#385
A playthrough of the bosses Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase in WWF Superstars.
So, something a little different for once. Before going onto fighting games not from SNK or Capcom, I'm going to be covering a few sports games with bosses.
The first of these is Technos Japan's WWF Superstars from 1989. This game saw six playable wrestlers pairing into tagteams and competing for a shot at the WWF Tag Team Title. 1988 Saw the brief tag-team pairing of Ted DiBiase and Andre the Giant, in a short lived tag-team known as Megabucks. The game sees players defeating three other teams, fighting Megabucks themselves, then fighting three other teams (one of which includes Ted DiBiase again) before a final confrontation with Andre and DiBiase. In between rounds, the player sees a counter stating the number of matches until they face Megabucks, who are also accompanied by Virgil, "Wrestling Superstar".
Both bosses were unplayable, which makes them ludicrously glitchy in this game, and hence much of the video has to be dedicated to just how ludicrous these glitches are. A wrong move by DiBiase which cause the opponent to disappear, making this kind of playthrough extremely finicky, and a little tedious too. Also, winning a round by submission with the team will actually cause the player to lose for some reason. Although Andre and DiBiase can grapple each other, albeit with minor glitches, as you see in the video Andre grappling an opponent Andre causes the game to crash altogether, which makes having to swap out to DiBiase if you face Andre.
Looking at the fighting styles of the bosses themselves:
Andre the Giant is in essence the true boss in this game. He's substantially more powerful than DIBiase. Compared to most wrestlers, Andre's punches and kicks will knock down an opponent in one hit, as opposed to three or four from other wrestlers. When the opponent is downed, he can sit on them, which not only deals considerable damage but appears to stunlock them. These means the move can be used as many times as the player likes, and after 8 or so uses of the move the player can pin and win against the opponent just like that. Also, I'm not sure if this is only when playing as Megabucks, but if you attempt to pin and are interrupted by the AI's tag partner, if you pin again immediately afterwards they won't attempt to interrupt you. Andre also has powerful grappling moves which destroy the opponent's health within seconds, and seems to have priority in any of his charging attacks. He's a beast, put simply, and made for a perfect boss in this game.
Ted DiBiase is significantly less powerful than Andre, almost like a sub-boss by comparison. He has the same powerful as most of the other wrestlers from what I can tell, just perhaps a little more health and a little more powerful. The developers seemed aware he was less powerful, as in the second run during the game in one match he is paired with a random AI opponent. His regular grapple move is his "Million Dollar Dream", that somewhat awkward looking chokehold he does. He also has a tendency to cause opponents to disappear with certain moves, meaning there is very little incentive to play as him.
All this together presents something of a problem; it is damn difficult to playthrough this game with Megabucks. Submissions make you lose, certain grapples cause the opponent to disappear or the game to crash, and Ted DiBiase isn't really that strong of a character. That means relying on using Andre the Giant, which certainly isn't a bad thing, but cheaply using him to buttstomp the opponent repeatedly until they're defeated, which gets old fast. As a result, this isn't a dramatically interesting playthrough, but it was fun to do nonetheless, and I think ultimately a good idea. The next wrestling game to cover is substantially better however, featuring my favourite wrestlers as bosses, and was one of the inspirations for these videos.