Wrestle Reviews
American Tag Team Wrestling
Release
1992
Format
ZX Spectrum
Commodore 64
Amstrad
Amiga
Background
American Tag Team Wrestling was released in 1992 and while now to newer wresting fans a game focused on tag team wrestling may seem odd. Back in the late 80’s and 90’s tag team wrestling was actually pretty relevant. While there were a few wrestling games with tag team matches. Most other wrestling games of this era, especially the home games on consoles and computers focused on singles matches.
British developers Zeppelin Games made this game and they were very active in the 80’s and 90’s. They are still in existence to this day, but they are now called Eutechnyx and they are the guys who make the current NASCAR games.
Presentation
The Amiga version of this game looks really nice. The characters have a great deal of personality to them and for the most part they are animated pretty well. One cool thing about American Tag Team Wrestling is that some of the characters are clearly modeled on WWF wrestlers of the era. Two wrestlers are clearly supposed to be Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage. The Amiga version also has a tremendous arena. The Amiga when it comes to wrestling games has the best arenas of any computer or even video game console of the early 90’s.
The other versions look as you would expect. The ZX Spectrum version is all in yellow which is not to put it down as this was common for many ZX Spectrum games back in the day. The Commodore 64 and Amstrad versions of the game look just like what the ZX Spectrum offered, only they have color. The characters in the “lesser” versions still look great, but there is no detailed arena like the Amga version had.
Game Play
You need to pick from a pretty decent selection of tag teams. You have two game modes you can either have just a single match. Which as I am sure you have guessed is just a regular wrestling match. Or if you want you can try your luck in the tournament. This is where you will try and become the tag team wrestling champions. And that my friends is all there is to this game when it comes to its game modes. This is pretty lame if I am honest, but the computer wrestling games of this era, while they may have looked better than what some of the consoles could do. They would never have as many game modes.
The game play is very simplistic. You just walk around the ring kicking and punching, or if you want to kick things up a notch you can do a running drop kick. And if you want to get flashy you can climb the top rope and try and hit a flying dropkick which seems to be totally random if it’s going to connect or not. You can also do a small selection of grapple moves, but most matches will play out like this. Grapple move, elbow drop until energy is gone, they tag their partner, repeat and pin. If you can stop them tagging their partner then you can win a match in about 20 seconds. And that is all there is to the game play. All the versions of this game play pretty much the same. You can either use the joystick which for grapples is much easier. Or you can use the keyboard, but be warned if you grapple a great deal your keyboard will take a beating.
Final Thoughts
American Tag Team Wrestling is clearly a game that was trying to cash in on the huge popularity of the WWF. This is as bare bones a wrestling game as you can get. There is pretty much nothing to see here at all. This is a game that only people who collect wrestling games (there must be more than me out there, I can’t be the only sad guy who does this?) This is a game that I would not recommend at all. It would be more hassle to find it than playing it would be worth.
For additional reviews by Jason Delacey: Click Here
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