Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. Wrestling and video games have had a long, storied history, and before it seemed like the WWE Smackdown series was the only game in town, there were plenty of other titles to choose from. And in the NES era, there was one game in particular that stood above them all, and it sure as heck wasn’t a WWF/E game. This week, we take a look at Pro Wrestling on the NES. Is a winner us? Let’s hit the ring and find out.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1987
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
GENRE: Wrestling
There really isn’t too much back story to the creation of Pro Wrestling on the NES. It was one of the very first wrestling games on the console (the first being M.U.S.C.L.E, which was released a year prior). The game was programmed by one man, Masato Masuda, who was working with the company then known as TRY, which would later become Human. Human would become legendary for their work on one of the most beloved wrestling franchises ever in Fire Pro Wrestling, and if you’ve actually played Pro Wrestling on the NES, you can definitely see where a lot of the inspiration for Fire Pro Wrestling came from.
COVER STORY
I absolutely love the black box NES covers. Not only do they have this really nice retro feel about them, but they manage to sell the game extremely well. I would say though that my only real gripe with this cover is that neither of the wrestlers on the cover are actually in this game, but that’s a very minor gripe. This cover art is actually one of the most iconic black box covers. It was so iconic, that it was emulated by the WWE for one of John Cena’s T-shirts.
STORY
Step into the ring of the Video Wrestling Association. As one of six gruesome grapplers, you have to climb the ranks and defeat the reigning VWA champion, defend your newly won gold against all challengers, and face off with the champion of the VWF to gain all the gold. If you can succeed, well, a winner is you.
Yeah, bot much of a thrilling story here, but again, this is both an early NES game, and a sports title. The lack of story here can be easily excused.
GAMEPLAY
Pro Wrestling is a wrestling game for up to two players. You control one of six wrestlers as you compete in one on one matches. In one player mode, you compete in matches to rise up in rank to challenge for the VWA championship. Once you win the belt, you must defend it against all the challengers. You have six wrestlers to choose from
Fighter Hayabusa: The Japanese technician
Star Man: The mysterious masked luchador
Kin Corn Karn: The bruiser from the orient
Giant Panther: The American power house
The Amazon: The half man, half fish brute
King Slender: The pretty boy from the USA
Wrestling in this game works like this. You lock up with the opponent by getting in close. Once locked up, you can execute one of several moves. You can body slam and whip with the B button, and execute bigger moves with the A button. But before you think you can simply just bust out a plethora of brainbusters on your opponent, think again. Before you can do that, you have to wear them down physically with strikes, body slams, and other moves that can put their stamina down, and send them down for the count.
Each of the six wrestlers in this game have their own style of moves that sets each apart from the other. For example, Star Man can execute a drop sault kick, while the Amazon will stab his foe with a fork (with a really nice animation of him trying to defend his innocence to the referee). For not only a wrestling game, but a game in general for this time, having a strong diversity in the move set comes off as really cool.
The wrestlers in this game also are very inspired by some of the big wrestlers of this time. For example, Fighter Hayabusa is clearly inspired by Antonio Inoki, especially considering Hayabusa uses an enziguri kick as his special move. Star Man is inspired by lucha legend Mil Mascaras, The Amazon could be inspired by The Missing Link, and I believe King Slender is sort of inspired by Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.
The game also is pretty in depth in terms of just how many moves you can execute. You can hit body slams, piledrivers, brainbusters, among other big time grapple attacks. But you can also do running strikes, top rope dives, you can slam and suplex enemies over the top rope and out of the ring, and even do running dives over the rope rope to the enemy below. A lot of stuff that honestly wouldn’t be replicated for most of the wrestling games that would follow Pro Wrestling, especially on the NES.
Each match is a five minute fight, and all matches are one fall to a finish. Like I established, you have to beat every contender before facing the VWA champ. Once that’s done, you have to beat all the challengers to the belt and earn a shot at the VWF champ, and final boss of the game Great Puma in a double title match. Should you lose a match, you will fall in contender rank. Keep doing so, and it’s game over. There are no passwords or save features, meaning it’s a one and done run in this game. This can lead to quite an ordeal on the thumbs especially with how intense this game can actually get.
Two player mode are two out of three falls matches. And as you could easily guess, the object is to score two pin falls before the other player. There are no other match types, or any other specialties in the game, but for a game of this era, and how much has been put into it, that’s perfectly fine.
The game controls really well, and there are barely any major hit detection issues that I can find (though trying to perfectly hit someone with the strikes do require pixel perfection at times), though my main gripe is trying to get the hang of the grappling. It’s a bit of a tug of war, where you have to hit your buttons at the best time, if not the AI will always hit first. This can be tricky to master, at least it was for me. But other than some tricky grappling, everything else works like a dream.
GRAPHICS
This game is definitely one of the best looking early NES games. So much attention to detail in almost everything. The ring is well designed, as is the arena. There’s an energetic crowd, commentators calling the action, even a camera man who moves back and forth. Most wrestling games that followed didn’t even put in a quarter of the effort into making something that looks this professional (Wrestlemania for example), and for that, this game really deserves some major kudos in some of the best looking stuff on the NES. And again, this was all programmed by one guy, which makes things even crazier.
MUSIC
This game doesn’t offer too much in the music department. They reuse the classic NES black box jingle for the opening, and the main theme is a pretty basic song as well. But for what you get, you do still get some okay music, and nothing that ever feels out of place. This is another decent early NES soundtrack.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Pro Wrestling is perhaps the best NES wrestling game on the console. There’s enough attention to detail into what makes a wrestling match fun and exciting, the game boasts incredible graphics for its time, and the game has a great pick up and play feel to it. The fact that this was all programmed by one guy is quite surprising, especially when you consider how bad most wrestling games that followed on the NES being such train wrecks, and they were made by more than one person. If you are a wrestling fan, interested in seeing one of the earliest wrestling games, or a fan of early NES games, then this game is certainly worth a play. A winner will certainly be you.
RATING: Thumbs Up