The lineup of stars is easily the game's strongest asset.

Their outfits are done well and accurately, but the faces aren't as recognizable as they should be. Some of the attempts at shading and textures of the physiques look terrible, like they've been colored in grainy crayon, while others are more passable. The entrances to the match aren't anything special, either. In fact, there's very little fanfare at any point. The crowd doesn't really get noticed and neither does the venue – even though there are many arenas available you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference. The announcing and occasional voice take from the wrestlers are so bad it's hard to believe they aren't an inside joke. They don't sound like any voices you'll recognize and they aren't the least bit interesting. In all, the presentation of Showdown is a touch below mediocre.

But if the wrestling itself is fun, the rest can be tolerated. Unfortunately movement is clunky, clunky, clunky. Not even the supposedly graceful wrestlers move as smoothly as they should, and over the course of several matches you'll see a fair amount of glitches – with wrestlers sticking through each other and sometimes bouncing across the ring when an animation is triggered. Reversals look good, and most moves look good once they start, but going from a grapple to a move animation is often a mess. Hit detection is almost random. Sometimes you'll connect just by being in the vicinity of the other guy, sometimes you won't. You can also taunt each other, and the taunts are very reminiscent of the old-timers.

The controls, for the most part, involve getting into a grapple and using one button at a time to select a move. Reversals can be pulled off with one button, too, and depend entirely upon timing. Once you get used to the controls, movement and hit detection, you'll find yourself laying down the beating of a lifetime before you notice any real progress. It takes lots of moves and a long, long time before your opponent gets tired enough to have some fun with. Even after three successive moves, body slams, for example, your opponent will often get up before you. No matter how many times I used Roddy Piper to toss Don Muraco around the ring, he always got up fast as long as he had a bit of health left in his meter. There's not even a free moment to get a few cheap shots in, let alone get up on the top rope and drop some big elbows. Getting to the point where anyone acts the least bit hurt or tired is a tedious exercise.

Signature moves do look good, however. It's just a shame you won't have a chance to use them until you've labored through the early parts of a match. Actually, it would be more accurate to say it's too bad the early parts of the match aren't more fun. It's not as if you should be using Macho Man's flying elbow the minute the bell rings.

There's a legend mode for single players in which you take your favorite character through three decades of greatness (70s, 80s and 90s). At the end you'll challenge Hulk Hogan and probably win the Legends of Wrestling title. It's not very hard and it doesn't take very long. There are also several match types available to play against friends, like steel cage, tag teams and battle royal. You can use the create-a-legend feature to make a wrestler from scratch but, at best, he'll end up as poorly rendered as the current models so there's very little point. Classic Match mode is probably the most interesting, putting you into key moments of historically important matches (Hogan vs. Andre the Giant, for example). They're only worth playing once or twice, but they're still more fun than your other options.

If your fondest wrestling memories involve the likes of Jesse Ventura and the Ultimate Warrior before they became politicians, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling will pull at your nostalgic heart strings. It's possible the gameplay won't bother everyone equally. But the poor presentation and frustrating, buggy gameplay will turn off most of us who were looking for a way to recreate the landmark moments and atmosphere from a different era of sports entertainment.