Pro Wrestling
System: SMS
Release Date: December 1986
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Fighting
Sega joins the pro wrestling ranks with Pro Wrestling on the Sega Master System. I don’t know what it was about tag team wrestling, but all of our wrestling games so far have been strictly tag team matches. I suppose that should make it easy to compare them all to one another. This is an edited port of the Japanese game Gokuaku Doumei Dump Matsumoto, which stars female Japanese wrestlers.
You have four teams you can choose from, the Mad Soldiers (Muscle Soldier and Iron Soldier), the Orient Express (Dragonfly and Giant Bull), the Great Maskmen (Green Mask and Stone Head), and the Crush Brothers (Elder Crusher and Younger Crusher). The first two teams will only battle the second two teams and vice versa. Apparently each team is programmed to either the red corner or the blue corner. If Kevin Kelly has taught me anything, it bad guys are in the blue corner.
After choosing your team, you’re tasked with defeating your opponent ten times in a row in the Mexican league to win the Mexican Titles. You and your opponents come to down the aisle to a theme song and the three minute time limit match is on. Everyone shares the punch (Button 1), kick, (Button 2) and running body attack (Button 1 + 2). However, once knocking the opponent to the mat, you can hold Button 1 to do a grapple attack that varies for every wrestler from the body slam, to the pile driver, to the Boston Crab and more. Or, you can tap Button 1 and push your opponent into the ropes. Then you can launch an attack with either Button 1 or Button 2. A couple of these attacks are shared between wrestlers, but the variety is there. A couple of the teams can find a steel chair on the floor and others can take it to the top rope to attack.
After you beat the first team 10 times, you win the Mexican Tag Titles and fly off to Hawaii to challenge for the Pacific Tag Titles. You then face the other team then times to capture more gold. Finally, you fly off to New York to challenge the first team again for the World Tag Titles. After trying all the teams out, I decided to win with the Orient Express, because Giant Bull has the Boston Crab, which I found to be overpowered in earlier rounds.
I won matches in all sorts of ways to make sure I had good footage for this video. But I fumbled into what I can only call an exploit that made the last fifteen matches I played completely trivial. Three kick, punch combinations in a row will knock your opponent down long enough to be able to pin him, which will lead to a three count every time. If the opponents are able to break the sequence, I can’t guarantee it will work, but I plowed through the game in order to win the World Tag Titles with the “technique”.
Graphics: 2.5
The graphics are similar in style to M.U.S.C.L.E., but better in every way. Wrestlers have many colors, the backgrounds are way nicer.
Sound: 2.5
There are multiple songs at play in this game. The sound effects are nothing special, but certainly not bad.
Gameplay: 2.5
It took me a couple matches to get the controls down, but after I did, they worked most of the time. Matches are repetitive because of the lack of moves.
Difficulty: 1.0
Difficulty might be slightly higher if it wasn’t for the exploit I stumbled into. I don’t think the computer would beat me if I wasn’t screwing around, though.
Fun Factor: 2.5
I had way more fun with this than I did with either of the other wrestling games we’ve seen.
Overall Grade: 2.2
Pro Wrestling earns a C+ and it is indeed better than Tag Team Wrestling and M.U.S.C.L.E. on NES. Nintendo’s Pro Wrestling will come up next week, so we’ll be able to compare.