History of WWF/E Games Part 13
WWF Rage in the Cage
Release
1993
Format
Sega Mega CD
Time to look at the one and only WWF game for the Mega CD.
Background
WWF Rage in the Cage, was the only WWF game for be released for Sega’s Mega CD add on. Like many Mega CD games, it was really just an updated port of a game that was already released on the Mega Drive. Rage in the Cage in the months leading up to its release was being hailed as the best WWF game ever.
First time I ever heard about this game was in a issue of the WWF magazine. I was blown away by how many wrestlers were in this game; 20. Sure it may not sound like a huge amount by today’s standards, but back then the most we had in a game was twelve, so getting a extra eight wrestlers was a huge deal. While the advertisement did a great job on selling the game really well, it was actually really vague on information about the actual game.
Many consider WWF Rage in the Cage to be the pinnacle of WWF games of this era. I personally have always felt that this is the most over rated WWF game of this era. A little bit of trivia about this game is that in Japan it is known by the rather odd but cool sounding WWF Mania Tour name.
Presentation
Rage in the Cage looks juts like Royal Rumble does on the Sega Mega Drive. This really is not a bad thing as Royal Rumble looked amazing. Many games on the Mega CD really did not go all out when it came to visuals, and this game is no different. It still looks good, and you can easily tell who all 20 wrestlers are supposed to be.
One interesting thing about this game, that really blew my mind at the time was the FMV videos. Sure they look terrible by today’s standards, and truth be told at the time of release these were not even in the top ten for FMV videos on the Mega CD, but for me as a kid I was blown away by these videos. As well as having a FMV intro movie, there was a FMV for each wrestlers finishing move that you could view on the wrestler selection screen. While I am talking about the wrestler selection screen, the digitized pictures of the wrestler’s look much sharper than they did on Royal Rumble. They look just as good as the wrestler selection screens on the Super Nintendo version of Royal Rumble.
The arena really just looks the same as it did in Royal Rumble. This is a little disappointing as the Steel Cage Challenge games that were released on the 8-bit systems at least had a different ring apron depending on if you were having a cage match or regular match.
Sound is great in this game. It is a little disappointing how they decided against using real entrance themes, instead we get the midi tunes from Royal Rumble, but they do sound a lot better. They sound more like the Super Nintendo than they do the Mega Drive. One really cool thing about the sound is the introductions from The Fink before each match, as well as a little taunt from each wrestler.
Game Play
Exactly the same as Royal Rumble for Mega Drive, I am being serious the core game play is 100 percent exactly the same. All the moves you could do in Royal Rumble you can do here, and there is no new ones added. They did however take away the steel chair from out side of the ring, and it still baffles me to this day as to why they did this.
Of course the thing people bought this game for was to play cage matches. Cage matches play just like any other match except you win by escaping the cage. There is a WWF Championship mode which takes forever, as you have to defeat all other 19 wrestlers, which takes a while in its self, but you also have to put up with the brutal Mega CD load times.
Game modes is what kills Rage in the Cage for me, and is why I feel it is very overrated. There is only one on one matches…that is it. Despite the game having the tag teams of Money Inc, The Nasty Boys and the Headshrinkers, there are no tag matches in this game at all, no Royal Rumble mode. All you have is one on one matches either in a normal ring or with the cage. It kind of feels like they had to rush this game out. It had a very specific time slot it needed to be released in. It had to fit in right between Royal Rumble and WWF RAW.
Final Thoughts
Rage in the Cage is not a bad game, and it does have some very good points. Cage matches, loads of wrestlers, and cool FMV are all nice touches, but the fact that the game play remains exactly the same as Royal Rumble, and the severe lack of game modes, make this game get boring quite fast. To be fair maybe it is because Royal Rumble packed in so much new stuff that I expected to much from Rage in the Cage. Truth be told if this had all the game modes that were in Royal Rumble, then hands down it would have been the best WWF game of this era. As its the only WWF game to be released for the Mega CD it is worth having in your collection. Here in the UK Rage in the Cage was released in a regular double CD style case, which was great as the larger Mega CD cases were cheaply made and broke really easy.
