Pro Wrestling (NES)

A professional wrestling video game on the NES has a few things working against it. Besides the inherently limited presentation, the controller has two action buttons which sounds like it should limit a game’s ability to mirror the bombastic high flying moves of real world sports entertainment, but Pro Wrestling for the Nintendo Entertainment System manages to impress without needing to do anything extreme. It has an understanding of what it can allow the player to do and builds around the restrictions that end up making it easy to forget you don’t really have that wide of a range of moves at all.

Pro Wrestling’s matches are not simple affairs because of the mix of options given to you in a bout. While individual wrestlers sometimes have unique attacks, for the most part you can expect the B button to give you a light punch and the A button a jump kick. To win a match in Pro Wrestling, you need to wear down the opponent to the point they can be pinned for a three count, and these starter attacks are your first weapon for doing so. The punch is admittedly not a consistently useful tool, usually just a very quick attack if you see your opponent is right up in your face, but the kick is massively important. It deals damage and knocks the opponent to the floor, and you can then pull them up and try to get a follow-up attack. The kick requires good spacing to land, positioning in the ring one of the most important things to handle as you and the other wrestler will try to control space with your kicks before you move in and go for the real heavy hitting techniques.

If you get close enough to the other wrestler, you’ll initiate a grapple, and here is where the battle system really opens up. You have a range of throws, but executing them is a bit of a gamble. While technically the person initiating a grapple has the advantage, if both sides were moving in at the same time, you can’t be sure who will overpower who. Picking the right throw is important as well. A body slam for instance is safe but relatively weak compared to pile drivers and back drops. At the same time, the stamina of the wrestlers will impact whether you can pull off the more powerful maneuvers. If the opponent is too fit to lift, you are essentially giving your opponent a chance to take control of the grapple and throw you around instead. One of the smartest choices in terms of design when it comes to stamina ends up being the fact it’s not outright clear how much either wrestler has. This means during a grapple, you will have to sometimes take a risk and see if you can do the more powerful throws yet, this also true of attempted pins. There are definitely apparent clues on how much you’ve worn down an opponent though. After taking a knockdown blow or getting thrown, the time it takes the wrestler to collect themselves is a clue to their remaining stamina. In solo play you’ll get an alarm to indicate when you’re reaching specific low thresholds, but otherwise you need to try and plan around how worn down the opponent is, because if the opposing wrestler can recover quickly, you don’t want them to strike you as you try to set up an attack.

Trying to land your kicks and pull off useful throws is the core of every match in Pro Wrestling, but there are a few more elements to consider. The three count after a pin is the primary way to win, but you can throw your opponent out of the ring and initiate a count to 20. If a wrestler isn’t back in the ring in 20 seconds, they’ll be eliminated, but this timer is applied to both wrestlers and it doesn’t matter who left the ring second, they both need to return to make the timer disappear. This alternate means of victory can help you potentially make a comeback, a player who can guard ring re-entry well given a new angle as well as one with some baked in tension since you will be at risk during the attempted stall. Multiplayer matches will last until someone seizes victory and are best two out of three affairs, but in solo play against game controlled opponents, a five minute match timer and single elimination rules will encourage smart aggressive play, a time out counting as a draw that requires a rematch. Computer wrestlers can be pretty smart at times, not afraid to stand out of your path as long as it takes for you to abandon something like an attempt at a running attack, and if you climb the corner turnbuckles to dive down onto them, they are pretty good at rolling aside so you’re the one hurt instead.

There are six unique playable wrestlers in Pro Wrestling and funnily enough none of them look like the characters depicted on the game box. Instead, Fighter Hayabusa, Starman, The Amazon, Kin Corn Karn, King Slender, and Giant Panther fill the roster and need to be fought multiple times if you wish to not just become the champion of the Video Wrestling Association but also take on the boss character Great Puma and become champion of the Video Wrestling Federation as well. Notably, Pro Wrestling is the source of the now well known bit of poorly written English “A Winner Is You”, this well-meaning albeit improperly conveyed phrase appearing after your matches on the path through the tournament. The playable wrestlers have a few unique moves each, with some that drastically change how they play. The Amazon, despite being some sort of half-piranha fishman, only has special grabs that don’t change his game plan compared to others, although seeing him bite the opponent repeatedly and then wave apologetically at the ref at least gives him a special charm. A character like the masked wrestler in pink Starman though has a strong running attack, Fighter Hayabusa can pull off the Back Brain Kick to attack foes from a unique angle, and Kin Con Karn of Korea stands out with his standard punch and kick being replaced with unique variants that mean fights involving him require different space management from both sides. It is a shame they aren’t more unique and that some characters are just stuck with flashy throws instead of a new tool for strategy, but it also means there isn’t too much extra to memorize and skills transfer well between most characters.

However, facing Great Puma isn’t exactly a grand finale thanks to the unfair advantages he’s given. The final boss must first be reached after a 10 match win streak defending your VWA title making him a bit tough to reach even after you’ve taken some time to feel out the flow of a match in Pro Wrestling, but then Great Puma himself can have some pretty cheap advantages over certain characters. He can almost always move out of the way of a jump kick, Fighter Hayabusa’s special attack variant having more luck, but it’s pretty clear he’s reading your inputs with how perfectly he weaves around kicks. You can corner him to land blows, but the grab game ends up the most important element in his fight and the slight gamble that is always part of it becomes quite nerve-wracking when you don’t know if the boss will come out on top and build up an early stamina lead. Compared to other matches where you can mix up options more often it does feel like you’ll have to play a little cheap yourself if you want to beat him, but his fight benefits from the limited range of options in that you can eventually puzzle out some ideas that work. Multiplayer’s more psychological matches makes up for the final boss not playing fair though, Pro Wrestling earning some longevity outside attempting tournament matches to earn the double title by allowing you to go head-to-head with another human and explore the mindgames a bit more deeply.

THE VERDICT: Pro Wrestling on NES may not have the huge breadth of wrestling techniques a game with more complicated controls can achieve, but its matches emphasize smart spacing and making judgment calls on which moves to use as you gauge your opponent’s remaining stamina. The small batch of wrestlers have small but sometimes meaningful differences that can impact your game plans in neat little ways, and being able to get the opponent counted out either by pin or by being out of the ring too long adds some flexibility to your options even when you’re losing. There’s definitely room to expand the game and the Great Puma fight unfortunately narrows your range of feasible strategies, but generally Pro Wrestling either solo or in multiplayer bouts will have a lot of interesting in-the-moment adjusting as you try to keep gaining an edge however you can.

And so, I give Pro Wrestling for the Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GOOD rating. Pro Wrestling won’t let you just throw yourself into a fight and brute force your way to victory, and that’s how it manages to still be an enjoyable experience even all these years later. Your movement is very important as even a slight difference in spacing will determine if you land your kick or if you will be the one who initiates a grapple. Stamina not being indicated clearly not only makes it a bit closer to a true wrestling experience, but it also adds more interesting risk-taking as you feel out for when the stronger throws can be whipped out or learn how much time you have to strike when you pull up a fallen opponent for a potential follow-up. There is definitely a lot of room even within this system for added complexity that wouldn’t break what makes it work, the amount of unique moves per wrestler feeling like something that could have been tinkered with to greater diversify the cast and make specific matches stand out even more. The important thing though is that the action was able to stay exciting while also looking impressive and having room for thoughtful action. Sometimes you do want to just see the wrestler lift and opponent and slam them backwards, but it’s even more satisfying when it’s a reward for wearing down the other fighter and it comes with that knowledge you just dealt a heavy blow to that ever important unseen stamina. Some ideas like adding clear stamina gauges would make things too clear cut, but Pro Wrestling focused instead on other ideas like fighting outside the ring that means you aren’t necessarily doomed even if you get whaled on hard at a match’s start.

Pro Wrestling is balanced around the universal nature of many of its maneuvers, and with so many actions having clear cut purposes, you are able to easily remember them and adjust as the fighting moves around the ring. It’s probably hard to resist the modern presentation of newer wrestling games and the recognizable faces they feature, but Pro Wrestling gives you a pretty clean version of this type of sports entertainment because it includes all the important elements of wrestling without pushing beyond what the game system it’s on could reasonably handle.