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WWF WrestleMania is the most ridiculous sport that has ever been televised. You must have seen it - two (very) grown men pretend to do each other grevious bodily harm - which, if it were real, would kill both of them within five minutes - before shouting at the camera a lot. Pathetic.

Notwithstanding this, a sim of the sport has the potential to be an excellent game: all that pixel-pummelling without the sweaty rhetoric of brain-dead lumps of meat. You get to play one of three likely lads called The Ultimate Warrior, The Hulkster, and the British Bulldog, each of whom has a special move, like jumping up and down on the opponent. After an initial bout of mutual insulting, you and an opponent mince daintily into the ring.

Moves, like kicking, punching and pinning, are controlled with various joysticks configurations - and there's quite a few of them. If you get involved in a grapple, you have to waggle the joystick rapidly in true Decathlon style; the fastest waggler wins the grapple and does his special move. If you're thrown to the floor it's a case of repeatedly hitting the Fire button until you get up - the weaker you are, the more presses you need. You can also climb up on the corner posts or even leave the ring completely and run away. Each wrestler sprite has its own character, through they all suffer from a paucity of animation frames in their moves - two frames for a kick, for instance. Scrolling isn't too bad, and, on the whole, the display's pleasant enough. The sound is crap, as usual.

WWF WrestleMania's not terrible, but it's only a beat-'em-up hiding under the guise of a wrestling game. There are some nice touches, like the way you can jump on your opponent from the post or leave the ring, but you really have seen it all before. And the mindless and extremely tiresome posing of the "contestants" both in the game and in the video that comes with it could well put you off.

1. There aren't any other wrestling sims on the ST, so WWF has no direct competition. It is very similar to most beat-'em-ups though, like Final Fight, Pit-Fighter, etc, etc.