Round and round he goes, where he stops… nobody knows…

Tecmo World Wrestling

One of the most often overlooked genres in video games is sports entertainment, or professional wrestling as they like to call it. It’s a shame too, because wrestling games normally sell very well and most of them are alotta fun. I know people that hate wrestling, but if I break out Fire Pro or any of the WWF games, then they’re all about it.

I’ve already went into my obsession with wrestling in articles past, so I won’t bother doing that today. Instead, I’ll take a look at one of the best wrestling games ever made, Tecmo World Wrestling.

If you have ever played a video wrestling game, than basically you know how Tecmo World Wrestling operates. Gameplay-wise, wrestling games haven’t changed that much over the years. You could do a couple of more moves, and of course there are better graphics, but basically it’s just walk up to your opponent and hit a button and a direction to do a certain move.

TWW sported a couple of differences that set it appart from the competition though. One of the most notable innovations was an addition of a side-ring announcer. He wasn’t too bad at commentating either. A lot of what he says does get kinda repetitive, but that should be nothing new to wrestling fans. Look at J.R. All he ever says is “He’s going straight to hell!” or “Austin! Austin! Austin!”

You could also work out to increase your strength in this game. There are three exercises, but my favorites are the push-ups. A big fat sumo wrestler would sit on your back while you try to rapidly hit the A button as possible. It’s innovations like this that make me miss the Tecmo of old. I admit, the Dead or Alive series is great, but I’d take the old school Tecmo any day of the week.

Of course, the best part about wrestling are the wrestlers. That makes sense, because if they were bowlers, it would be bowling and not wrestling. Instead of using real wrestlers, Tecmo opted to create their own cast of crazy characters. They were basically all the same except that they had different moves, but each had his own unique personality. Here’s a quick rundown…

Akira Dragon is your typical Japanese wrestler guy. In fact, I think he might really be Fighter Hayabusa, but he had to change his name when he moved to a different federation. Kinda like when Mean Mark became the undertaker.

I also thought it weird that one of his special moves was a German Suplex. I wonder why they call it that. Do Germans really go around suplexing each other? Wouldn’t it technically be called a Japanese Suplex since a Japanese person is performing it? These are the kind of questions that keep me up at night.

At first glance, El Tigre was another one of those stereotypical stock wrestler types. He’s all luchadore style with his mask and all. But when you actually use him, he actually has very little high flying moves, and is more of a power person.

Even though they claimed Pat Gordon was from Greece, we all know better: he’s really one of the people on Super Dodgeball. I never used him much due to the fact that he looked like he was having problems with his bowel movements.

Rex Beat’s bio card says that he’s from Britain, but I always pretended he was Animal from LOD. Some other people he resembles include: Mr. T, Gene Simmons from KISS, and this angry biker guy that lives across the street from me.

Jackie Lee was the resident martial artist expert, which in wrestling terms means that he use to take Taekwondo back when he was little. He also did the German Suplex. Uh… don’t have much else to say about him actually.

Oh yeah, have you guys noticed how wrestling in the States always portray Asian wrestlers as just me-no-speakee-engrish foreigners? It really pisses me off. There’ll be a couple that escape every now and then, i.e. Ricky Steamboat, but the majority of Asians in the US federations end up just being crappy jobbers. A recent example is how the WWE is screwing Taijiri over. It might have to do with something with the fact that the majority of wrestling fans are beer guzzling xenophobic rednecks… but it would be kinda wrong for me to generalize.

Hmmm… Boris Chekov was a Russian, which automatically qualifies him as being a power Soviet weapon of destruction intent on destroying all the ideals we Americans hold sacred. He had the Giant Swing, which is the coolest fucking move in the game. If you don’t know what a Giant Swing is, it’s when somebody grabs you by your feet, starts spinning around, and then tosses you on your head. I’m not sure, but I think it would really hurt too.

Mark Rose was the gay guy, kinda like Adrian Street or Golddust. He’s from Germany, but if you read his card, you’ll notice that he isn’t able to perform a German Suplex. OH MY GOS WAT DA FIZNICHIDY IZ UP WID THAZ SHIS IS PISSIN ME OFFA!!! I’m sorry, but I didn’t mean to get back on the whole German Suplex thing. It’s just really really bugging me now.

Julio Falcon was like the popular wrestler from the 80s, Coco B. Ware, in the fact that he played with a big ass parrot who attacked his opponents and gouged their eyes out. Okay maybe I made that part up, but it’s only because I don’t remember ever using the guy.

Randy Gomez was the first person I ever used in the game. That’s just one of the bits of useless information that floats around in my head. I can tell you the attack power for every single monster in Final Fantasy, but if you asked me something that has to do with the real world, I’d be totally loss. The real world is scary. The Real World on MTV is even scarier.

At any rate, I think the reason why I picked him was because his nickname was the Venezuelan Grenade, which sounds really really cool. It’s like, damn, this guy is liable to go off at any second and blow up like a grenade. It sure beats the hell out of being a German Grenade.

Last, but definitely not least, is Dr. Guildo, my favorite character in the game. He also possess the Giant Swing and the along with it, the Death Drop. Dr. Guildo also wore a kind of weird helmet mask thing. And if you don’t know by now, helmets are cool.

Unlike Pro Wrestling, I could actually beat this game. The final boss was the “Earl of Doom”, B. King. He’s a demon from hell intent on taking over the world, one body slam at a time. This might seem a little farfetched: why would a denizen of the lower planes with magical powers want to dress up in underwear and play around with steroided men? But if you really follow wrestling, this kind of stuff happens all the time. Remember all those crappy Undertaker-Kane matches?

Another thing that was neat about TWW were the cutscenes of special moves. Even though they too got kind of repetitive (especially if you try to pin somebody put keep on giant swinging their ass), the scenes really added a nice touch.

Tecmo World Wrestling is really one of the better games on the NES. Its combined great graphics, crazy characters, and a few innovations to set it appart from it’s competitors. It’s really fun to play, and hell, it’s alot better than any of those WWF games.

Score: 8.3

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