Me, before I got in shape.

I have been a fan of professional wrestling for as long as I can remember.  The same goes with video games.  So is it safe to assume that I am a fan of wrestling games?  Of course it is.  Is it also safe to assume that I will instantly enjoy any wrestling game that is put before me and completely ignore it’s faults?  No, not so much.  It doesn’t seem like that difficult of a concept to convert to a great game, but you’d be very surprised by some of the lows that have been hit over the years in the genre.  The world of wrestling games is much like the actual world of wrestling, some of the participants are larger than life and can bring a crowd of thousands to their feet, while others get no reaction whatsoever and end up being seen at flea markets around the country charging $2 for a few minutes of their time.  Now, we take a look back.

The NES Era (and a bit before)

Title Match Pro Wrestling was not the first wrestling game I ever played, but it is for the Atari so I feel it should go first.  Pretty much because I don’t want to put our young readers to sleep by talking about gaming in the caveman days.  Besides setting the bar for generic wrestling game titles, TMPW isn’t very memorable at all.  Now I’ve got a few screenshots, but I’m going to post the only thing from this game that I really personally remember…

Aside from the tragic origin story of Skin Head, you have very little other reason to play this game.  This game pushed the limit in terms of graphics for the Atari, but it just wasn’t a fun game when you got down to it.  Believe it or not, you could only play as Generic Indian, Masked Man, Nazi, and Other Minority for so long.  Not turned away yet?  Have a look at some alleged gameplay:

Yeah.  That was actually a long, technical masterpiece of a match too.

The NES was home to several wrestling titles, most of which sucked.  Tecmo World Wrestling (sucked), MUSCLE (sucked), and several other lackluster titles.  The NES was the first console (don’t know if this is true or not but I’m not doing any homework on it) to feature a real roster of wrestlers, with WWF Wrestlemania.  Sure the roster was limited, there were about 4 moves, and if the computer was playing as Andre you were screwed, but it still managed to be good fun back in the day.  WCW also entered the arena with a much better first try than the WWF.  WCW offered you the chance to choose your moves, and even included signature moves for each wrestler.  It also had a decent roster, which didn’t really matter because I played as Flair every single time.

Something must be said for the fact that no matter what they wore in real life, your wrestler wore the same snazzy black trunks with different solid-colored tights.  Was there a sale on them backstage, or at the local dance academy?  Which wrestler found the deal?  Did the company reimburse him?  What the hell did Ric Flair do wrong to end up with the mustard yellow?  Gameplay may not have been deep, but the questions left racing through your mind were.

I mentioned MUSCLE in passing earlier, but I feel I must go back.  This game was based on the popular line of small plastic wrestling figures from long ago.  MUSCLE Men were where it was at, and you weren’t shit if you didn’t have at least 100 of those fuckers.  Truth be told, not only did I have a ton of them, but I also had the title belt carrying case.  You did too?  Allow me to go one further, I kept bios and stats for all of mine.  Let’s get to a clip of this suck and forget I ever let that last sentence out:

I know it looks like it sucks (because it does), but I think I sorta see where they were going.  It was a popular line of toys, so maybe they were trying to simulate the way kids play with them with all of the flying through the air and punching and very basic slams.  However they didn’t take into account those of us who had complex storylines made up for our figures, and who put on 5 star matches with complicated chain-wrestling combinations, instantly damning the game to the clearance bin.  Man, we were so damn cool.

While the NES had a large share of misses, it did have a gigantic hit.  The NES was graced with a game that would go on to set the bar for wrestling games from that point on, and change the face of wrestling video-games forever.  A game that brought to the table the best in graphics, sound, and control.  This was not your father’s wrestling game!  Maybe I’m being overly dramatic, maybe I’m not!  Actually I am being overly dramatic and I’ll admit it because I don’t want to write myself into a corner.  Still, it was a great game.

We’ll speak on that and much more next time my friends.