028 · TAG TEAM WRESTLING
Data East becomes the first third-party publisher to make a game for the NES, but is it any good?! For more NEStalgia as well as in-depth articles and show notes, go to www.NEStalgiacast.com
Tag Team Wrestling is the first third-party game on the show, from Data East, and the first one Nintendo let out without publishing it themselves. It is a rough way to start that chapter. We came away unable to say who was hitting whom, and not entirely sure we had been playing the same game.
What it gets right
- Pins you cannot always escape. If you have been beaten down far enough, mashing does nothing and you stay pinned. That is a believable touch, the same thing that happens late in the N64 WrestleMania 2000 and No Mercy games.
- The ref. He wears the biggest, happiest open-mouthed smile whenever he is counting someone out.
- A cheap trick that works. One of the two wins we managed came from staying outside the ring and jumping back in at a count of 19, because the computer keeps chasing you out there and never thinks about the count.
Where it falls apart
- The core move is a menu you cannot use. You land a tiny punch with A, and if it connects a menu of moves appears. You then have about three seconds to cycle with B and lock one in with A. Mashing means you keep confirming the first move by accident, and Joe never saw the menu at all, yet still pinned people.
- It feels random and rigged. The computer seems to get a frame-perfect interruption on whatever you were about to do, like a tiny boy wrestling a big man. Opponents also glow red and become invincible as they get angrier, which the manual mentions, but it never happens to you.
- No reason to tag. Hardly anyone found a use for the partner beyond maybe a stamina swap. The special moves are not special, and the animation jumps, like the Game & Watch, from one side of the ring to the other. A suplex out of the ring looks like a screen change.
- Winning gets you the same fight. You get the little dance and then wrestle the same people again, the Strongbads, over and over. Titles come at three wins (American), eight (European), 15 (World) and 25 (Super), and we argued about why Europe outranks America.
Beyond the game
It was developed by Technos Japan, who made Double Dragon, River City Ransom and Super Dodgeball, so we were puzzled it turned out like this. The game dates to the arcade in 1983. We also learned the Strongbads are where Strong Bad from Homestar Runner got his name and Mexican wrestling mask. It landed in late 1986, just after WrestleMania 2.
The bottom line
Skip it. In the Essential Games List segment Joe said no, calling it difficult because it is poorly programmed, not because you can learn from it. Sam said he would rather go to his older brother's room and get beaten up, and he put it in the jank folder, though he admitted he may have imagined landing a clothesline. All four of us called it not essential, and we are not telling you to check it out. The Data East lineup that follows worried us too.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
You are challenged to match the awesome skills of your opponents to gain the title in the World Super Championships of Tag Team Wrestling!
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. I'm Sean. And I'm Sam. Guys, tag team wrestling. Woo! Yay. Yeah, I felt that from the room, but more importantly, Sean hasn't even reacted yet. More importantly, though, we're talking about a Data East game. Oh, man. Yeah, a company that doesn't really have an amazing reputation and is now bankrupt. Yeah. Woo! Hey, they got the first third party game in there, didn't they? Yeah, this is the, and it seems like we barely talk about that, but every game so far was like Nintendo at least published. Mm-hmm. Uh, developed was sometimes handled by intelligence systems.
Or, um, who did Ten Yard Fight? Iram. Did that. So they did Tenured Fight and also Kung Fu. Yes. So, you know, there were other parties in there for sure, but this is the first game that Nintendo has allowed without their publishing seal on it. Now, of course, it still has the Nintendo seal. It has the seal of approval. I guess we'll be the guests of if that matters anymore. We're just the true approvers. Yeah, we'll judge if it still deserves that quality seal. But let's go right into first impressions. Joe, what do you got for me? I think the first thing I thought was like, what is going on in this game? Because it seemed like.
This is real fast. You're in the ring with an opponent. It's pretty simple wrestling, but it seemed pretty random whether I'm hitting him, he's hitting me. I mean, I'm doing the same thing every time. Sometimes I get a hit. Sometimes he gets a hit.
Not a lot of like animation doesn't feel like we're like moving. It was just it was a little confusing at the beginning. Yeah, I didn't get much better. Sean. Okay, so you you the way you explain it, Joe, was that you would sometimes get a hit just as often as he would get a hit or the computer would get a hit. Okay, I'm sure the computer got a hit more often. I think I know where you're going with this. Yeah, it was very difficult to get a hit. This game is is not very user friendly. The computer seems to have no problem just doing like a frame perfect interrupt of whatever you are about to do. It was it was wrestling, but it was as if you were a tiny, tiny boy and you were wrestling the big man.
Yeah. Yeah, I felt like I was doing like I read the manual. Well, first of all, I read the manual before going into this and I felt like I missed something because I just got my ass kicked like immediately. There are only seven pages to that manual, aren't there? Yeah, and I I didn't I didn't know what was happening and I kept trying and I just I felt like it was cheap. I felt like I just I was wondering at one point like did they actually like allow you to fight in this game? Like I know it was by a different developer. Maybe it's like how long can you last in the ring with this guy? It's a kind of wrestling.
Yeah. So, yeah, my first impression was just that that is such a weird way to handle grappling in this game. Oh, yeah. For the uninformed, what you do is you'll punch with a and it will let out the tiniest punch animation. It looks like it's barely like the guy's barely reaching across to his opponent. But if you're lucky enough, you will register that as a hit and then a like screen will come on with the attack that you yeah, a menu with like what attack you might do. And then you can toggle through B in three seconds time. You have to hit it over and over. As many times you can just hit B like I think you get like four or five different moves. There's a ton of different moves. Really? Yeah. How many?
I don't remember exactly, but I remember seeing a lot of different. There's like six, seven, eight. OK, that's way more than four. Four. That's at least two more than four. He's got me there. Anyway, so you cycle through them and then that's the move you wind up and then that's the move you wind up doing. Well, you got to press A on the move. Otherwise, your guy just does nothing. But that's what screws you over. I understand cycling with B because I guess you, you know, even though you're on a menu screen, you should be able to cycle with the D-pad. But let's say you couldn't, right? And you need to use B.
To reconfirm with A, the problem there is that you're mashing the buttons so much that you just wind up, at least me, I always wind up doing the very first attack. Well, yeah. But Mike, that means you're playing the game wrong. You're supposed to know exactly when you're going to hit them and then have the presence of mind to go into menu mode and then do your move. I get the menu mode, I think. I think that it was, because it's like, I think this is one where you look up what the move is in the manual, you know? I think it's a manual game.
What I mean, though, is that you should never be mashing buttons. But you can only play this game by mashing buttons. Well, I get that too. And I think that's okay for games, you know, to be a button masher. Because your better moves are near the end with, like, you have to press B like eight times or whatever to get the cool moves. Yeah, but I'm constantly getting, I can't do those cool moves because I'm constantly hitting A and then immediately reconfirming my A, even though I'm just not noticing. My issue with it was I kept pressing B to try and get to the last of it, and then I would never hit A, and so the guy would just hit me again.
Can I ask you guys something? Yes. How frequently did you guys get this menu to come up when you hit that? Very infrequently. When I connected, I got it. No, I know, but I connected very infrequently. Did you ever connect and not have the menu come up and you just start pinning the guy? I've had that only when they're on the floor. Okay, can I tell you guys something? Yeah, I'm ready. I never got the menu to come up. No. Right now, I'm going to go over here panicking. I'm like, what are they talking about? I'm like, do I just go along with it?
I never got the menu to come up. A full-blown menu with, like, a border. Yeah, it just tells you one word, and then when you press B again, it cycles to a different word. It'll be like, how did your guys get on the floor? But I have pinned someone. Oh, wait, I know exactly what happened. I figured out Joe's situation. So what must have happened is the guy picked you up, and then your tag team partner came in, punched them, knocked them down, and then you went to pin them. Because they were knocked down. I did get picked up a lot. It was always the same move that he would use on me.
I thought, I could be wrong, but I thought that I used it on him before, too. But if I didn't have that word come up, maybe it came up, but I didn't even see it, and I was just pressing so fast. No, the strong pads always have the upper hand with you. Yeah. I saw it in the manual, because I did eventually go back and read the manual. It's like, what am I missing? I saw in the manual it hit B this many times, and I just never saw that come up. This is fascinating. Yeah. You're bringing a whole different perspective to the game.
I think we should probably get a little more focused, though, first. So I don't want to say let's talk about the objective, because it's wrestling. But the ways to win is either by count out, outside of the ring, a count to 20. And if both are out, then I honestly don't know what happened. I'm probably just going to say you lost. Yeah, probably. In games like these.
But then the other way is to pin, and is there like a TKO option? If there is, I never got it. I don't believe so. I think once you get into a pin, you just can't get out when you have zero energy. You have to mash. It says that in the manual. Yes. It says to mash, but if there's enough of an energy disparity, you're not going to get out. Oh, yes. I hear what you're saying. I lost every time by pinning. Even in those later WWF games that were popular on the N64, like WrestleMania 2000 and No Mercy, there comes a point where you've just been beaten down so hard that even when you're getting pinned and you're trying to break out, it's just not going to happen. So that's a cool little touch. But this game is missing a lot.
And I think that more so than the menu thing is an interesting way to get around not being able to program a bunch of different moves. But I think coming up very soon, we'll see a better way to handle doing different moves in a wrestling game. Better, yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying efficient still, but definitely better.
One thing that I couldn't get over is that there's a point where your opponents just become invincible. Yeah, they turn red and they just come at you. That's in the manual, too. It mentions that they start glowing with the angrier they get. If you try to run away or something. But I never glow. I never become invincible. That seems really cheap that it doesn't happen for me.
Yeah. I would just like to go back for one moment, Mike, and say that you said that this game has a lot missing. Yes. It's missing a lot. I would say that's true. But even what is there is just so poorly implemented that there's no way to have fun with this game. Like, the only way to do anything is almost locked out just because of how frame perfect you have to be with it. So even if it had more features, if it kept the way that it actually implemented the features it does have, this game would be no better. I'll say it right now. The animation is jank.
Okay? Yes. The special moves are not very special. They don't really feel that cool. Yeah. The tag is almost, like, irrelevant. I feel like I never used the tag. There's no real reason. I mean, maybe a stamina thing. Like, oh, my guy's really low on health right now, so I'll tag him. My other guy. Who cares? Like, the sooner you get out of the match, the better it is for your soul. The sooner you just shut off the system. Yeah, exactly. So just end the match.
But did anybody actually, like, win a match? No. I won a match. I pinned a guy, but didn't hold him down. You actually won. I actually won a match. Did your guys do the little dance at the end? They did. Okay, that makes me feel good. They did a little dance, and then you immediately fight the same people again, and you're still the same people as well.
But they're harder, right? Well, I wouldn't say. I didn't notice that they were harder, but, you know, like, winning the first one was kind of a fluke to begin with, so I didn't continue on, really, to continue fighting. But I played a couple of different fights, and the one that I won, the main strategy was just every time I was able to get an attack to knock them down, was just to pin them right away and get closer to that three count each time.
So I don't know. Changing up the number of times you pin, like, if you pin more frequently, that eventually the ref will just hand it to you. He'll just do, like, a faster three count. You notice that when the ref is counting you out or counting your opponent out, that he has, like, the biggest smile on his face? Like, he is the happiest to be reffing. He just likes what he does. It's the most exciting part of his job. He just likes pinning. He's almost out of the game. He's like, this is it. I can finally go home. But yeah, it's like an open-mouthed smile. I mean, it's a very happy smile. The other way I won, because I won another match. You won twice? Not in the same sequence. Wow. Was a count-out.
Oh, really? A very cheap count-out. And I found this to probably be the most efficient method for those who want to... Just keep jumping out and into the ring. What I would do is I would be out there, and then, no, I would actually just continue to fight him, do different moves and stuff like that, get to, like, a 19 count, jump back in the ring real fast before he could, and then it counts him out, because... Yeah, because you could jump back in the ring fast. Yeah. You'd be, like, a jump in the air, like a somersault, and you're just back in the ring.
But the computer is, like, insistent, even though it knows that a count-out is gonna... It's like, he'll come back out. Yeah, like, the computer's, like, insistent on, like, as long as the player is out here, I should be fighting him. Never thinking, like, I should go back to the ring. There's a count-out coming up, you know? Like, I think that's just weird, and to be honest, I said that the computer knows that, but I highly doubt that it did. Right. So, we're bashing Data East here, but this game was actually developed by Technos Japan.
They did games... Technos? Technos. I'm not pronouncing that right, but it's, like, it is techno, with an S at the end, but the O has, like, a line over it. Oh, okay. So... I don't know what that is. It probably still makes it Technos, if you're asking me. Technos. Yeah. They're also bankrupt. Oh, good. But they made... They made a couple of notable games, so I don't know why they had such a hard time developing this one, but they made Double Dragon. They made River City Ransom.
Super Dodgeball. Those are pretty good games. Yeah. All things considered. Like, games that are still heard about. Yeah. I don't know if they're, like, still good. I haven't gotten back to them in a long time, but... Super Dodgeball's a fun game. Yeah, Double Dragon is definitely gonna be, like, a highlight on NES. That'll be in there. I haven't played any of these games. Very cool. That'll be a first for you, and you'll think, this is coming from the studio. It's made to Team Wrestling. That's a big game? Double Dragon's a pretty big game, and I think it got a couple sequels, too. Yeah, with Battletoads. Yeah, Double Dragon and Battletoads. That's a big deal.
Wait, they did Battletoads? No, no, no. Well, okay, so there was a team-up. The franchise, yeah. Yeah. So Battletoads got its game, and then Double Dragon got its game, and then they actually, like, did a team-up game later, where it's Double Dragon and Battletoads. Oh, okay, cool. Like, not on the same cart, like, the two different games. Like, it's actually its own game. An actual own game where the two team up. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, if you bother to actually try and beat this game, does anybody know what you do? I mean, just keep fighting. You just keep fighting. But I think that more so than Urban Champion, which required 125 wins to become the Urban Champion, that was a little unrealistic.
At three wins, you can get the American Tag Team Champions, which will, like, display a screen with the trophy, which is kind of cool. At eight wins, you become the European Tag Team Champions. At 15 wins, you become the World Tag Team Champions. At 25 wins, you become the Super Tag Team Champions. I somehow think that the World Tag Team Champions is probably a bigger deal. That's what I was thinking. But here's also what I'm thinking. Why is Europe so much better than America in the wrestling circuit?
I think it's, like, in addition. Like, you got the American, and now you also have the American. So it only takes three to get the American. There's an additional five to get the Europeans. There's only one country in America. I have never heard of the European wrestlings. You have to relearn the European fighting style, so it takes a little longer.
I'm going to have to give a lesson here for a moment, because we're talking 1986, and we're talking late 86, so WrestleMania 2 has already happened, actually. WrestleMania 1 was in 85, and WrestleMania 2 was in, like, March of 86. Okay. So, you know, Hulkamania is running wild in America right now, and the Japanese like wrestling, too, and probably a little good mix of the WWF as well. This time it was the WWF, not the WWE.
So wrestling is, like, really big in pop culture, like, bigger than it ever is now. Should have been. You know? Like, yeah, bigger than it ever should have been, too. But I'm a big wrestling guy, and I will just say that, like, the structure, even in the WWF, was, like, you know, the American belt is kind of just, like, that's it. You know? Like, that's the bottom line, and you want to be that world champion is, like, the final one. But there was a European belt, and then there's the Intercontinental belt, too. So I think that maybe the structure should have been, like, American, European, Intercontinental, and then world to match, like, how the WWF did it. Yeah. Like, if you're the world champ, then who do you beat to become the super champion?
All the superheroes. I'm so glad you asked about who you beat, Sam, because you just continue to fight the same people over and over again. The Strongbads. Which, Sam, take it away. All right, so when I saw that they were called the Strongbads, I had to do a little research, and it turns out that the character from HomestarRunner.com, Strongbad, if you guys know Homestar Runner? Mm-hmm. Yeah. is named after these characters from this video game.
Yeah, that's also why he's got the Mexican wrestler face, too. Oh, yeah. The second I saw the names, I was like, oh, that must be him. I never thought. Like, I mean, I know that Strongbad is mostly just a thing, like, referencing obscure 80s things anyway, but the impact that this game had on the creator of Strongbad, the Homestar Runner website character, is just like, that's weird. Yeah, it was weird. Of all games, this. It's a very strange thing to discover.
Like, I just never would have found the reference. I never thought I'd find the reference. It's just in this game. I only found the reference by doing, like, a deeper dive, too, into, like, the game. Like, I never, like, when I saw the Strongbads there, I just thought, like, oh, that must be, like, a normal name for wrestlers or something like that. Like, it couldn't have been, like, a correlation between Strongbad from Homestar Runner and the Flash animation. That's what I thought, too. I saw it, and I was like, no. This isn't bad. It's on Wikipedia. You can see the origin of Strongbad. Wow. It's just, it's very strange.
And, unfortunately, you know, for this game, too, we're going to see a lot of this from Data East. I don't know why. I mean, I'm not saying that every single game they make is going to be a dud, but if anybody knows Angry Video Game Nerd from Cinemassacre, like, those, you know, Data East is, like, notoriously his company to shit on. Like, he just continually plays, like, every, I think even at this point, he's probably played, like, every game in their lineup, and it's just, most of them are pretty poor. Who kept giving them contracts? It was all Nintendo.
It's just weird that this is the first third-party, like, game, because you're coming out swinging and missing. You look at the Switch, right, and everybody wants that third-party support, and in many ways we've gotten it in this second year and a little bit late into the first year, but if you would have had games like this coming out as your third-party support, it'd be a little worrisome. It'd be like, where's Pac-Man? I would feel very much like this is, like, five years ago all over again.
Like, they're letting the floodgates open for another crash. Right. If I were a gamer of similar, like, stature back then. Yeah. And this game was already out, too. I mean, it came out in 83 in the arcades and has seen, like, many ports. It was even ported to, like, Apple II. I'd love to see what that looks like on an Apple II.
And I can't, maybe, who knows, maybe the hitboxes are better. Maybe the punch is a little longer. The animation sometimes made me think of, like, a Game & Watch. Like, sometimes you'd just be, like, you're pinning the guy, and the next frame, you're on the other side of the ring. Like, it just felt like there was no movement from one side of the ring to the other.
Even when you go over the ring, you know, like, when they suplex you over and then you're on the outside of the ring, it just seemed like you had just transported screens, you know? Right. It didn't feel like you had naturally gone over the road. Yeah, it doesn't look like the same space. Perspective is weird. I don't think we should waste any more time on this. Does anybody have straight thoughts? Good. Let's move right into the Essential Games list.
All right, it's the Essential Games list. They're, you know, WWE pretty much makes all the wrestling games now. There is that other wrestling game that I'm looking to Sean for help for, but I know he's not going to know it. Why would I have that net? Why would I have that answer? It's called Fire something. Fire wrestling game.
I'm typing it in as we're going. You're Fire Pro Wrestling. Oh, do the Juggalos still make a backyard wrestling? No, they don't. But that was a pretty good game back in the day. So let's use that as an example. So you're playing backyard wrestling, and that's a pretty old game. And you're like, oh, I want to, you know, I want to play older wrestling games. Stop. You probably don't. But maybe someone in this room can tell you otherwise.
Joe, is tag team wrestling essential? No, it's not. There's not too much more to say about it. I mean, I think I think to sum it up, this game is difficult in a way that's not like a good or challenging difficult where you feel like you can learn. It's just difficult in a way that it's like the gameplay is poorly programmed. So it just just doesn't really work that well. Obviously, I didn't even know. I didn't even know how to do the main function of the game. And I thought I was doing it right. We didn't we didn't talk about that enough. You didn't land a single move. But I did. I pinned people. Pinning isn't a move.
That's how you win. You fell on top of it. Like sometimes wrestlers do like fancy pins. You just. Yeah. You just fell on top of these guys and put their leg over. Punching and they're punching and nothing else is happening. So I was like, OK, I mean, we're hitting each other. I mean, looking on the screen, it looks like we're hitting each other. Agreed. I don't know. Not my finest moment. No, this isn't essential. It's a poor game and it's poorly made and it's poorly played. And if you have this in your library, it's actually depreciates the value of your collection.
Sam. All right. So. You are in the 80s, right? You have a choice between playing this game or, you know, going to your older brother's room and like pissing him off so that he beats you up or like or like finding someone who can act as your older brother and beat you up.
Right. You know, that sounds like a more enjoyable time than this. Just because like at least then you'll be able to control the moves that you're doing yourself. You know, it's just it's just not fun. And this game is in the jank folder. But Sam, am I wrong in thinking just from looking around the room when we were talking about the game that you might have enjoyed it? And I'm not saying that makes it good, but you might have enjoyed it the most out of the four of us. Did you find any joy in this game? I mean, no.
When I would do them, I mean, the only joy I got from it was when I actually got some of those late B press combo things where your guy like throws the other guy against the ring and then, you know, runs at him with his arm out or something. That happened to me a lot. It's called clothesline. Clothesline. That's it. That happened to me a lot. Maybe I'm just imagining that I did it to him.
But in my head, I got one of those cool moves one time. And in my head, that kind of was cool. But again, I might be imagining it. So maybe it wasn't cool at all. I think that's a testament to how invested I am. This game has inflicted a trauma upon us in which we may have actually enjoyed it. Yeah. I was like, it couldn't be that bad. It's so bad. It's real bad. What do you think? Well, here's my thing, okay? I never smiled once during playing this game. Or since. I never felt giddy playing it. Even when I won those two matches, one of them being really cheap with a count out out of the ring where I tricked a computer to stay outside of the ring. Never was I like, yeah.
Yeah. Let's keep going. Let's become the super tag team champions. And I think it says something about the quality of this game, not in a difficulty sense, but just in terms of development and gameplay, that nobody else in this room was able to beat them or even enjoy the combat, okay? That's what we're trying to tell you here, okay? We're not saying check out this game. It's not worth checking out.
I did not smile once while playing this game. That's on the back of the box. And yeah, it's on the back of the box. And I'm actually sorry that I read the back of the box so epically at the start of this, fooling some of you listeners into thinking, oh man, we got a tag team wrestling game coming up. Forget about it, okay? There will be other tag team wrestling games, I promise. This one, inessential.
Is it inessential or unessential? I don't think it's either one. Not essential.
I have a way with words that only a few people can understand because they don't make any sense. I think that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time for Chubby Chair Rub. And after Mike said he has a way with words, I should let you know that we wrote the pronunciation of Chubby Chair Rub on the board. I will call it many different things on next week's episode, so don't be surprised. It is Chubby Chair Rub. It could be Chubby Cher Rub or Chubby Cher Rub. It could be Chubby Gargoyle. Who knows? There is no Heaven and Hell. But there is NostalgiaCast.com. What? We live in that?
No context? Well, I mean, you know, a chair rub is like a baby angel. You're still saying it kind of wrong. So it's like a baby angel. And so I'm saying there's no Heaven or Hell, but there's definitely NostalgiaCast.com. That's N-E-S-T-A-L-G-I-A-Cast.com. There you can find all of these episodes, but you don't have to just go there. If you're listening to this thing on a podcast app right now, how about you just hit that subscribe button? And if you're subscribed, why don't you tell us about it by contacting us at contact at NostalgiaCast.com.
Hey, I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter, and I'll be talking to you real soon about Chubby Chair Rub. And if you want context for the Heaven and Hell, tune in next week, and we'll explain what we're talking about. Very nice, Joe. Good plug.
Hi, we're here with Ninja Cherub.
Just tag team ninja cherub wrestling. We should just act like this whole episode that we have Chubby Cherub. And just be like me. You go, hello, guys. I would turn it off. Let's do it. Tag team wrestling, okay? Is everybody cool with that? Sure. Tag team wrestling. Can I go like this the whole time, and then hit it against this by accident a couple times? That sounds like a bad idea. Yeah. Actually, could you just do the whole episode doing Morse code tapping on the mic? This is how I'm going to talk most of the time, and then this is how I'm going to say things if I have something to say.
You gotta sound more like shocked. This is my reactive choice. This is how I deal with things. People give me information that I don't really understand. I just talk in this staccato. Good night. Sit, Ubu, sit.
Is that the end? Yeah, we'll cut out your good night. Sit, Ubu, sit is from the end of a sitcom. What sitcom? No, no, no. Hold on, here it is. Just from the end of all the sitcoms. No, really, it was at Ubu Productions. It was at the end of Family Ties.
