- PAL release: 12th October 1999
- NA release: 18th November 1999
- JP release: 15th September 2000
- Developer: AKI
- Publisher: THQ (NA,PAL), Asmik Ace (JP)
- N64 Magazine Score: 90%
After doing well with the WCW vs nWo games, AKI and THQ managed to get the big wrestling license: WWF. Focusing on the big WrestleMania event, AKI brought over everything they learned from their previous games and improved upon it, making fights feel eventful without dragging on too long, and providing a decent amount of modes and features, including a basic create-a-wrestler.
The main wrestlers have their intros, as well as a little, very compressed FMV for them, and they all look fine from a distance. When the camera gets closer, however, the wrestlers look like they’re constructed from parts poorly stuck together, and the faces look like masks, especially so in the case of The Rock, who has his eyebrow raised expression permanently pasted on the front of his face.
WrestleMania features a decent singleplayer mode – with you picking a partner for tag matches to mix things up – and a good amount of modes for multiplayer. One mild annoyance is that the female wrestlers are all locked away at the start, and the only way to create a female wrestler is to unlock one and copy them. Overall though, this is where wrestling games started to improve a lot.
Fun
Attitude’s beat-’em-up style combos have been dropped in favour of a more simple tap of the action button and analogue pad, but this simplistic approach does provide hardcore fans with a more satisfying fight.
Oliver Hurley, N64 Magazine #36
Remake or remaster?
I’m not sure what current wrestling games are like.
Official ways to get the game.
There is no official way to get WWF WrestleMania 2000.
Europe
Japan
North America
N64 Games by Date
1997: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1998: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1999: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2000: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
I have a lot of good memories of playing Wrestlemania 2000, I remember I got to play it a couple of years after it came out and was annoyed at myself for not buying it day 1, because even though I played the Smackdown games on PS1 at the time, which were more popular, I much preferred this game.
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You could tell AKI had a lot of fun making it, with loads of references and call backs to random story’s that had taken place in the WWF before hand or changing a wrestlers music to an older theme they used on the past would be acknowledged with unique entrances.
Plus it was just a lot of fun to play and had plenty of modes to replay for hours.
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The create a wrestler mode was also pretty good and had so many motion capped moves from wrestlers that were not in the games roster, almost all of the moves from their previous WCW games were in there so you could pretty much make any WCW or WWF Superstar. I think i spent a third of my time in this game game just making random wrestlers.