Shades of Resonance: Fond Reminiscence - Memory Log #19

WWF Superstars

Why yes, my friends, I'm one of those: someone who unironically watches that "silly fake stuff." Make your judgments now.

So I should start by telling you that pro-wrestling has long been an important part of my life. I grew up with it. I've formed relationships around it. I've drawn a heavy amount of inspiration from its unique and interesting characters. And I've derived an endless amount of entertainment from the drama, the intrigue, and the sheer stupidity that its storylines have served to create.

You could say that it's had a profound impact on me.

And over the years, I've created a lot of cherished memories. They're the kinds of memories that I reminisce about quite often. On any given day, I'll spend a lot of time fondly recalling all of the fun ways in which my friends and I engaged with pro-wrestling's television products, toys, and video games. And I hope to share some of these memories here and in my future wrestling-related pieces.

Now, my memories of my early history with pro-wrestling are kinda fuzzy, so I'm not able to tell you when, exactly, I became a big fan of the "sport." From what I remember, I saw a handful of episodes of Saturday Night's Main Event when I was around the age of 6 or 7, but I wasn't paying close attention at the time; rather, I was a passive observer, and I was watching only because I had no choice--because my brother, James, was a huge wrestling fan and often had control of our den's TV.

Otherwise, I'd seen a few episodes of the cartoon Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, which portrayed the World Wrestling Federation's biggest heroes and villains in a comically over-the-top way, but I only gave them a look because my aunt was nice enough to tape them for me one random Saturday morning (if she didn't know which shows we were into, she'd just go ahead and tape the entire Saturday morning lineup). I never naturally gravitated to it.

But even though I almost never engaged with the WWF's product, I still knew a lot about it because of how deeply embedded it was in popular culture. Its stars, in particular, were everywhere. They were constantly appearing in television shows, movies, commercials, and just about every other entertainment medium. And they were all over our house, too! Or, rather, their likenesses were. James, you see, had a huge collection of those big rubber figures that were being produced by LJN, and once he stopped caring about them, they basically became mine! And I was always carrying them around, playing with them, and reading the bios on their packaging.

So I knew all about the WWF's top stars, and I'd come to have a fondness for them and their colorful personalities. Hell--whenever we were on vacation with our relatives from Staten Island, my cousin Nick and I would meet up in one of our parents' hotel rooms during the boring hours and fill the time by pretending to be WWF wrestlers (or the A-Team, V's resistance members, or whichever television characters were currently popular with us) and using the bed as our wrestling ring. We'd pretend to be, say, the Islanders. He'd play the more-physical Haku, and I'd play the high-flying Tama, since I was skinnier and could jump higher.

And it was this fondness for the WWF's larger-than-life characters that instantly drew my friends and I to a newly appearing arcade machine whose cabinet was bursting with images of familiar wrestling stars (or "Superstars," as the company dubbed them).

That imagery belonged to an irresistibly awesome-looking game called WWF Superstars.

I don't remember where, exactly, we were when we first discovered WWF Superstars, no, but I do recall how we felt when we saw it up-close: We were in awe of it. We were blown away by its visuals and particularly how incredible its characters looked. WWF Superstars' were, by far, the most realistic video-game representations of professional wrestlers we'd ever seen!

And for that reason, I was instantly a fan of WWF Superstars. I didn't know if its gameplay or controls were any good, no, but I didn't care about such things at the time. The only thing that mattered to me was that is wrestlers looked amazingly lifelike; its having that quality, alone, was enough for me to instantly declare my love for it.

Superstars only had six wrestlers in total, but we weren't terribly disappointed by that number because, at the time, six was still a pretty high character-total for a competitive arcade game. And we were happy with the developers choice of characters. All six were solid picks, we thought.

Most importantly, it had three of the sport's biggest stars. It had the musclebound Hulk Hogan, who was the face of the company and currently the most popular wrestler in the entire world; the flamboyant, gravelly voiced "Macho Man" Randy Savage, who was regarded as a super-athlete but otherwise insane; and the painted-up, tassels-wearing Ultimate Warrior, who, I understood (because I'd never seen him in action), was a superman-caliber wrestler in the mold of Hulk Hogan--only he was more intense and much less stable than the Hulkster.

And it also had three memorable upper-midcard players: the intellectually challenged "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, who was known for shouting "Hooooooo!" and wielding a wooden 2X4, with which he'd whack opponents across the back; the evil Elvis-impersonating Honky Tonk Man; and the Big Boss Man--a corrupt former corrections officer who carried around a nightstick (and a ball and chain, too!) and used it to rough up defeated opponents.

I wasn't very familiar with the latter three Superstars--since none of them appeared in the Rock 'n' Wrestling cartoon, and I'd never seen action figures based on them--so I mostly gravitated toward the known entities: Hogan, Savage and the Warrior.

Superstars' gameplay was tag-team based, so a big part of the fun was pairing up wrestlers who would ordinarily never be seen together (and it was always wild to see unlikely duos like Hulk Hogan and the Honky Tonk Man riding down the aisle together in those specially made ring carts). In our earliest sessions, though, my friends and I would usually choose to play as the team of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage because, at the time, the two of them were a real-life tag team; they formed "the Mega Powers," which was the biggest thing in wrestling.

Whenever I'd play alone, though, I'd gravitate toward Jim Duggan--mostly because I liked to abuse his cool-looking running bulldog, which, as a bonus, was one of the game's most damaging moves!

But while playing alone gave me the opportunity to branch out more and be experimental in such ways, it just wasn't as much fun as playing with friends. In truth, Superstars' action shined the most when it benefitted from the augmentation of players' social interaction and playful banter. Without said enhancements, the experience was rather mundane. That's why I'd usually avoid playing Superstars whenever I didn't have a friend by my side. I knew that its action wouldn't be as fun without the enrichment of our silly banter and goofy commentary (we could never hear the game's audio, so we'd just call the action ourselves!).

And Superstars was at its absolute best when four people were playing it together--when another set of friends would come along and challenge us to a match! Four-player Superstars would never fail to produce the most frantic, wildly competitive arcade action you could ever experience; it was guaranteed to inspire a scene in which four maniacs were bellowing loudly and furiously pounding away at the machine's control pad. It's just unfortunate that we didn't get many opportunities to experience four-player action (kids tended to shy away from human-vs-human modes because playing them came with the risk of getting only a single match's worth of gameplay out of a quarter).

When it came to single-player mode, Superstars was very much the typical arcade game, which is to say that it was designed to be unfairly difficult and thus gobble up quarters. Though, it had a clever way of suckering you in and making you think that you'd get a fair chance: In any match, it'd allow you to easily win the first two grapples, and this courtesy would effectively bait you into thinking that you were in command of the action. Thereafter, of course, the pendulum would immediately swing in the direction of the CPU-controlled players, and from then on, they'd get priority in just about every exchange. By then, though, you'd be wholly invested in the action and overcome by the delusion that soon the scales would balance out and you'd be able to take control from time to time.

It would never work out that way, no, yet I kept believing that one day it would. That's why I kept trying to beat the game on a single credit.

I was the perfect dupe.

If you wanted to successfully win matches without going broke, I learned, you had to abuse certain mechanics. You had to repeatedly lift downed opponents off of the mat and string together series of moves. You had to rely on "advanced tactics" like scoring cheap knockdowns with wrestlers' standard kick-and-punch combos and baiting opponents outside the ring so you could pummel them with tables and steel chairs.

And the goal was to win three consecutive matches against randomly paired opponents and thus earn earn a shot at the tag-team champions: Ted Dibiase and Andre the Giant, who formed the Mega Bucks. The two of them (along with their manager, Virgil--a true "Wrestling Superstar") would appear in the promos that played between each round and taunt you, and before the title match, they'd do a tension-heightening interview with "Mean" Gene Okerlund. Though, I never knew what they were actually saying because Superstars' audio, outside of sound effects, was rather muted (also, of course, the arcade cacophony tended to drown out games' sounds).

From what I could make out, Andre was threatening to beat me like a dog. And I was so sure that I heard the line correctly that I told many a curious Superstars fan that it was indeed what he was saying. It turned out, though, that he was simply mumbling about being "unbeatable," which disappointed me. (I was also disappointed by the fact that he lacked his trademarked creepy smile and two rows of 68 teeth.)

The only speech sample we could clearly make out was the one that we heard constantly. It was the line that our losing team would deliver post-match. The team's captain would say, determinedly, "I can't wait for the rematch!" It was obviously supposed to be an inspiring line, but the only thing it made us do was laugh. We laughed because it sounded goofy and because there was no variant of it; every wrestler used that same speech sample, and thus we were expected to believe that Randy Savage sounded exactly like the Honky Tonk Man and Jim Duggan. To us, no other suggestion was as absurd.

So naturally we began to use the line in our everyday exchanges. We'd frequently say it to each other and to anyone who was foolish enough to try to seriously engage with us. It wasn't as prevalent as iconic lines like "Riiiiiiiiiise from your graves!" or "I'm bad!", no, but still it got plenty of use. Mostly, "I can't wait for the rematch!" was our go-to counter in any situation in which one of us was one-upped by the other in some way--like when one of us was served a fewer number of shrimp by a Benihana chef.

Because, obviously, we had brain damage.

So to win the tag-team titles, you had to beat Ted Dibiase and Andre the Giant, who comprised what every arcade-goer recognized as one of gaming's most feared boss duos. They were regarded as such because it was seemingly impossible to maintain any advantage over them past the initial lockup--even when the starting opponent was Dibiase, who was the weaker of the two (but still about an 8 on the "overpowered" meter).

And Andre the Giant, pro-wrestling's most feared and respected big man, was completely unassailable. He'd easily get the advantage in every lockup, he'd continuously use crippling grappling moves like the Coconut Crush (a move that involves slamming an opponent's head into your knee) and the Canadian Backbreaker (a shoulder-rack-type submission move), and he'd effortlessly repel any striking or running move with chops or body blocks. And even if you were lucky enough to win a lockup, it wouldn't matter much because you wouldn't be able to use your strongest moves--your slams and suplexes--on him; he was simply too heavy to lift. He'd resist and counter any such attempt.

So Andre being the legal man was always a nightmare scenario.

And we were fine with Andre being ridiculously overpowered because that's how it was in real life. It was true to his character. Andre was the behemoth who few wrestlers could budge. Every wrestling fan knew that. Hell--even people who didn't watch wrestling understood that Andre, who was said to weigh over 600 pounds, could absolutely not be lifted by anyone who wasn't a steroided-up superman and that even then, it could only be done under strenuous conditions. (In truth, Andre being "unslammable" was a myth that was created by the WWF for marketing reasons. He'd been slammed many times in the past by various wrestlers, but most people weren't aware of this because they didn't follow other wrestling promotions when they were growing up.)

This piece of character development translated over nicely to Superstars. Andre was a behemoth, and only the game's resident steroid monsters--Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior--had a chance of actually executing a slamming-type move on him. Thus, if you were hoping to make a serious run at the titles and do so without having to pump in a load of quarters, the only choice that made sense was to pair Hogan and the Warrior.

From there, it was all about knowing how to exploit the game's mechanics and execute the cheapest of tricks. Like I said earlier: You had to know how to (a) abuse your wrestlers' standard kick-and-punch combos and score cheap knockdowns and (b) bait opponents outside the ring and then proceed to quickly drain their health meters by pummeling them with tables and chairs (if they were available).

Though, because it was exceptionally difficult to maneuver Andre outside the ring, your options were far more limited when he was the legal man. The best thing you could do was prevent him from ever entering match--do whatever you could to stop the more-tossable Dibiase from tagging out. (As an aside: I thought it was a nice touch that Dibiase and Andre would display their heelish tendencies by not even bothering to tag out. They'd instead show total disregard for the process by illegally switching places after simply whispering instructions to each other.)

And if we were able to capably execute our strategy, we'd do what many thought couldn't be done: defeat Dibiase and Andre and become the new tag-team champions!

We accomplished that goal many times, and we rarely had to spend more than two or three quarters to do it. Unfortunately, though, we were never able to endure the second loop--the "Title Defense" mode, whose difficulty-level trended toward unreasonable. Usually we'd run out of quarters at around match two.

For the time, Superstars was great. It was fun and entertaining, and it offered the most realistic take on pro-wrestling we'd ever seen. Those were the qualities that continued to draw us in. We'd look for a Superstars machine in any arcade we visited, and if we spotted one, we'd immediately rush over to it; and then we'd spend the next half hour spiritedly working our way to the top of the tag-team scene.

Though, we weren't able to enjoy Superstars for extended period because it wasn't around very long. Within a year and half, it was gone from arcades and replaced by something better: its sequel, WWF Wrestlefest (which I'll be talking about soon). Once it disappeared from arcades, I never saw it again--not even in any of those retro-themed arcade spaces you'd find in indoor amusement parks or at golfing ranges. It was all but forgotten.

I didn't see it again until the early 2000s, when I discovered MAME, which allowed me to play it (and many other classic arcade games) on my computer. And I've been accessing it that way ever since then.

I can't say that I return to Superstars often, though, no. I just never feel the need to. I mean, it has a certain charm to it, yeah, and it's still pretty fun, but it just feels so archaic compared to Wrestlefest, which is superior in every way and thus the far better option whenever I'm craving some old-school arcade-wrestling action.

Still, I was happy to get a chance to revisit Superstars and spend some time with it because doing so allowed me to discover the true depth of its fighting mechanics and gain an appreciation for game aspects that I originally ignored or overlooked. I was, for instance, finally able to hear its music, which, I was happy to find, is surprisingly great (it's surprising because 80s-era wrestling and fighting games tended to have painfully generic music); its is a varied set of rocking tunes that would feel right at home in an intense, high-octane action game like Contra or Streets of Rage.

Also, I enjoyed using MAME's cheat function to play as Dibiase and Andre, both of whom are ridiculously overpowered even in playable form. With them, I was able to waltz my way to ultimate victory! (To me, nothing in gaming is quite as magical as being able to take control of characters that were never meant to be playable. It's like gaining access to forbidden land and doing whatever you want while you're there.)

But I have to say: I'm disappointed that it took me so long to notice so many of the game's cool little touches, like the background's jumbotron, which displays the mugshots of the four competitors, and the fact that Billy Lee is hanging out in the crowd (on the left side). Hell--at the time, I didn't even realize that Double Dragon's developer, Technos, was also behind the creation of Superstars! How I missed such an obvious connection, I have no idea (if only I'd paid more attention to the information that was displayed on the game's splash and title screens).

To me, Superstars' legacy is that it was the first wrestling game to truly capture the spirit and the personality--the pageantry and the grandeur--of the pro-wrestling shows we watched every weekend afternoon and at 8:00 p.m. every twelfth Sunday. It was the first wrestling game to authentically portray the sport's larger-than-life personalities and over-the-top action. And because it did these things--because it created this winning template--it deserves more recognition. Without it, we wouldn't have awesome games like WWF Wrestlefest, WWF Raw and WWF No Mercy.

Superstars, furthermore, is the game that convinced me to give pro-wrestling a serious look (the sport's ever-growing popularity amongst my friends was also a big influence). A few months after I discovered the game, I tuned in to a modern WWF wrestling show (MSG Network's Wrestling Spotlight, upon which I stumbled while flipping through the channels one night) with an open mind, and consequently I instantly became a fan of what I was seeing.

"What was the main hook?" you ask.

Well, when I tuned in, the show was airing a promo for a newly arriving wrestler named "Tugboat" (who, my friend Mike tried to convince me, was "Jimmy Hart stuffed with pillows"). He was a sailor who wore a candy-cane-striped shirt and shouted "Heeeeeee!" as a means of replicating the sound a ship horn made when its cord was pulled, and, he said, he was coming to the WWF to make a huge splash! Also, he claimed to be a friend of Hulk Hogan!

And that was it. The moment I witnessed that scene, I thought to myself, "I have to start watching this stuff right now!" And from then on, I was a loyal WWF viewer.

And considering how hot the product got during that period, I'd arrived just in time!