HammerLock Wrestling (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
94A playthrough of Jaleco's 1994 wrestling game for the Super Nintendo, HammerLock Wrestling.
Played through the Top Ranked Match Single Mode on difficulty level 2 with Sam Warhammer (an unlicensed Hulk Hogan character).
I remember being so stoked when I first saw this game reviewed in Game Players. The screenshots made it look so cool, back then it made me think of Sega CD graphics with the game's promise of ever-present animated cutscenes that matched the action. And granted, they are really cool. The game is a blast to watch because of them.
The problem with them, though, is that they are ALWAYS running, they dominate the screen real estate, scaling down the ring and the character graphics to a similar size that the sprites in similar NES games were. Much worse of an issue, unfortunately, is how the game handles the display of the cinematics: for really dramatic hits, the screen shifts the playing field to accomodate a full 2/3 screen frame for the move, and then it shifts back. Every time it does this, the third of the screen that the playfield occupies moves up or down very quickly. It's incredibly disorienting, and can make lining up moves really difficult at times, and can be a bit nauseating after awhile. It looks awesome, though.
As far as the game play goes, it's alright. It's pretty standard fare - the graphics are obviously the main selling point of the game, but it plays at least as well as WWF Royal Rumble does. It has a lot of cool stuff going on, but the entire game gets dragged down a few notches because of the conscious design choice to subjugate the gameplay to the fancy huge closeup cinematics.
If you can find it being sold cheap, absolutely give it a play. I have no idea what it goes for, but it was a pretty low print run and is pretty uncommon, so if it's cheap, it probably won't be after it's "discovered" by the eBay collectors/poachers.
It really can be a lot of fun, especially if you like tacky video games to play after you've finished hot-gluing plastic diamonds to the epaulets of your vintage denim jacket. Yeah. Tacky. And hilarious.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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