Hi there, continuing on from the hockey and American football genre videos, let's take a look at every professional wrestling video game on the Super Nintendo. Eh, well, almost. You see, this is a pretty weird genre, because these games were made for what is essentially a cult audience, and if you include Japan only Super Famicom games, two very different cult audiences. There are more than twice as many pro wrestling games released only in Japan than what the North American and European regions received. I'll be looking at the more popular Japanese games, but not the more obscure ones, sorry. Only because they're really hard to navigate, and there's no English translation available. Just some personal background real quick, I used to watch wrestling dating back to the early 90s. I remember the first pay-per-view we ever got was the 1991 Royal Rumble, and Surprise Holkogen won that one. I lasted a couple years when it got excruciatingly lame. Watched again in the late 90s, and then Vince McMahon bought out his competition, and things got a lot less interesting, and I stopped entirely after that. But the point is, I have a lot of experience with all the North American wrestling titles. Instead of going alphabetical, let's just start with the WWF games, since those were the most popular. There's four games here, starting with WWF Super WrestleMania. Now, much like the Madden NFL series, the WWF games progressively added more and more game modes, moves, items, bells and whistles, and all sorts of stuff. So Super WrestleMania has aged the worst out of any of the games by far. There's just nothing here. It's extremely primitive, everyone has the exact same moves, and it's so slow. There's only three game modes, one-on-one tag team, and a four-on-four survivor series elimination match, with each mode supporting up to two players. The big appeal of this game at the time was simply playing as some of these wrestlers and hearing their theme music. Really, that's it. I will say the roster here is pretty good. You got Macho Man, Holkogen, the Road Warriors, Jake the Snake, earthquake and Typhoon, the Undertaker, and the Million Dollar Man. Yeah, this game has not aged well at all, and you're better off playing games like WWF Royal Rumble. This is a little more like it. Right off the bat, this game feels 10 times faster than Super WrestleMania. The presentation is cleaned up a little. There's a lot more moves, and each wrestler can do their own finishing move once their opponent gets weak on energy. There's also a grappling meter here, so when you're locked up, you can actually see if you're winning, and of course, you win a lockup by pounding the shit out of a button. The biggest improvement was adding the Royal Rumble match, which is a battle royal where anything goes, including choking, and a thumb to the eye. Now that's funny. Royal Rumbles are by far the most fun in this game, because they include every wrestler in the game, and you gotta throw everybody over the top rope to win. A 6-man tag team option was added in addition to a tournament mode, as well as a Brawl mode, where there's no countouts or pins, you can fight anywhere in, wait a minute, he's got a steel chair, oh no, that's terrible. And even better, if you want to make a normal match into a Brawl, you can hit the ref. I can't begin to tell you how much joy I got out of this as a kid. I absolutely love doing this, and it cracks me up to this day. Really, this game's only flaw might be the rather strange roster of wrestlers. This game was made in a bit of an odd time for wrestling. Whole Kogan and Ultimate Warrior were both gone, and you had odd balls like Lex Luger as the narcissist, Tatanka, and Crush. Who cares about these guys? Anyway, Royal Rumble is light years ahead of Super WrestleMania, and while the gameplay might be limited, it's still a lot of fun. After that came WWF RAW, and oh man, if you like the Brawling in the last game, it's even better here, because this game has a bucket. Back when I watched wrestling, I don't think I ever saw anyone hit anyone else with a bucket. I don't have the slightest idea why there's a bucket or how or why anyone would have thought you should be able to hit people with a bucket, but by God it is laugh out loud funny every time, it's just so goofy looking. Anyway, RAW is yet another improvement in the series, keeping just about every game mode from Royal Rumble while bringing back the 4-on-4 Survivor Series match, as well as a straight up brawl and a RAW endurance match, which is 6-on-6 but without the tag format. The moves are changed up significantly from Royal Rumble, giving some much needed variety in the gameplay. Again, the only flaw here is the bizarre roster. You've got mainstays like Bret Hart, Razor Ramone, and The Undertaker. Then you've got the 1, 2, 3 kid, Bam Bam Bigelow, and Dwayne The Clown. If they were able to keep the Royal Rumble roster with Macho Man and Ric Flair and Mr. Perfect and all those guys, that'd be great. But either way, I think objectively, I have to consider RAW the best game of the 4, even if I personally prefer Royal Rumble. And then there's WWF, WrestleMania, the arcade game, and uh... wow. This game takes a left turn, so to speak, a left turn straight off a cliff. This is when Midway worked hand in hand with Sculptured Software who developed the previous 3 WWF games, and Midway of course was riding high off the success of NBA Jam and Mortal Combat games. So they tried to replicate the same kind of vibe for WrestleMania, the arcade game, and instead it's just really, really goofy. I mean, just look at the poster here. That just looks so awkward. I will say this game has some incredible visuals, and the sound is also really well done. The announcer voices are tremendous. It's really a very good arcade port, all things considered. It's just the gameplay is extremely one-dimensional and gets boring very quickly. There's no extra game modes, because there's only six wrestlers here, and that's a big disappointment. So yeah, WrestleMania, the arcade game is interesting for what it is, but RAW and Royal Rumble are a lot more fun. Now we move on to the other big wrestling company of the day, WCW, with WCW Super Brawl Wrestling. One word describes this game confusing. It seems to be based on the Fire Pearl Wrestling layout, which I'll get to later, but I don't really know what I'm doing half the time. Stuff just sort of happens. I guess when you press a button with a direction, it doesn't move to your opponent, but when you just press the button without the D-pad, it'll grapple or punch or whatever. It's pretty hard to get used to. Of course it is fun to see Sting and Vader and the Steiner's and Ricky Steamboat, and all the old WCW guys again, but there's no unique game modes here. It's still just one-on-one tag team and a gauntlet rebate every other guy. I do like that this game has a completely different feel to it than the WWF games, making it stand out a bit, but this game is just okay-ish. It's tough to get used to the controls, but even after you get an idea of what to do, it's still just okay. Next is Saturday Night Slam Masters, an arcade port from Capcom. This game is great, cartoony fun, and it has that traditional early 90s Capcom-y feel to it. All the wrestlers look like extras from Final Fight, and hey, there's Hagr himself. That's pretty awesome. Each of these guys get their own entrance and a couple of their own special moves. There's the typical game modes here, but the game's biggest selling point is that it's four-player compatible, making it one of the best four-player games out there for the Super Nintendo, and worth the price of the cartridge alone. Saturday Night Slam Masters isn't anything revolutionary by any stretch, it's just good old fashion fighting done well, with huge sprites, precise hitboxes, and a variety of moves. Next we move on to some murky territory, with some Japan region only Super Famicom games. Now, pro wrestling is huge in Japan, but they have their own organizations over there, which have their own series of games for Super Famicom, some spawning up to seven games. I'm not going to cover all of them because there's just too many, and a lot of them aren't English-friendly, so I didn't have a clue what I was doing, in more than half of them, but I will cover a few of the more well-made games. Let's start with two games that were actually released in North America that are conversions of Super Famicom games, Hammer Lock Wrestling, and Natsumei Championship Wrestling. Starting with Hammer Lock Wrestling, uh, wow. This game is weird and really disorienting. You've got the actual action happening in this middle section of the screen, then these cutaway sequences and these top and bottom panels? Look, I understand the need to stand out in some way, but this does not work. It is way too disorienting not to mention completely pointless, although I will say the pixel art here is pretty nice looking for what it's worth. There's no unique game modes or anything, so there's nothing different on that front, so this game is a stay away. Next, there's Natsumei Championship Wrestling, which is a little better. The focus is on the in-ring action, thankfully, but the gameplay here is tough to get used to. Everything is based on timing, so it can take a while to get that down. There are button combinations for each move that you have to implement, and if you don't do it right, your opponent will take advantage, and you'll get your ass kicked fairly quickly. Overall it's not bad. One other thing I like is that each wrestler has something to say after each match, kinda like punch out. Wow, that guy was really heavy. I can't help but laugh at that. Anyway, for some weird reason, Natsumei Championship Wrestling is available on the Wii Virtual Console, and while I'd rather play the WWF SNES games, this game isn't that bad. Although it's tough to get good at. Continuing on from there, it should be mentioned that Natsumei Championship Wrestling was a localized version of a Super Famicom game, ZenNippon Pro Wrestling Dash, which is the second game in the ZenNippon Wrestling Game series based on the All Japan Pro Wrestling Organization. The first two games are pretty much identical, just with different rosters, but the third game is just a little different. Sadly, there's no English patch for this game, so I can't figure out what's going on, but it does appear that they have made SD anime versions of the wrestlers. So yeah. The fourth game falls back in line with the first two games, and as you'd expect, it's the best version, complete with entrances and entrance music, and a ton of wrestlers to choose from. But again, it's tricky to figure out because there's no English patch. Next, there's the Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling series, which spans three games, and these are a bit more English-friendly, with a roster that American audiences might know a bit better, with the Steiner Brothers, Eddie Guerrero, and the Road Warriors among a few others. The gameplay, however, is pretty similar to the ZenNippon series, although I will admit it's a bit more button-mash-friendly. I enjoyed the Shin Nippon series quite a bit, and found it more enjoyable than the Zen Nippon series, not just because it's more English-friendly, but it's a lot more polished overall, and it's easier to get a better feel for what you're doing. Last but certainly not least is the Influential Superfire Pro series, which spans an impressive 7 games on the Super Famicom. This series is massively popular in Japan, featuring games on Sega Saturn, PS1, Game Boy Advance, among several other platforms. The original FirePro games were made for the PC engine, and were the first of their kind, with a huge roster of wrestlers, and actual tactics involved in the matches instead of just button-mashing your opponent to submission. FirePro set the standard for pretty much every wrestling game to come afterward. As for the Super Famicom games, they're just awesome. There's weapons, blood, crisp controls, a ton of moves, and this is consistent throughout the entire series. The only problem, of course, is the obvious language barrier, but thankfully there are English patches available for a few of the games. Most importantly, for the best game of the series, SuperfirePro wrestling Premium X. If you're into wrestling, I highly recommend checking out this game. It gets everything right, and it sums up what the FirePro series is all about. Heck, even if you're not into wrestling that much, this is still a fun game to play. Anyway, that about does it for me. Thanks for watching, and have a great rest of your day!