Dom Robinson reviews
WWF Royal Rumble
Distributed by
Silver Vision
- Cert:
- Cat.no: WWF 1005
- Running time: 203 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 1-6, NTSC
- Chapters: 14
- Sound: Dolby Surround (Dolby Digital 2.0)
- Languages: English, Spanish
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-Enhanced: No
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Backstage after the Street Fight, Special swimsuit retrospective,
Behind the scenes at the controversial end to the Royal Rumble match, The 1998 and
1999 Royal Rumbles
WWF Royal Rumble
is another lengthy DVD containing actors throwing each other about a lot and
appear to cause a great deal of pain with their fists, feet or any household
implement they can get their hands on.
The main feature lasts two-and-three-quarter hours and takes up half the chapters
with Tazz vs. Kurt Angle, a Tag Team Table Match between the Hardy Boyz and the
Dudley Boyz, the Miss Rumble Competition (more on this later) and the Intercontinental
Triple Threat with co-champions Chris Jericho and Chyna up against Hardcore Holly.
The Tag Team Championship Match between the New Age Outlaws and Acolytes, the
Street Fight for the WWF Championship with Triple H against Cactus Jack and,
finally, the 30-Man Royal Rumble Match, which lasts an hour here, to determine the top
contender for the WWF Championship at Wrestlemaina.
Presented in a 4:3 ratio, the print is free of artifacts and looks very good.
And yes, I was right in stating atop this review that it's presented in NTSC as
filmed. This isn't the standard practice for DVDs in the UK but given that anyone
with a DVD player *should* be connecting it to the TV with a SCART
or S-video lead, this shouldn't be a problem and will make the picture look better
than a standard NTSC-PAL conversion.
The average bitrate is 5.24Mb/s, often peaking over 7Mb/s.
The sonic content, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround), fills the room
with sound. Most of the noise tends to come from the audience cheering while the meatheads
in the ring shout a lot.
Extras :
Chapters :
There are just 7 chapters over the main 166-minute feature (the rest of the time
is made up with the extras and gets another 7 chapters). It's technically not enough -
I prefer one chapter per five minutes at least - but they're just used here to
separate the different fights.
Languages and Subtitles :
Shouted English - and Spanish this time - in vanilla surround sound, but no subtitles.
And there's more... :
There's around 34 minutes of extras including an exclusive look backstage after the
Street Fight in which Triple H does not look at his best, particularly when he's covered
in blood, an in-depth look at the controversial end to the Royal Rumble match, The Rock
shouts his mouth off as always and we get a repeat, from the main feature, of the
Miss Rumble Swimsuit Competition.
In the case of the latter, the ladies line up: Ivory, Terri, Jacqueline, B.B., Luna and
WWF Women's Champion The Kat, but sadly the only one to get 'em out for the lads is the
haggard old late-comer, Mae Young.
Menu :
Most of the menus feature animation in the form of clips from the show, all
with music.
Overall, obviously only WWF fans are going to buy this but they'll be
well-served with over 3hrs of material and DVD is a much better way to view
the action over VHS given the instant scene access - not to mention pausing
certain parts of the Miss Rumble Swimsuit Competition... :)
The following is a list of all the The WWE/WWF DVDs and games review online to date :
2002 WWE Raw
2000
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
