Are You Ready To Rumble?
The modern wrestling video game consists of thousands of smoothly animated polygons and hi-res skins and textures that accurately duplicate the glamor and glitz of professional wrasslin, but the genre also has a rich 2D video game history that includes several must-play classics.
The first 2D wrestling video game that many encountered was Nintendo’s simply-named Pro Wrestling, an 8-bit grappler featuring a nice selection of freaky-cool characters such as Star Man. The control scheme was simple, and the move sets limited, but Pro Wrestling was lots of fun.
Fire Pro wrestling is the most deep, complex wrestling franchise ever created, 2D or not.
The Fire Pro Factor
The 2D wrestling video game took a large evolutionary leap with the release of Human’s/SPIKE!’s Fire Pro Wrestling series. The game remained a Japan exclusive for years since its 1989 PC Engine debut. The reason? Fire Pro included virtually every popular wrestler/MMA fighter/league in history, but managed to skirt copyright issues (in Japan, at least) by giving the characters fake names and slightly tweaked appearances. In recent years, Agetec brought Fire Pro to America (Fire Pro Wrestling, Fire Pro Wrestling 2, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns), but altered the wrestlers’ appearances to avoid the wrath of one Mr. Vince McMahon.
Thankfully, the Fire Pro series houses an insanely deep character creation and customization system that allows you to give the big balding blonde guy with the big boot and leg drop his yellow shirt, trunks, boots and bandana, or create original wrestlers with hundreds of moves and unique fighting AI. Since debuting in the late ’80s, the Fire Pro series has gone one to become one of the most respected and loved wrestling video game franchises, appearing on a variety of consoles.
Haggar on attack.
Saturday Nights Get Live
Fire Pro may represent the pinnacle of 2D wrestling video games, but there were other quality two dimensional grappling games that sprung up during its run. For example, Capcom’s Saturday Night Slam Masters (aka Muscle Bomber in Japan) was a hit both in the arcade and on home consoles, thanks to its large ’90s-era musclebound sprites, Monday Night Raw glitz, and the manliest man that ever manned, Final Fight’s Mayor Mike Haggar. The title barely qualifies as a wrestling game, however; the gameplay relies heavily on strikes and features Street Fighter II special moves that makes it feel more like a beat ‘em up or one-one-one fighting game that’s confined to the squared circle. Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II moved further into the 2D fighter realm by eliminating the need to pin opponents to win a match.
LGN released a trio of 16-bit wrestling games on the SNES and Genesis: WWF Super Wrestlemania, WWF Royal Rumble, and WWF Raw. Featuring digitized likenesses of several WWF pro wrestlers, the trilogy evolved from a very simple button masher to a very simple button masher with special moves and varied game modes.