Retro Game of the Day is a daily look back at some of the games we loved - and some that we didn't - during the formative years. Today's entry is Pro Wrestling for the NES.
Retro Game of the Day! Pro Wrestling
Pro Wrestling by Nintendo for the NES, released in 1987 domestically (USA).
This was part of the first wave of the post-launch lineup of NES games that the OG NES crowd got their paws on. It was odd to see a sports title coming so soon off the assembly line, but whatever it was you can bet it was going to eagerly get picked up!
I remember my buddy picked this up and we'd go back and forth between playing this, Super Mario Bros, and Ghosts n Goblins. As this was the "newer game" it was a little exciting (although Mario was the most fun, and GnG was... well, it was really hard!) Though I wasn't too keen on wrestling as a kid, most of the folks in my neighborhood was, so you can bet this title caught fire pretty quickly!
Pro Wrestling was really an unexpected surprise. There really had never been a home game quite like this before (and honestly, I'd not seen one in the arcade too much like this either). It was wrestling, but there were a group of fairly well-defined (and interesting) somewhat cartoony personalities. King Slender, Starman, the Amazon - this was wrestling alright! Best of all, each wrestler had his own special move set - many required you to learn and practice how to properly execute the button combos. In a pre-Street Fighter world, this was actually something pretty special.
Pro Wrestling was a little game, it was very simplistic - but it felt like wrestling, it was quite colorful, the music was catchy, and it was a lot of fun to play with your buddy (probably one of the top 2-Player simultaneous experiences on the NES when it launched). It's not aged very well, and games like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! will probably eclipse this in most gamers' memories - but for many of us, the thought of this game brings back some really happy times.
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