With the success of its two predecessors WWF Super Wrestlemania and WWF Royal Rumble released on Snes/Gen/MS this game has a lot going for it being released on Sega CD with more room to expand rosters and create the ultimate version of the previous releases in this latest update.
However, even tho it expanded the rosters, it failed in most other areas with the lack of game play options.
You'd think having so much more room for expansion on a CD compared to the previous cartridge releases it would just hit it out of the ballpark and leave the previous titles for dead, but it stepped up to plate and managed to strike out.
Sure, it boasted a 20 character roster, compared to the previous that featured 12, but that's where the pros end apart from being the only version that features the steel cage match, which is really not that much fun anyway.
The only marches available aside from a cage match is 1 on 1 and tag-team, and a campaign mode. Missing now are the royal rumble, and survivor series match (4 on 4) and there really is no excuse to not have included those matches here, especially seeing as how it's expanded from a 3meg game to a 650mb possibility.
It's understandable that certain previous games wrestlers had left the company and could not be included, but it still could have had more on the roster. However, that's not the con, the con is lack of match types.
Since the very first game Super Wrestlemania, there was attempts to include intros to matches. Now it's in, and accompanied by audio speech provided by the late great Howard Finkel. However, it turned out to be an un-needed feature that sounded like a revolutionary feature at the time for developers, but became a skipped over option by players after the first time you hear it.
The next was the waste of space used to put very poor early 90s quality videos into the mix. It was new at the time, but by today's standards it's a complete waste of space putting in frame by frame low quality gifs to give the illusion of video for the games intro, and an option to view a wrestlers signature/finishing move.
What's puzzling is they spent so much time trying to implement digital videos that they still reverted to using midi music for the wrestlers theme music. A wasted potential to have CD quality music over all the wasted space adding in poor quality video clips. Had the videos not been included, I couldn't really see this game as being much bigger than 7mb, making it just a game really that features 8 more characters available than the previous released games, and an exclusive cage match that couldn't possibly have taken up much room to implement.
Less than a few months later, ACCLAIM had already made the switch back to cartridges and released WWF Raw for the Snes/MD/Gen/32x and proven that the CD space was not required to improve the game and the videos and audio was a waste of time. Not to mention the cage match disappeared too, but the other missing modes where back.
So that's why you probably never heard of WWF Rage In The Cage on the Sega CD, or perhaps you knew about it, played it once or twice and just didn't find it had any replay value like the other simmilar titles.
It was a game that could have really been something to top the other 3 titles making this the ultimate version to have, but the devs instead focused too much on new technology that took up too much space and by today's standards is highly outdated and plagued with unnecessary junk files.
Another thing too was the AI was harder than any of the other versions too. Even on the easiest difficulty level, leaving the game more frustrating to play than enjoyable. It was also the only version to not include a two punch cheat to drain opponents energy, which is something every player of the other games knew about and used, plus even using a turbo pad for auto fire buttons to win lockups and preform moves with is questionable as the game just decides sometimes it's 50/50 no matter how fast you mash buttons.
Overall, even with the largest roster, it's the worst of the 4 games. Even the Snes version of Super Wrestlemania that had no signature/finisher moves had more replay value over this one. It's a game that too much thought went into trying to implement video technology that wasn't ready yet instead of making the game fun to play that leaves this version as the one not fondly remembered or even known about to most that made it an over priced flop.
However, even tho it expanded the rosters, it failed in most other areas with the lack of game play options.
You'd think having so much more room for expansion on a CD compared to the previous cartridge releases it would just hit it out of the ballpark and leave the previous titles for dead, but it stepped up to plate and managed to strike out.
Sure, it boasted a 20 character roster, compared to the previous that featured 12, but that's where the pros end apart from being the only version that features the steel cage match, which is really not that much fun anyway.
The only marches available aside from a cage match is 1 on 1 and tag-team, and a campaign mode. Missing now are the royal rumble, and survivor series match (4 on 4) and there really is no excuse to not have included those matches here, especially seeing as how it's expanded from a 3meg game to a 650mb possibility.
It's understandable that certain previous games wrestlers had left the company and could not be included, but it still could have had more on the roster. However, that's not the con, the con is lack of match types.
Since the very first game Super Wrestlemania, there was attempts to include intros to matches. Now it's in, and accompanied by audio speech provided by the late great Howard Finkel. However, it turned out to be an un-needed feature that sounded like a revolutionary feature at the time for developers, but became a skipped over option by players after the first time you hear it.
The next was the waste of space used to put very poor early 90s quality videos into the mix. It was new at the time, but by today's standards it's a complete waste of space putting in frame by frame low quality gifs to give the illusion of video for the games intro, and an option to view a wrestlers signature/finishing move.
What's puzzling is they spent so much time trying to implement digital videos that they still reverted to using midi music for the wrestlers theme music. A wasted potential to have CD quality music over all the wasted space adding in poor quality video clips. Had the videos not been included, I couldn't really see this game as being much bigger than 7mb, making it just a game really that features 8 more characters available than the previous released games, and an exclusive cage match that couldn't possibly have taken up much room to implement.
Less than a few months later, ACCLAIM had already made the switch back to cartridges and released WWF Raw for the Snes/MD/Gen/32x and proven that the CD space was not required to improve the game and the videos and audio was a waste of time. Not to mention the cage match disappeared too, but the other missing modes where back.
So that's why you probably never heard of WWF Rage In The Cage on the Sega CD, or perhaps you knew about it, played it once or twice and just didn't find it had any replay value like the other simmilar titles.
It was a game that could have really been something to top the other 3 titles making this the ultimate version to have, but the devs instead focused too much on new technology that took up too much space and by today's standards is highly outdated and plagued with unnecessary junk files.
Another thing too was the AI was harder than any of the other versions too. Even on the easiest difficulty level, leaving the game more frustrating to play than enjoyable. It was also the only version to not include a two punch cheat to drain opponents energy, which is something every player of the other games knew about and used, plus even using a turbo pad for auto fire buttons to win lockups and preform moves with is questionable as the game just decides sometimes it's 50/50 no matter how fast you mash buttons.
Overall, even with the largest roster, it's the worst of the 4 games. Even the Snes version of Super Wrestlemania that had no signature/finisher moves had more replay value over this one. It's a game that too much thought went into trying to implement video technology that wasn't ready yet instead of making the game fun to play that leaves this version as the one not fondly remembered or even known about to most that made it an over priced flop.
