The first WrestleMania event aired on March 31, 1985 and took a relatively obscure, regional form of entertainment to a national stage. Through crafty cross promotion with MTV and NBC, McMahon made his wrestlers into mainstream celebrities, which in term resulted in the rise of Hulkamania. Wrestling has gone through ups and downs since then – the steroid scandal led to a major downfall in popularity, only for a resurgence to come in the late 90s with the advent of the “Attitude” era. In celebration of this year’s WrestleMania XXV, THQ, Yuke’s and WWE have come together to produce WWE Legends of WrestleMania.

Legends of WrestleMania lets players take control of some of wrestling’s premiere stars and relive classic WrestleMania matches from the first 15 years of the event. Over 40 of the most popular wrestlers from the era are represented including Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Bret Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. If you have a WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2009 save on your system, you’ll also be able to import current WWE superstars into the game. There are still a few key omissions – The Macho Man Randy Savage, Diesel/Kevin Nash, Razor Ramon/Scott Hall and Mankind all had classic matches at WrestleMania, yet are not represented in the game. Some parts vaguely resembling these wrestlers are available in the fairly robust Create-A-Legend section however, so all is not lost.


Presentation is the most impressive part of the Legends of WrestleMania package mainly due to high production values. The game is chock full of video packages showing the lead-up, match and outcome of classic WrestleMania encounters. These videos are really well put together, and feature a lot of footage from the WWE library that is not available in other forms. Character models are highly detailed, if slightly exaggerated when it comes to muscular builds (which looks especially silly when fighting SmackDown imports), and the animation is mostly new, so it doesn’t look ridiculously dated like the stuff in SmackDown vs. Raw. Many of the classic entrance themes are attached to their wrestlers, with new ones produced for wrestlers who never had them. Due to the majority of them being composed in the mid to late 80s, they’re filled with a high level of cheese which some may find amusing (particularly Dusty Rhodes’ American Dream). Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler provide commentary – it’d have been nice to have featured some of the older commentators, but Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura are too busy, Bobby Heenan is barely able to speak and Gorilla Monsoon is dead.

Legends of WrestleMania may bear some resemblance to SmackDown vs. Raw, but the two play quite differently. Yuke’s appears to have taken criticisms of over-complication into account when producing Legends of WrestleMania’s control system; it’s a more arcade-like affair where players have a fairly simple range of moves, but will most assuredly use all of them – and eventually become sick of seeing the same ones all of the time. One could argue that it’s a little more realistic, given that wrestlers like Hulk Hogan weren’t generally renowned for their variety of attacks. Striking moves and grapple moves represent your basic attacks, and each has a stronger variant which is executed by holding down the requisite button for longer. Blocking and reversals are easier to pull off, but their importance in determining the result of a match stays much the same. Some moves have been made completely useless – running is awkward and submission moves are de-emphasised with the body damage system being replaced by a fairly simple life bar.


The fighting system of Legends of WrestleMania revolves around the chain system, which functions similarly to the momentum meters of past wrestling games. There are a few key differences, namely that the chain meter has three different levels that determine which moves your superstar can perform – the higher the level, the more effective the move. Chain levels can also be spent on a number of different taunts, which will (temporarily) increase strength and speed, prevent counters or replenish health. The chain meter is built up slowly by executing moves on your opponent, but high risk moves, counters and chain combinations can speed the build-up considerably.

Chain combinations are a method of making Legends of WrestleMania more accessible – when a player executes a particular move, the game will go into a QTE style sequence, where the player must press a button to continue the attack, and make it more brutal in the process. These sequences are fairly deeply rooted in the game, managing everything from Irish whip moves to finishers. When you’re on the receiving end of a chain combination, you also get the opportunity to press a button, this time to interrupt the sequence or turn it around. The system works well when playing alone, but when playing with other players, online or off, it can get a bit messy. When playing online, the host has a significant advantage in chain combinations, which makes it very difficult to have an evenly matched encounter.


Yuke’s has also taken the opportunity to address concerns relating to SmackDown vs. Raw’s over-reliance on button mashing. Getting up off the mat or escaping from a pin is now handled by a small circular meter showing you exactly how close you are to getting up. Players can mash the buttons to fill the meter, or simply hold a few down – the rate at which it fills varies based on the method you use and your level of health. When pinned to the mat, you’ll need to fill the meter to a specific point – mashing is easier when you’ve got a lot of health, but when you’re down on your luck, you can gamble a pin escape by holding down a button and trying to get the alternate green meter to land in the small block. Mashing is still used for escaping submissions and winning cage and ladder matches, but it’s nice to have other options.

While Legends of WrestleMania features the usual exhibition matches, main events like cage and ladder matches and the Royal Rumble, the focus is mainly on the single player modes. The main mode is “Relive”, which allows players to pick famous matches from the first fifteen WrestleManias, and recreate vital parts of the match in the game. The game shows players one of the aforementioned video packages and provides them with a list of objectives which they must complete to recreate the match – the more of these you recreate, the higher the score. Players will be rewarded with a medal for achieving a specific score, which unlocks new costumes, wrestlers, match types and video packages.


Match objectives for the “Relive” matches start out fairly simple – in the WrestleMania 2 match, you’ll need to do basic stuff like ram Bundy’s head into the cage, stop him from escaping twice, hit your finisher and escape, but they get progressively more challenging. By the end of the mode, you’ll have a laundry list of tasks to recreate, some of which require taking multiple finishing moves from your opponent, which can become very frustrating. It’s annoying that there are only seven matches included, because there are a lot more classic matches that really should have been included, like the Razor Ramon/Shawn Michaels ladder match from WrestleMania X. The “Rewrite” and “Redefine” matches follow much the same path, but the goal is to change the outcome of a match, or play out a “What If?” scenario and the objectives sheet is much less specific.

The other major mode is Legend Killer, which pits the player’s created wrestler in a gauntlet match against four tiers of ten wrestlers, followed by a survival match against almost every wrestler on the roster. These events are a bit drawn out, but it’s necessary to complete them if you want your created wrestler to be capable of putting up a fight. New video packages, costumes, etc. are unlocked from beating each tier.


Nostalgia plays a big part in the appeal of Legends of WrestleMania; if you followed wrestling in the late 80s to early 90s, you’ll experience an extra level of enjoyment that most won’t. Take off those rose tinted specs, however, and the game’s fragilities start to show. It’s nice that Yuke’s has used this game to address some of the weaker points of SmackDown, but it feels like they have a long way to go. With some tweaks to the multiplayer aspect of the game, more “Relive” matches and the inclusion of some of the missing wrestlers, Legends of WrestleMania could have been a classic.