038 · PRO WRESTLING
Another wrestling game so soon?! And this one comes straight from Nintendo! Is it an improvement or just another suplex on our hearts? For show notes and more check out www.NEStalgiacast.com
This was our third wrestling game on the NES after Tag Team Wrestling and Muscle, and it is clearly the most competent of the three. It is also a hit: Nintendo R&D3 made it at the height of the 1980s wrestling boom, and it sold so well that for its first two months it was reportedly the number one video game. Sean, Sam and Mike played it, and the reactions ranged from real enjoyment to doubts about 2D wrestling in general.
What it gets right
- Presentation. A referee follows you around, a cameraman stands ringside doing nothing at all (we wished you could throw him at your opponent), and the stat screens before each match are great. Starman is listed as from "Mexico?", Amazon looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon and has a piranha bite, and Fighter Hayabusa has a birth date of September 18th, 1951.
- More to do in the ring. You can run with a double tap and bounce off the ropes for a flying elbow, climb the top rope, and throw people out of the ring. Getting pulled out means you can only re-enter from the very center, which tripped us up. One plan we liked was running at the ropes the second a match starts, which worked a little too well and made the game boring.
- The referee matters. If he is on the far side of the ring, the pin count does not start until he arrives, so you can break out at two. It is a detail wrestling games rarely bother to simulate.
- A real goal. You start ranked fifth, and slipping to sixth ends the game. Climb to first, take the VWA belt, defend it, and eventually face The Great Puma, who you cannot play as. The glittery trophy screens are a nice payoff.
Where it falls apart
- Grappling you cannot read. Sam admitted not knowing how a grapple starts. Grapple moves hit for a lot, and it is not clear who has priority.
- Hit boxes that miss. We threw roundhouse kicks at nothing but air, and the computer opponents never seem to miss. It is better than the other two wrestling games, but the hit detection is still not there.
- Fatigue that never lets up. The more you get knocked down, the harder it is to stand or break a grapple, and it stays that way. Great Panther once kept grappling and throwing an exhausted player around instead of just pinning him, which was cruel.
Beyond the game
Masato Masuda directed it and later made the Fire Pro Wrestling series. Game Informer's 2001 list ranked it the 79th best game of all time, which we found hard to take seriously.
The bottom line
Skip it. Sean said that if the NES library were only these three wrestling games, it would be essential, but there are many better titles on the system. Mike said no wrestling game on the NES is going to be definitive in 2018, and he is not convinced 2D wrestling can be fun, even though there is nothing really wrong with it. Sam voted Play it: put enough time in, especially with a sibling to play against, and it is a fun one to have. Two Skip it votes to one Play it left it off the Essential Games List, and the verdict is Skip it.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- Nintendo R&D3
- HUGE sales for Nintendo as this was peak WWF boom
- The referee
- The cameraman
- Masato Masuda went on to create the Fire Pro Wrestling series
- Game Informer says it was the 79th best game of all time in 2001
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Pro Wrestling. Now, real wrestling action is at your fingertips.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game.
Released in North America. Sean, why are you laughing? Because I've never seen you do jazz hands during the intro. Those weren't jazz hands. Those were spirit fingers. Yeah, that's the power. Exactly. Thank you. That is the power of pro wrestling at my fingertips.
Because this is a podcast and no one can see me, I was like, basically assaulting Sean with my fingertips during the whole read. Yeah. And not like actually. Almost like I was a wizard, you know? Yeah. Like putting a spell on you. You're a puppeteer. You're causing me to do this. But what a time to play our third wrestling game for the NES. Yeah, we didn't even do introductions. Yeah. Oh my God, I'm Sean. I'm Sam. And I'm Mike. Wow. Everybody knows me by now because I talk way too much on this podcast. And if you don't remember me, I've also been on the podcast. Yeah. And you're the quiet one. Yeah. But maybe you have feelings about pro wrestling that you're going to talk about today.
Don't be the quiet one. Well, I certainly do. Sean, you said this is our third wrestling game? I would say nominally it is our third wrestling game. I think that there are games that were called wrestling games that you should not call it a game. Yeah. You shouldn't call it a game. Here's the thing. Wrestling, you know, we're at peak wrestling time. Yeah, it is mid to late 80s now. Sorry, peak wrestling time isn't true. Like people will tell you that like the Raw is war, WWF era. Like that's when wrestling was at its height. I'm saying like the boom is happening right now. Like wrestling is bigger than ever in 1985 because it's now like we're talking WrestleMania in 85.
Hulkamania. Hulkamania is 85 as well. So like by 87, we're at WrestleMania three now, baby. And it's no coincidence that we also get pro wrestling. Oh, pro wrestling. Our third, our third wrestling game. Yeah, don't let that distract you from the fact that in 1992, 1998, 1998, Mankind was thrown off a hell in a cell by The Undertaker. I love it. I said it backwards though to help it out. It's good. I also said the first year wrong, so.
So let's get into first impressions. First impressions of pro wrestling. If you don't mind, I'll go first. Okay. Yeah. This game just quite frankly just doesn't do it for me. Then that's my first impression is literally I knew that like whether this game works or not, it does. It's not going to do enough for me.
It's not going to impress me enough. There was nice little touches and yes, this is definitely the most competent wrestling game we've gotten so far. But in terms of like the energy and excitement, I'm sorry guys. It's just not there for me. Sam. Uh, first impressions was that I was kind of floundering with the controls a little bit. Um, kind of just mashing things, trying to hit someone, wasn't sure where the hitboxes were. But then after I kind of settled into it, I started to really enjoy this one. Cool. Sean.
Um, yeah, I was sort of leaning more towards Mike's impression where I just don't think I can play early wrestling games. I'm not good at any kind of wrestling game retro or current. Um, but I did appreciate this one a lot more, at least just because of its presentation. At least, uh, like this is the first time I've seen like a, a ref or just like following you around. There's enough, there's enough added here for it to be like a big enough difference than like tag team pro wrestling. Like, like this is definitely the one to get out of the three wrestling games that are currently available on the NES. Like I think it's got, uh, it's got a lot of authenticity.
I mean, it's not real. There's even a cameraman. There's a camera guy that's, that serves no purpose. You cannot interact with them. I mean, it's just there because like, Oh, let's put a camera guy. It would be cool if you could throw the camera guy into your opponent, but that's just a missed opportunity. If you could knock out the camera guy, I would hope that you could also knock out the ref. Yeah. You know, like that would be on your team or fight him also. Yeah. But yeah, so I think it's got great presentation. Um, and I was struggling with it. I wonder if I'm just too hard on wrestling games in general though. Like, like hear me out here for a minute.
I, I do like wrestling. Uh, not, not anymore. Really? I'm not big on it. I'll still watch some big events. And if I know like, you know, what's going on in the current storylines, I'll watch it, but the rock is still pretty big, right? Uh, no, uh, but, um, no, I mean like I really like wrestling, especially back then. And so like, maybe I'm just being too tough because my standards for like wrestling are like attributed to something that is not like a video game. Like you couldn't take the storylines of the WWF, even at that time and translate them into a wrestling game. Like when it comes down to it at the end, there's only like two buttons on this thing. So you're not going to be able to like really work it out to be like some kind of complex
wrestling machine. And I think I, you know, just like looking back on the game, I'm willing to say I'm too tough on it, but it's not going to change my mind about like going back to it. I have an idea. Yeah. What if, and I don't know why there hasn't been a wrestling game that has tried this. What if between the matches, there was like a choose your own adventure portion where you could actually develop the storylines.
So this, this is a thing that happens in almost every wrestling game, like since the PlayStation one. Uh, well, I don't care. Okay. No, I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. It was, it was a mind blah for me. Mind blowing. Well, I, you know, I don't want to say the actual word, but it was like mind blowing to me, I guess at the time that, um, that's the word I didn't want to say. I didn't want to say mind blowing.
Gotcha. It was mind blowing to me that like back then in PS one days, you could even like, you know, go through like a full season and like do pay-per-views and stuff like that. Whatever. And like build up your stories, but. Yeah. But that's just, that's just fights. I mean, isn't there a bunch of stuff that happens like behind the scenes? Like, no, I know. And you can do that. Like, I'm not joking.
And like WWF SmackDown and SmackDown two and shut your mouth and know your role and all that stuff. Like, and these are the titles of the games. You could do that in those games and it's, it's crazy. And now I think like it, that's like the, the selling point for those games is like essentially you can create your own character and like go through a story arc of the WWF that don't make like specifically WWE now. Sorry guys. Don't want anybody to get confused with the wildlife foundation.
Um, you know, and you can like go through your own storyline. So yeah, the NES version is definitely not going to have that. I'm very sorry. Everybody that likes wrestling games that I totally forgot about the genre for about two decades.
Sam, you had, you had fun with this game. I did. I liked this game. Who's your character? Uh, Starman is my character. The guy who's from maybe Mexico. Mexico. Yes, definitely. It's like a luchador kind of like, but like a full body. They straight up. They don't deny it in the, in the like intro video when you select your guy and it gives you like his stats. It says, yeah, it says nation Mexico question mark. Really? Yeah. Like dead serious Mexico question mark. I thought that there was a guy that was maybe from Caracas or something like that. Uh, Caracas.
Hmm. No. So we have, I'll just go through the roster and you guys can tell me you guys should give me like a thumbs up, thumbs down, but say whether you actually like them because no one's going to know if you did the thumbs up, thumbs down. Okay. Um, so we have Starman who is from the nation of Mexico question mark. His date of birth is unknown. He weighs 220 pounds, six foot three and his signature move is the somersault drop kick. Love that one. Uh, that makes me immediately think of Rick and Morty with the, Oh, somersault. Uh, what, what's the, uh, Oh, somersault jump. Yeah. It's like, sorry. Yeah. You need to have a very high IQ to understand.
That's my bad. Um, no, but I do like Starman. Okay. I think Starman like looks cool. I like Starman. Starman was the first person that I played against. And I was like, Oh, who is this bad-ass looking wrestler?
I want to be him. Who's kicking my ass right now? And so I went to him and I went, I was like the swamp thing guy and I forget what he's called. Yeah. I was wondering who, what the swamp man's name was too, but I think it's Amazon. Amazon. Yeah. And, uh, his nation is unknown. Uh, okay. I don't think of him as the swamp man. I think of him as like legit the creature from the black Lagoon. Yeah. His special moves actually look like he's eating your face. It's called the piranha bite. Yeah. So is he actually eating your face?
Yeah. I have to imagine if it's called the piranha bite at the very least, he is chewing on your neck. Okay. So I thought maybe it was just a really like low poly, not low poly, low resolution way to like show a noogie. No, he gets in there. He definitely gets in there. Okay, cool. All right. So how do we feel about Amazon? We like it. Yeah, I dig it. He was cool. I really only used Starman though. Okay. He was, Amazon was my go to guy from being legit just because it was so, so unique and different. I was like, I'm actually playing as something non-human. Yeah. That's strange.
Uh, Starman could be anything. Starman could be anything, but he could also just be a guy with a star painted on his face. I assumed that that's what Amazon was. He was just a guy in a costume. Oh, you think he's in a costume? Yeah, he's in a costume. The star guy, you can see the holes in his mask where he can look through. Wow, this game is a lot more details than I give you credit for. Speaking of like little details in this game, since we're not about to go through all these guys like Kinkorn Karn.
Or, uh, Fighter He- He-Busa. He-Busa. Fighter He-Busa was the guy I played with the most because for a while I thought that was the only one you could play ass. You didn't think they just like touch the directional buttons. No. Fighter He-Busa from Japan, born in- he was born September 18th, 1951. They were that specific about it. Um, and his, uh, his special move is the back brain kick.
Um, which is just you use the- you press the A button while in front and slightly below the opponent. And he'll do that. It looks cool. Yeah, it looks pretty cool. Then you have giant panther. So we are going through all. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I mean, once I talked about Kinkorn Karn, I was like, we gotta go through the rest. Kinkorn Karn. From Korea. Uh, Kinkorn Karn's from Korea. Giant panther, uh, from the USA. Ooh. And, uh, he was born November- From Georgia, right? November 5th, 1952. They don't- they don't specify the state because then they'd also have to specify like the region on the other- Oh, he's either from Texas or Georgia. Georgia. Well, because-
That's the only place that wrestlers grow up. Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah, I guess like, well, you know what? If we're gonna get into a bit of wrestling history, you know- I feel like there's some Florida. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's- I would say like, you know, there was a- before the WWF kind of like made everything like, you know, the entire United States as like its own circuit thing. Yeah, the circuits were kind of like divided the same way that like divisions are still divided in sports, you know, where it's like you've got the East Coast, you've got the Southeast, you've got the Midwest- That's where my friends are still into like the indie wrestling scene, which I did not know existed before. Yeah, no, I mean- I hate-
A guy I know from high school does that in California. He's an actual wrestler. Maybe not California. Maybe it's New Jersey. He was in California for a while. Wait a minute. He was in California for a while. He wouldn't close to the other. I forget which one- Which- where he was doing it. People always say it's either California or New Jersey. Yeah. Like when it comes down to it. He wants to cross the Hudson and does it. Yeah. I think he did it in California, but he also does it in New Jersey. Okay. Yeah. And he actually does it though. I believe so, yeah. Like he puts himself through the tables and stuff. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. God bless him. And then the last guy, King Slender.
Slenderman. From the USA. Ten years younger than most of the other guys. King Korn Karn is the oldest guy born in 1942. Oh my. Well, to be fair, we don't know how old Starman is. That's true. He could be ageless. He could be infinite. Like, since the birth of the first star, Starman has been around.
I mean, Carl Sagan says that we're all made of stars. We're all star children. Yeah. Stardust. That's another Mass Effect thing, right? Star children? The star child, right? No, that's 2001 A Space Odyssey, Mike. Okay. That is true. I was also thinking that little child thing though. Oh, the one that's like, hey, do you want to destroy your control? Yeah. Okay. It's like, don't do this to me right now, kid. That's the Crucible. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no. Okay. I don't know. I thought you were on the Crucible when you beat Death Kid. I thought that was just the- By the way, this is part two of Mass Effect trivia. Yeah, Mass Effect 3 trivia specifically. We're just really trying to- Guys, we're still trying to figure out that game.
We're just- Someone has to do- I need the government to do a formal investigation into what happened with Mass Effect 3. I need answers. The Mueller probe has moved into the Mass Effect trilogy. Yeah. We should get back to pro wrestling. Yeah. Let's talk about the actual gameplay. Oh. All right, let's do it.
Yeah, so the gameplay. You got, you know, you got your kicks, you got your punches. Yeah. How does grappling go in this one, Sam? Because, you know, grappling's been a bit of a struggle in the other two wrestling games. To be honest, I'm not sure how grappling starts. I just kind of like, find myself in a grapple. I'm like, all right. But I know that there are certain moves that you can do when you're in a grapple. And so I guess if you hit those moves before the opponent does, then you do them. And like start- You're summing up my exact feelings though. It's incredible. You're right. How do you get into a grapple? I don't know. I just kind of went with it though. And, but Starman has some good options when he's in a grapple.
Have you ever thrown the guy to like the ropes? No, I couldn't figure that out. Okay. Because I've done that and I find that to be the best strategy because then you always just give them like that roundhouse kick thing. Oh, my strategy. And that knocks them right out. I have a winning strategy that I, it makes the game really- Well, we're here to talk about winning strategies. Yeah. It makes the game pretty boring, but I have not found a flaw in this. It made the game pretty boring, but this is what I do. Yeah, no, it is. So this is what happens. You, when you're, the second you square off against your opponent, immediately you run away. If you double tap direction, you run in that direction.
So you immediately run, if you run against the ropes, then it gives you like a boost coming at them. And then you can do like a flying like elbow at them that they just can't dodge. Wow. Yeah. I was trying to do that. That's so strange. I never was able to like fly off the ropes essentially.
Like, you know, like I could, like, that's a thing real wrestlers do too. And I was just like, Oh, I'd probably be able to do that because I was actually surprised at like how many extra things you can do in this game that you could do in the other two. Yeah, you can climb on top of the ropes also. Yeah, climbing on the top rope and dropping an elbow is really cool. That's, well, it's, this isn't exactly that. This is like running against the ropes and bouncing off of them. Yeah, that's what I would have liked to be able to interact with, with the actual ring.
Yeah. Oh, for sure. And you can like throw people out of the ring, which I never did, but I got myself thrown out a couple of times. Yeah. And if you get thrown out, it's weird that you can only reenter the ring from the very center. Yeah. That tripped me up the first time that you can't enter from the side. I guess I only just tried to enter from the middle because it felt that where you got thrown out of though. No, I got thrown out. Like I just tried to like fight him and then I eventually made my way to the center. Gotcha. Okay.
Yeah. I always like to be as cheap as possible. People probably know this from the tag team wrestling episode, but like I always try to be as cheap as possible. Bring my opponent outside the ring and just knock them out at 18 and just run back in there. He's like, he's out gold. Get him. It's much easier that way. Never thought to do that. You know what I tried to do a lot and can only do sometimes, which was a little bit
disappointing, which was, I would try and like do one of the jumping like sidekicks or whatever to knock him out right near the edge and then jump on top of the on top of the ropes and then come at them with some kind of flying move. Right. But every single time I would do this almost every single time they would wake up like come to before I got before I was able to jump off and then I would miss and I would just lay on the ground for a long time.
And that guy's like, oh, OK, I'm going to do that now while you're laying on the ground. And then they would just pin me for like not like game over pin. But it's OK. They would just get me every single time I tried to get them that way. You can really only you can really only lose by either count out or pinfall. Right. There's no KO. Is there no. OK. Yeah. But it becomes I've I've noticed that there is a point where it'll play a sound effect when you get knocked down. And I'm pretty sure it just means that you can't get back up.
Like I never really. I mean, I was like button mashing to try and wake up. Well, here's one thing I have to give a compliment to the game before I start bashing it. One thing that I did really like about it was that you do kind of like fatigue faster
and faster the more you get hit. And it stays that way, too. It's like it's not like you suddenly like find your strength again. It's like once you've been like knocked out a couple of times, like it's going to be really hard to stand up and get out of the grapples and stuff. But at the same time, I have to say that like that kind of stinks from the gameplay thing because you've completely lost control of your character at a certain point. Yeah. And the A.I. will take advantage of that. They one time I swear the Puma guy. No, not Puma. Black Panther. No, not Black Panther. Black Panther is gumshoe. Right. The Black Panther jewels. Diamonds or whatever. This is great Panther.
And the weird thing was that he was he knew I was beaten at this point. I couldn't escape anything. But he just continued to grapple me and just like throw me against the ropes. Pick you up. Or, yeah, pick me up or do his special. And I'm like, dude, pin me. Get me out of here. I'm done. I am so tired of this right now. Yeah, I was very cruel. Oh, yes. So, you know, that's a mechanic that, you know, you can like it, but you can also hate it. All right. So there is there is like a little bit of a progression, though, in this game from when you start. There's like the idea of like winning the is it the VWA belt? Yeah, I think it's the yeah, VWA. I don't know what that stands for.
Video Wrestling Associate. Oh, my gosh. Wow. This is amazing. Like people are really good at that kind of stuff. And I think you've solved it. I'm pretty sure that's it. Yeah, I don't think it is. Video Wrestling Association. I buy it. Whatever. Yeah. Somebody will correct us. Yeah. So you're trying to win that belt. And I think you have to do how many? How many? You make your way up. Like you're ranked fifth to begin. If you drop to sixth, then you it's game over. Yeah, it's game over. Keep fighting to make your whip to first. And then you have to defend the first place or like 10 matches. And then you fight Ric Flair. Yeah. Who is called Slenderman. No, no, no, no. No. Really? I don't. I'm not sure. I thought it was.
The Golden Shot. Sorry. I know what you're talking about. Yes. To win the belt. You're talking about. To win the belt. Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's the Ric Flair guy. Yeah. And wait, or is it when you fight the other association? I forgot. I had to read about this. Okay. No, no. Because I was going to say, once you are the VWA champion, if you win another 10 fights, you get to the final boss. Yes. That's the great Puma. Okay. Yes. Yeah. And that's why I said Puma earlier, but he's not an actual character that you can play as. He's just a fightable character that is like from an adjacent league.
Yeah. He's actually, yeah, it's funny. It's like how the Swamp Man is actually just from the swamp. It's like the Amazon guy. It's funny that like, yeah, the great Puma is like, but I think that's kind of neat that they like included, like, that's the kind of thing urban champion needed. Urban champion needed anything.
I'm just, I'm saying like, these are Nintendo developed games and like, they, you know, like this has like a Nintendo flair to it by adding like, you know, these, these special characters. Like, I would love to see one of these guys show up again somewhere. Like, I want them in the new Smash. You know what Cars 2 needed? Cars 2 needed like, like the, the, the curious case of Benjamin Button's storyline. I think that's what it needed. Wow. That's incredibly, do you want to explain yourself right now? Are you just bringing that into the equation? I'm just saying like, just to say like, a game that bad. Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry. We really can't rag on urban champion anymore.
So we have to, we have to stop because somebody likes that game. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. So you fight great Puma and then you just kind of, you know, it's like you fight them and you defend the title and great. Keep going. Like that's really it. Uh, so I think that's cool. I mean, these, those championship screens are kind of cool.
Yeah. It's always like when, um, you know, when it goes beyond like just the blocky characters that we see on the end, you know, like it reminds me of why we were talking in the previous episode about Trojan and it's like, yeah, the graphics aren't the best, but when you see that pixel art at the ending, like that's awesome. And it's kind of like the same thing with the championship screens. It's like, that's a really nice trophy. Yeah. They show you the trophies. It's very glittery. Yeah.
I like it. One last gameplay thing I want to talk about before we, uh, before we go into like, you know, my house cleaning section where I just like talk about the development of the game. Mm hmm. You know, one thing I really appreciated about this game was the referee and how like if he's on the other side. Yeah. I'll hustle over. Yeah. But he also has like, it counts as part of like your time being pinned too. Yeah. So if he's on the other side and you're like, uh, you know, you would have been in the three count, but he hasn't started counting yet. You might be able to break out at two. Yeah. And that's part of the reason why I think that this is a good, it's a good simulation
presentationally because I, I mean, I couldn't play the game for the life of me. I'm just not good at wrestling games, but to, to include something so, uh, something so tangential, I would say like just something that isn't always simulated in these games. I think that was really cool. Yeah. I'd like to talk a little bit about why I don't like this game though. Okay, good. You know, because I don't like this game either. Yeah. I like this game.
Good. Yeah. Okay. Uh, no, no, no. I just meant like, you know, cause I feel like I've been saying a lot of good things about the game. And people might be confused. And I think like, there's a couple things that like, just take me out of the game. And number, number one is that grappling thing. First off, it's just like, even when I'm in, when we're in a grapple, is it like, it's not, they're not specific enough about like priority of like who goes who. And like, sometimes I feel like, am I just not spamming the buttons fast enough? Like, you know, and grappling moves do a ton of damage too. So it easily takes you out of the fight if he's, if you know, if your opponents getting most of them. So I didn't appreciate that.
Uh, I definitely didn't like the hit boxes for this. Yeah. A lot of times I felt like I was doing the roundhouse kick and it just looked, it must've looked really silly to everyone in the audience because I just kicked like air, but I thought I was pretty, pretty sure I was going to kick him in the back or something. Like, so I was, I was surprised by, you know, that the hitbox detection is still not there.
Um, I don't really know how you would solve that though. I think like the problem that these older games are happening is, is the space of the wrestling ring itself and being able to like, you know, show like when you're on. Yeah. Like it's the exit, but on the sense of like, if you're a little bit off, like it should be more forgiving. I feel like, because it, you know, obviously if I'm punching a guy and I'm not directly squared up with him on a 3d plane, it wouldn't land that punch.
Right. It would make sense. But even here, sometimes it feels like I'm punching and you know, it's not happening because I'm a little bit off. It's like, yeah, I mean, sure that that could be a reason, but we've played games that while they may not be wrestling games, they still have hit detection that works on both the X and Y axis.
Like there's nothing that says that this game can't feel as tight as, um, like tennis as like tennis. Like sure. Like tennis didn't feel tight to me. I mean, I'm just, I'm just trying to think of something. I understand what you're saying.
I'm not giving the game a pass on this. I'm saying like, for me, this is the part that like broke me on the game was just that like, maybe I'll just never be good at these old wrestling games. But you know, as much charm and like polish this game has at the end of the day, you don't get to see a lot of that if you're not good at this game. Yeah. And I think that because it can't be a game that like we just like last week we played Trojan and you, the hit detection was fine. Like you could, you could hit your sword.
I never felt like I was missing anyone. Like just by virtue of wrestling being a slower, uh, activity, um, for then just like some random beat them up. Uh, I think it, it needs a way to, to give these, to give these moves more weight and maybe failing to even do them as part of that. I don't really know like what the game design philosophy is for a wrestling game, especially this early in like their history. I think for me though, like in a wrestling game, like I want to feel like, you know, like, like I'm, I'm a person to be feared, you know, like, like I'm a, I'm a strong character.
Like I, I, I don't want to be like most of the time punching the air and being like out grappled. And this is something that all have, all of them have had like a problem with. Yeah. I mean, I mean this one again, like a lot better than the other two. And at the same time, like the AI also just like, obviously they get it. They know where the hit boxes are. Yeah, exactly. They're not missing. I think sometimes it does feel a little cheap, but for, for some reason for me, it was able to, I was able to get like, yeah, I was able to like click, it clicked with me a little bit. That's what I'm saying.
I think like, you know, I don't want to take off too many points just because I'm bad at this game. But at the end of the day, it did kind of like harpen my enjoyment of it. I think that something like muscle or tag team wrestling is like, you just, you can just tell it's jank and it's not, you're not going to get better at the game just from the nature of the game. But this one, I think that is the, is the kind of game where it comes off. Like some of the hit boxes are a little bit jank and there's kind of not, I keep saying jank, but not jank elements to it, but there kind of are right. But it's things that over time you will get used to and that you will navigate.
And in like, still have a good time with it. That's where the balance was for me. Okay. So right before we get into the essential games list, I just want to say that this game was Nintendo R and D three, which is, you know, the numbers don't really mean anything. I mean, R and D one was always working in the most important games, but it doesn't mean that if you're working on R and D three, that your game isn't important. And as it turns out pro wrestling is actually a pretty important game for Nintendo at this point, because yes, that, you know, that wrestling boom was happening all across the States. And that really helped this game be one of the biggest sellers of 87 for Nintendo. Uh, it was, it was doing huge numbers.
Uh, I think for the first two months, it was like the number one bestselling video game. It's interesting considering that it already had, I mean, to varying degrees of competence of both far below this one, but they already had two other wrestling games to compete with. Like people were just itching for, you know, and also I think like the difference is, is muscle
and, uh, tag team wrestling, you might've mistakenly bought, but I think this one actually, like when you look at the, you know, if you're a kid back then, all you had was the box covers to go off of. When you look at the back of this box, you getting that feeling of like, Oh, this is like just like the WWF. Yeah. So I think it has that going for it. And so I think like Nintendo is to credit for that. Like they saw the boom, they saw the opportunity to make the game and they kind of kind of copied as close as they could. I mean, like that kid, that guy with the camera, I, you know, even though you can't do anything with them, it's just like cool that they recognize that.
And they're not trying to make like a more traditional style wrestling game. And this one does have more flair to it. You know, uh, yeah, Rick flair. I mean, Sean will tell you he's in the game and, uh, the creator of this one, or at least like the director in charge of it, uh, Masato Masuda, he went on to create the fire pro wrestling series, uh, line of video games, which I think is still getting games, right? Didn't he get a game very recently? Fire pro wrestling. Yeah. That's the name of it. Yeah. Really? You guys haven't heard it. This is like a, wow. Okay. It's like a longstanding series. I think it just got another game. Smackdown. It didn't change into Smackdown.
Fire pro wrestling is, is all, it only exists in the game world. It's not, it's not real. Uh, I recommend checking it out because it's kind of cool. Uh, it has, you know, it has its own unique set of characters as well and stuff like that. It's like we're going to have to play it at some point, right? Like it's part of the, uh, the curriculum. Did it ever come to any S that's a good question. Uh, I don't know when fire pro wrestling started. I just know that it's a longstanding franchise and it's kind of interesting that like Masuda
started at Nintendo and said kind of like, yeah, I'm going to go make my own, uh, games and stuff like that. So he wound up doing, you know, joining another company and making games. And that's why I'm not sure if this comes to the NES or not. If he, he might've still been working at Nintendo for a time, but, uh, it's just cool to see that like the guy behind this longstanding video game franchise series, his roots start right at the very beginning with pro wrestling on the NES. I guess he, uh, he did have some, like, I guess it's too jank for us, but not for me, not, not for, yeah, not for the guy who has a jank folder.
Um, but people do like this game, Sean. Uh, you could say game informer really likes this game. Game informer, uh, in 2001 said that this was definitively the 79th best video game of all time. Wow. Now that just makes me think that like this was a, a, a call. No, okay. This is, this probably wasn't an internet poll, but I was just the game informer staff like coming together and making this list.
But like, guys, come on. In 2001, the fact that this game is topping the 100, like the top 100, it's like, clearly it wouldn't be anywhere close anymore. Even for gaming. I know, but it's just, this reeks of like somebody, like everybody stuffing the ballot box to vote like Rory Fitzpatrick into the all-star game or something like that. Like, right. No, I always felt that way about like, for me, I always liked getting those top 100 game
magazine things. But when it came down to it and you actually read them, a lot of times it was just like, this is so subjective. Like, like, like, like, because they're covering so many decades of things, you know, it's like, where do you even begin to talk about a game like pro wrestling and Halo? You know, like you don't, you don't even like, you don't put those games near each other, you know, right. And they're not near each other on the game informer list for what it's worth. You know, like I don't, 2001, is Halo even out? Yeah. By like a couple months, I think. Yeah. Okay. So maybe it wasn't on their list.
But like, you get what I'm saying. You know, it's like, you don't put like, you don't talk about games like that, you know, and it's just like pro wrestling. Like I could probably think of 79 better NES games. Yeah. By the end of this. Yeah. All right. That's, that's game informer. Let's find out what we think about it on the essential games list.
All right. It's the essential games list. And this time we're talking about pro wrestling. We're going to talk about whether it's still worth playing today when you have access to games where you can make entire storylines and play pay-per-views and also, uh, you can play like what? Yeah. Mass Effect 3 is an option. You got Halo 1. If you're a massagist.
Um, Sean, take me through your essential game. So let me, let me tell you if, if the NES only had his library, uh, stricken down to just these three wrestling games that we've played. Hell yes, this would be an essential game, but it has a number of more titles, uh, than those three wrestling games. And most of them are better than this. I appreciate all of the, the cute touches and presentation.
And I, I assume that if you like wrestling games, this might be for you, but this is not in my essential games list. Sam. All right. So let me paint a picture for you guys. You're a kid, you know, you're, you have put, you're really into wrestling, let's say. And so you've, you had the other two NES games and you were just so disappointed with how bad they were. You boot this one in, you know, and then you hear that same music from tennis and baseball and you're thinking, Oh no, what did I do?
But then you start playing it and it's, it's not, it's not that bad, you know? And then you start, I think, I think that this is a game that if you put enough time into it, you can really enjoy it. And especially if you have like a sibling or someone to play it with and you start playing each other in it, then I think that this is like, it could be a very fun game to have just in your collection. I don't think it's essential, but I, I personally enjoyed it. I would give it a play it.
I'll, I'll get my vote right out of the way and say that this is not essential in 2018. It'd be silly to think that like, you know, any, for me, it's silly to think that any wrestling game on the NES that doesn't have like some other like genre breaking thing is going to be, you know, like a definitive version of anything in 2018, just because wrestling games have, you know, are one of those things that have definitely come a long way since then. Like in comparison. Yeah. But I, you know, I think even wrestling more so, and I think this is what I'm getting down to and why I don't think it's that fun is because I'm just not quite sold on the idea that like 2d wrestling games can even be fun.
Yeah. I'm not quite sold on that yet. I really think that like the jump to 3d really helped wrestling, the wrestling genre in specific, just because it's one of those things that benefits a lot more from 3d space. Whereas like, you know, even NES baseball and tennis and so on. That's like, yeah, I wasn't like a huge fan of those games.
At least one of them is haunted. Right. You'll check out the articles on nostalgia cast.com for that. Uh, but yeah, no, I mean like, yeah, I'm not too hyped on those games either, but they were, they were like understandable and playable and they had like their own defined rules for 2d. This is just trying to emulate 3d wrestling in a 2d space. And I think that's why the 3d wrestling games are so much better.
But that's just like, you just say like any game that has been any game genre that has been done in 3d is just inherently better than the 2d. Well, but I'm not, I don't think I'm going to say that though. That's what you said. I'm saying the wrestling genre in specific, like that genre of games works better in 3d. I'm saying that like any wrestling game that's done in 2d is just trying to like the other games, like tennis, right?
Like in a 2d space, like you look at Mario tennis on the game boy, that's a great game and that's 2d and it figured out a way to do it differently than like, Oh, I just wish that I could play this game, but in 3d, you know, like, like it, it does its own established rules and any sports game can do that kind of thing. I mean, you know, I, I played even Madden on like the game boy advance and it was like, wow, this is interesting take. Like I didn't need it to be in 3d on the game boy advance to convince me that it was football.
Yeah. You know, these wrestling games aren't doing it for me and that's what it comes down to you guys. Uh, but as you know, Sean and Sam have said, like the game definitely has that Nintendo charm to it and plenty of personality. And you know, I, I actually have a lot of good things to say about this game. So nothing inherently bad about it. I don't mean to offend anybody by the fact that like, I'm just not enjoying it, but you know, I just aren't sure I'm going to enjoy wrestling games on this console period. All right. And, uh, you know, that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia.
Join us next time for Salaam. Salaam. I had to say it because you guys, but I know everybody always makes fun of the way I pronounce anything. And I've been saying it that way for so long that I had to say it again. Uh, so Sean, what will they be playing? Salaam. They're playing. You guys can just join us to play salami next week. Uh, the, uh, rares. Very first game. Uh, rare the company. It's not rares. Like, eh, I can't even make a point on that. Nevermind. It's like a rare steak. I wish I could start over, but I can't because we're signing off. So you can. We don't have so much tape left. You can tell me how much you loved or hated this episode at contact at nostalgacast.com.
That's N-E-S-T-I-L-G-I-A cast.com. And speaking of which, that's also the same URL as our website. Just take out the contact and the ad symbol, but add a www dot in front of it. You must put the www dot. Yeah, you get the idea. Uh, you can also just Google search Nostalgia and we'll show up. But make sure it's an E and not an O. We don't have Nostalgia for these games. We have Nestalgia. Get it? Because we never played these games growing up. Uh, we got articles. We got show notes. We got thoughts. All that stuff's on the website. Join us next time, guys. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter, and we'll talk to you soon. We'll see you soon.
