Retro Game of the Day! Pro Wrestling (NES)
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.
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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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