Last updated on December 8th, 2025 at 04:15 pm
80s Mania Wrestling Returns – Simulation Game Review
80s Mania Wrestling Returns is a Simulation/Sports/Sports game from Checkmate Creative LLC, first launched in 2nd August 2018.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 1,977+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes 80s Mania Wrestling Returns Stand Out
Wrestling GM mode game! Become a retro wrestling general manager and booker!
80s Mania Wrestling Returns is a totally radical pro wrestling manager game and wrestling booker game presented as a collectible card game! And it's set in the 1980s and 1990s!
Hundreds of amazing characters flesh out this old school wrestling universe including wrestlers, tag teams, managers, commissioners, interviewers and more! Each character is totally original while also inspired by the two greatest decades in pop culture history! It’s piledriving parody at its finest!
Wrestling game fans looking for a pro wrestling GM mode or booker game will love 80s Mania Wrestling Returns!
Do you have what it takes to be an elite GM? Not only will you run your own fantasy wrestling league full of awesome weekly shows using your collected wrestlers, you'll host a supercard every month where all your biggest feuds can settle the score!
Full-blown stat tracking for all of your wrestlers Wins and Losses, Title History for each of your Championship Belts and even Year End Awards make this the best wrestling simulator of any mobile wrestling game out there!
80s Mania Wrestling Returns might just be the best wrestling game in the business!
This Simulation game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, 80s Mania Wrestling Returns is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 29th November 2025
Recent improvements include:
-Previous Early Access Wrestler cards are now in the Daily Shop rotation
-Foil versions of previous cards available
-A wild Turducken appeared!
Download & Availability
80s Mania Wrestling Returns is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get 80s Mania Wrestling Returns on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Looks like it could be a fun game, that is if you can get it to load. Ive only been able to get into the game to actually play it once. Every other time we try to open the game we get stuck on a loading screen with a loading bar that never moves, no matter how long you wait or how many times you try to close and reopen the app.
For subscribers, consider adding more and better cards to the card store. Other than that, its a great game and very nostalgic.
We gave it hey four instead of five star simply because we feel you were a little greedy when it comes to the money aspect of it as we have spent over $200 on your game we feel you shouldve given us a little more.
When we barely downloaded it we had a lot of fun until now the game doesnt even load at all.
Very fun booking game that plays really well on mobile. Highly recommend to any fans of GM mode, TEW and other booking sims.
This app is so much fun. Its non stop walk down memory lane when pro wrestling wasnt pure dumpster trash like its been since the 1990s. Great work! Love this app.
This game, is the only game we will ever spend money on. This game is the perfect mix of card collecting, nostalgia, and pop culture references balled up into a simple wrestling game. We cant explain in enough words how awesome this game is. The developers listen and really have made an amazing game.
Seriously, this is a fun game but you quickly realize to get any cards or venues that are worth a crap, youll either have to do the subscription or pay $$ to get them. Youll get stuck with the same cards you started with for wayyyyy longer than you want until you can save up in game $$ to get new ones (which doesnt happen quickly by any means).
This might be the dumbest game we've ever tried. Don't recommended wasting your time.
We were expecting a bad game but a booking game is fine just that we picked the cheapest guy and getting the lowest money isnt a good thing but when we buy cards (wrestlers only) from the shop they are inactive, today we even bought the foil version for a character but didnt get to put him in a match. Also as a suggestion maybe run ins.
Stop making too many needles changes. The slave drivers to pain dealers was stupid. Dont let Wokeness ruin a good game. Other than that . Updated review, Mad Arab changed to Mad Abner was stupid. We know that the woke whiners would call it racism, so are you going to change his Arab dress too ? Why not just make him into a redneck hillbilly now ? Because the name fits that image better. No longer spending money on tokens. This game is getting watered down and lame.
Not nearly generous enough with the payout you get in game. Good luck getting enough to buy a legendary tier wrestler Ive gone about 5 in game years and max out about $5000 in a single month. Over a whole year, Ill probably earn about 50,000-60,000 (even worse at the start of the game, too). You get 1 token annually (worth 100k), and one every real-life month. Legendary tier wrestlers can cost upwards of 150k, and some arent even active for more than half of an in-game decade. Would describe this game as very stingy for f2p players.
We love this game, and the monthly updates keep it entertaining. Just a few hints to make it even better. Add a few more titles such as womens tag team , six man tag team, possibly a tycoon title, and or hardcore title. Maybe add new monthly event possibilities such as the 80s War games match or the gauntlet match and a tag team tournament or best 2 out of three falls. Keep up the good work and growing this game.
Its really good and fun but when you play it for like a hour it gets boring and cards are really expensive and its annoying. But other than that its a pretty good game.
Its a great game and us and our brother likes to play it.
When are we going to get 2000s mania wrestling.
Was having fun with the game up until the last update and would have given the game a 4 star rating instead of 3. Since the update the rotation of cards through the store is broken. Currently the ONLY cards that are available are jobbers, openers and match types. Before the update they used to rotate through legendary, upper mid card and mid card wrestlers, but havent seen any since the update. It is getting brining now to just wait for a shop refresh to only see new cards you have zero interest in. We would love to hear if this change was purposeful or if they accidentally jacked up the store.
Add a hardcore championship belt.
We love this game its combines the fun of wwe our gm mode and the 80s we really recommend this game it is so fun.
Crazy people to get legends like troglo cadaver star boy are just in this game and it never gets boring to play its just amazing and addicting with great people in 80s mania and has very good people to collect in 80s mania and in our opinion it is better than Modern mania just emo people in Modern mania.
This and MMW are the greatest booking games of all time. This game we love but we have a question for the creators can you add contracts as a different game mode to the game thats the only thing we wish for.
Bought subscription, and bought countless tokens. It only gives us the options of getting the same lame foil cards and we will not spend another dime until they cycle out the available cards to purchase. Such a rip off.
So much text to read and so many options you must click on . Very sloppy looking as everything is all over the place and you get lost easily trying to figure everything out despite the walkthrough. We cant deal with such a headache.
This is a great game. Considering how much Ive enjoyed it, we tried Modern Mania as well, which turns out to be exponentially more grindy. Stick with this gem and dont be fooled by the sequelits more of a re-skin with much more aggressive monetization.
We love this game so much! We miss when wrestling was a bunch of different characters and this game fulfills that want. We agree with one review asking for title renaming/creating. Create a ppv and CAW would also be a welcome addition.
First heard about this game from one of conrad Thompsons podcasts. Its a lot of fun. Great character artwork and backstories on each.
We wish we can set up tournaments for the championship titles after the championship becomes vacant through injury or through constant cheating and title swapping.
We personally love this game, its one of only a couple that we have made in game purchases, and Ive played quite awhile. One thing we would love to see in a future update is an option to change a regular one on one match to a tag team match. We love tag teams and would like to use our teams more. Another idea is being able to book hot feuds on consecutive cards without penalty. But only hot feuds thats listed as such in the news section. In wrestling if a program is hot you want to book that on as many shows as possible because that program is drawing the most money.
We love this game but have had most of big crowd venues disappear. We asked support through email and never received a response. For that we have to rate the game a one star since we are not making nearly as much now that Canada Centre is our biggest venue.
We are new to this game, but Im a huge fan of 80s and 90s wrestling. This is a really neat representation of the genre. It seems to be getting addicting too.
Started playing this game and cant put our phone down.
This is a fun game easy to play with some good strategy once you unlock more than the basic cards. Money system is very fair and you can easily grind your way to what ever cards you want after cashing in a couple of tokens of which you get once a game year. While you cant fully control the outcome of a match using the cards that modify a wrestlers push can greatly nudge things the way you want to go. This game is perfect for mobile as it plays in 2 – 3 minutes chunks once you get the hang of the card system.
We love playing this game! This is the 1st issue Ive had though. We just bought Chance Solar in 1999. But hes not showing up on our roster.
We played other booking games and they were not as good as this. You dont have to pay after a while, Unlike wrestling GM.
Just the perfect blend of depth but easy enough to just pick up and play compared to the majority of other wrestling booking games, which imo are too text heavy and turn into a mess of numbers and names after a while. Couple small bugs: 1. When auto filling skits/matches from top contenders sometimes the Book button disappears. 2. Sometimes when you try to use a Feud from the Sponsor slot to autofill out a match with the Feuds included wrestlers, it seems to be very finicky when a Foil card is involved. It puts in the wrestlers but locks out the feud until you clear the card, even after you switch back to the non-foil. Doesnt seem to recognize we switch back to the non-foil to use the non-foil feud or something idk, but its slightly buggy. Far from gamebreaking though. We like how we can make our own Factions, that was awesome update as well as more wrestlers, factions and feuds. Id love to be able to create a belt or rename the belts too, changing TV to Hardcore or Intercontinental would be sweet.
Its a wonderful love letter to pop culture and vintage wrestling! Ill play this forever.
This game was fun and had potential, but for the last few days it will not load on our phone. It gets to 4 loading bars and never moves. Disappointing as we were really getting into this game.
Im hooked on this game. We love looking at the cards and trying to figure out to whom they are an homage. Its a deck builder/wrestling booking sim wrapped in a fun package. Youve got the run of the mill from Jobbers to Legends, homages to famous pro wrestlers, legendary musicians, pop culture figures, and iconic movie, cartoon, and video game characters. For pro wrestling and pop culture nerds of the 1980s and 1990s, this game is a dream come true. To truly enjoy this, understanding the nuances to pro wrestling is a must. Understanding the babyface and heel dynamics, feuds, gimmicks, etc will help you be successful. Tap into your inner Vince McMahon, Jim Crockett, or Verne Gagne, and start fantasy booking like no tomorrow. We cannot recommend this game enough.
We were playing this game when it suddenly is now frozen on the startup screen with continue. We do not want to restart the game so could you fix it please.
Absolutely love this game. Once you get used to what cards help build better matches and build a war chest, its tough to put down.
We have no other words than, what an amazing game to play. Not a lot of good booking sims out there, and this is one of the good ones.
Totally our speed, fun and relaxing and silly. You can try to set up outcomes and killer shows but its challenging to get the star ratings p and keep top guys healthy. Support has been great, engagement is great. New game elements have been added since we started and we love it.
We never do these, write reviews, but we gotta give it up to the developers of this game. This is the only game Ive ever tried on our Iphone and its been such an awesome experience its really all we need. Im currently in year 1992 and the past 12 seasons have been filled with unique content and killer matchmaking. In a time where games find so many ways to charge the consumer this game gives back to the player which keeps the experience going. Thank you to the creators for all the free tokens and new characters, Keep up the great work!!!! 10/10.
Addictive but we are dumb so we dropped about $100 on this hahah love it though.
It a very good game it like svr gm mode.
This game makes us long for Saturday mornings watching cartoons, eating cereal, and waiting for WWFs Superstars of Wrestling to come on. The replayability is insane. Get this game.
Time flies by playing this blast of a game! The options for wrestlers and matches keeps interest and entertainment.
Love this game! The characters are cheeky & the booking element is addictive. This is a must for any wrestling fan.
The improvements of this game makes it that much fun.
They offered us free in game tokens to leave good reviews. Usually unless you pay money it takes an entire month to earn 1 token. Im leaving a review for a free token. This game is a grind to play if you dont pay money.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.147
- Size: 303.02 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Checkmate Creative LLC
Last updated: 29th November 2025 | Genre: Simulation, Sports | Developer: Checkmate Creative LLC