By: Chris "Sledge" Douglas
As I've talked about here, here and here, joshi (women's) pro-wrestling has been, at various times, a popular form of entertainment in Japan over the years. And since having been introduced to it via some TV exposure in the United States and via tape trading (GOD I feel old whenever I talk about the concept of tape trading nowadays), I've pretty much become a fan myself, even going so far as going to see Eagle Sawai's retirement in 2007. But, the concept of women's wrestling to be mainstream enough to get an actual licensed video game was quite novel to me at the time. So that's why I did a bit of a mini freakout when I found that there were actually quite a few. For instance, did you know that Pro-Wrestling on the SEGA Master System was actually converted from a game based around the Crush Girls and their fued with Dump Matsumoto and crew?
Well, I found out about these while researching Fire Pro Wrestling games. This was well before my time in Japan of course, and therefore thought I'd never have the chance to be able to buy them, so I played the hell out of the roms. And the one I played the most was Super Fire Pro Wrestling Queen's Special.
Released in June of 1995 on the Super Famicom (and apparently there was a PC Engine CD version released in February of that year), Queen's Special was unique in that it was an officially licensed Fire Pro game. Besides the joshi games, all Fire Pro games, from the first one on the PC Engine to the last one released on the PS2 even here in the US (I'm not counting that little XBLA loser) have been unlicensed games. Sure, the characters would strongly resemble real life wrestlers, but they had no official permission to have them in the game. However, these were different. And they were officially licensed from All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling.
It wasn't until 2007 while living in Yamanashi that I was finally able to receive a full, in the box copy, and I've since played it to completion a number of times.
Let's take a closer look.
Control:
Control is similar to just about any Fire Pro Game, IE you walk up to your opponent to initiate grapple, and press your desired button or arrow direction plus button at the proper time to execute a move. The game will then internally do some sort of rock-paper-scissors with both you and your opponent's stats to decide who's move gets done.
One thing to warn "y'all" about, and its something I catch myself doing from time to time, is that, like every Fire Pro game, when you perch yourself on the top rope, you'd better be sure of which button you want to press. This is because it doesn't matter if the opponent is standing up or lying down... if you press that button, it's only gonna do one move.
Unlike the wrestling games we're familiar with today, Fire Pro had a single move dedicated to a single button in this case. If your opponent is down and you press A, then your Manami is going to attempt a top-rope dropkick, and miss horribly.
Visuals:
Animations are completely new and have not been seen in any Fire Pro before or since.
Notable:
Joshi Bridge!
Also, no breathe button!
Moves are animated to look very... joshi. If you've seen Japanese women's professional wrestling before, you'd know that they work very differently from the men. This game does well in capturing that, and is probably why these animations have not been seen since.
Gameplay:
You work the match by wearing down your opponent using weaker grapple moves in the beginning, and then mixing it up with submissions and peppering in a few lucky strikes whenever you can. All of your moves are available from the outset, and you DON'T have to work up any "momentum bar" up to any "Specials" or "Finishers". Nope. It's all there.
Now why wouldn't you want to use it?
Because you'd be reversed to HELL if you did. Sure, you might be able to land a lucky few... and if your character is relatively stronger than your opponent, maybe you'll be able to pull off a few. BUT DON'T TRY IT.
Or, you know what, go ahead. Try it. See where it gets you.
However, I've noticed that as soon as you're able to knock them down with a single strike, then they're pretty ready to receive just about any grapple you want to hit. Just about.
Character Name Changes:
Chigusa Nagayo - Vampire Woman
Devil Masami - Demolition ... something
Dinamite Kansai - Kansai Dinosaur??
Issues:
- Like any other Fire Pro game, the CPU logic makes no distinction between moves that should be done on the outside versus moves that should be done on the inside. Your opponent will always eat up valuable count-out time wrapping you up in a submission hold.
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