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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 and1999 Royal Rumbles
WWF Royal Rumbleis another lengthy DVD containing actors throwing each other about a lot andappear to cause a great deal of pain with their fists, feet or any householdimplement they can get their hands on.
The main feature lasts two-and-three-quarter hours and takes up half the chapterswith Tazz vs. Kurt Angle, a Tag Team Table Match between the Hardy Boyz and theDudley Boyz, the Miss Rumble Competition (more on this later) and the IntercontinentalTriple Threat with co-champions Chris Jericho and Chyna up against Hardcore Holly.
The Tag Team Championship Match between the New Age Outlaws and Acolytes, theStreet 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 topcontender 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 asfilmed. This isn’t the standard practice for DVDs in the UK but given that anyonewith a DVD player *should* be connecting it to the TV with a SCARTor S-video lead, this shouldn’t be a problem and will make the picture look betterthan 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 roomwith sound. Most of the noise tends to come from the audience cheering while the meatheadsin the ring shout a lot.
Extras : Chapters :There are just 7 chapters over the main 166-minute feature (the rest of the timeis 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 toseparate 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 theStreet Fight in which Triple H does not look at his best, particularly when he’s coveredin blood, an in-depth look at the controversial end to the Royal Rumble match, The Rockshouts his mouth off as always and we get a repeat, from the main feature, of theMiss Rumble Swimsuit Competition.
In the case of the latter, the ladies line up: Ivory, Terri, Jacqueline, B.B., Luna andWWF Women’s Champion The Kat, but sadly the only one to get ’em out for the lads is thehaggard old late-comer, Mae Young.
Menu :Most of the menus feature animation in the form of clips from the show, allwith music.
Overall, obviously only WWF fans are going to buy this but they’ll bewell-served with over 3hrs of material and DVD is a much better way to viewthe action over VHS given the instant scene access – not to mention pausingcertain parts of the Miss Rumble Swimsuit Competition… 🙂
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.