Is ‘frantic menu-selection’ a genre?
Technically, this isn’t the first ever pro-wrestling video game – that honour falls to the obscure The Puroresu, for Bandai’s 8-bit home computer, the RX-78 Gundam. However, for most historians, The Big Pro Wrestling (Tag Team Wrestling in the west) is the place where it all started.
Developed by Technos Japan, and published by Data East, this arcade game was released in Japan in December 1983.
We’re dealing with tag-team matches only (no singles matches) and the gameplay is simple enough. Use the joystick to move your wrestler around the ring – as you move, your arms occasionally raise up into the air. If you make contact with your opponent when your arms are in the air (and their arms are down by their side), you gain the upper hand in the subsequent lock-up.
Here’s where the menu comes in: you then have 3 seconds to cycle through a menu of moves and make a selection. Each move in the menu is more powerful than the last. However, if the 3 seconds expires before you choose a move, your opponent will hit you with a counter-attack.
That’s really all there is to it: use the joystick to move around to try to initiate contact with the opponent when your arms are up … then frantically tap through the menu, selecting a move as late as you dare.
Presentation
We are quickly introduced to the 4 main characters: the player-controlled Gemini Brothers (Terry and Sunny) and the CPU-controlled heels, Mad Bull Giant and Bloody Mask.
The Gemini Brothers are obviously inspired by The Funks (Terry and Dory Jr), although they also have a great deal in common with Japanese superstar Antonio Inoki, particularly in terms of mannerisms and moves.
The heel team bear more than a passing resemblance to Andre the Giant and The Destroyer. However, the most egregious look-a-like can be seen when the heels’ sword-wielding ally makes a rare appearance: the turban-wearing Violence Ceaser Singh is a very obvious knock-off of Tiger Jeet Singh.
As you’ll have gathered from this cast of characters, The Big Pro Wrestling is unlicensed. However, curiously the name-entry screen (in both the Japanese and western releases) states that the game is “Approved by New Japan Pro and All Japan Pro“. The Japanese promotional flyer goes one further and makes clear that the approval comes from “New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling“.
Rumour has it that the president of Technos Japan received some sort of vague approval from a person connected to the two wrestling promotions, but it’s very questionable whether that individual had the necessary authority.
Having said that, there’s not a great deal in the game that is connected to either company, other than the various Inoki-isms that are sprinkled throughout.
On that point, the Gemini Brothers go down in history as the first video game wrestlers to enjoy a ring-entrance, replete with theme music. They come out to a brazen rendition of Mandrill / Michael Masser’s “Ali’s Theme / Ali Bombaye”, instantly recognizable to Japanese audiences as Inoki’s theme music.
Pre-match, the scene is further set with the presentation of flowers. As the ring announcer introduces the babyfaces, they throw their jackets into the air, while the dastardly heels whisper and plot in the other corner.
The audio is impressive for a game from 1983. Other than the aforementioned entrance music and some frenzied crowd noise, there is a smattering of synthesized speech to bring things to life. The heels shout “Come on!” at various intervals and your wrestler gives a very obvious Inoki-esque “Daa!” when he lands moves.
Throw in a packed and excitable crowd, the commentators at ringside, a pair of press photographers and a cameraman, and it all adds up to a charming representation of late 1970’s / early 1980’s Japanese pro-wrestling.
Then the bell sounds and away we go…
Gameplay
It’s worth remembering that, in late 1983, the fighting genre was still very much in its infancy.
The seminal Karate Champ (Karate Dō in Japan) wouldn’t be released for another six months. It would be a further six months after that before the snappy kicks and punches of Kung Fu Master (Spartan X) revolutionized the concept of fighting games.
Therefore, even if Technos Japan had wanted to borrow heavily from existing fighting games of the time, there really was no template to follow.
We end up with the slightly odd scenario where we have two buttons that are used solely for menu navigation, rather than for kicks, punches or grabs.
As noted above, the gameplay revolves around maneuvering yourself so that you collide with your opponent while your hands are up and theirs are down. If you manage this, you’ll have the advantage and can perform a grapple move (using the menu-based system).
In any other combination of “hands up / hands down”, we have a collar and elbow stalemate – with the player having to pull-away to attempt a re-engagement when the necessary “Player Hands Up” v “CPU Hands Down” situation occurs.
When you have the advantage in a grapple, a menu appears on screen. You then have 3 second countdown (2 seconds in “real time”) to tap the first button to cycle through the available moves, with each move in the list being more powerful than the last.
When you’ve highlighted a move that you’re happy with, pressing the second button performs the move. If the timer expires before you select a move, the opponent reverses the collar-and-elbow tie-up and slams you down. As such, the reward of going for the bigger moves (appearing later in the menu) is balanced against the risk of the timer expiring before you reach and select that move.
| Button Presses | Move |
|---|---|
| 0 | Headlock |
| 1 | Kick Combo |
| 2 | Western Jab |
| 3 | Chop Combo |
| 4 | Drop Kick |
| 5 | Body Slam |
| 6 | Enzui Giri |
| 7 | Piledriver |
| 8 | Western Lariat |
| 9 | Brainbuster |
| 10 | German Suplex |
| 11 | Cobra Twist |
If you fail to lock-up with the CPU for a while, the AI opponent will fly into a rage (turning red) and at that point they zoom across the screen to catch you in an unavoidable and punishing grapple. As you get further into the game, the CPU affords you less and less time before activating this furious state.
A Power bar is displayed on screen showing your current wrestler’s heath. This not only depletes when you receive moves, but also reduces when you perform moves yourself, an early attempt at simulating stamina.
As the Power bar lowers, your movement speed slows. Tagging your partner allows you to recover some health on the apron, while the fresh man takes over in the ring.
Gameplay Hint
If you move downwards (towards the bottom of the screen), your arms will move to the opposite position: so if they’re down by your side when you’re facing left, right or upwards, they’ll be raised when you move downwards. You can use this (in conjunction with a ‘box-step’ technique) to maximise your chances of colliding with your opponent with your arms aloft
The move animations, while simplistic, would have been instantly recognizable to Japanese players.
These include Terry Funk’s Western Jab combo, Antonio Inoki’s Enzuigiri and Cobra Twist and Stan Hansen’s Western Lariat. We also get a great Karl Gotch-inspired German Suplex. The crowd roars and sweat flies through the air as the moves connect, giving some visceral punch to proceedings.
It’s also possible to achieve a submission victory by applying the Cobra Twist to Bloody Mask when his Power is low. Submission victories are something that many later wrestling games wouldn’t even try to simulate.
Of note too is the rudimentary ‘cut-play’ on show: attempt the Cobra Twist too early in the match and Mad Bull Giant will storm into the ring to break up the move.
The movesets for each member of the face team are identical, while the heels (who do not have to navigate the menu system) have their own selection of moves.
For the human player, attempting the more powerful moves (the Piledriver onwards) on the larger Mad Bull Giant character leads to an automatic reversal, so you need to wear him down with the smaller moves. This is the first example of ‘weight detection’ in a wrestling game, another innovative first.
If a grapple move is performed near the ropes, the action can spill out to floor. At that point, not only does the view change, but the move-menu is reduced to three new moves: an Inoki-style Knuckle Arrow punch, a Giant Baba-style Brain Chop, and an attack where you ram your opponent into the ring post. Count-outs are possible and the CPU is not afraid to exploit that strategy.
In a fun twist, when you’re battling at ringside, there’s a chance that Violence Ceasar Singh will make an appearance. Rampaging through the crowd, he sends audience members and chairs flying before thrashing your hapless wrestler with his sword. It’s yet more evidence that the developers were true fans of Japanese pro-wrestling and it’s an impressive technical achievement – interference wouldn’t resurface in a wrestling game until 1989’s Fire Pro Wrestling Combination Tag.
When a fallen wrestler has no Power left, their opponent automatically goes for a pinfall. In that situation, there are no kick-outs or near-falls: the 3-count is inevitable.
The referee gives an excitably high-pitched “one, two, THWEEEEE!” at the climax of the match. This same cadence would be re-used a couple of years later by the ref in Technos Japan’s Exciting Hour / Mat Mania.
If you win a match, you collect a trophy or belt (together with a point bonus depending on how quickly you secured the win) before you move on to the next match … against exactly the same opponents.
If you manage to achieve 10 wins in a row, you are crowned the “World Champion” – the news is delivered via some wholly underwhelming text on screen. However, the matches keep coming in an endless loop.
Player v Player battles are not possible, but two humans can play co-operatively against the CPU. In the cocktail table version of the game, tagging-out will flip the screen 180 degrees so that the player sitting on the other side of the table-top gets the ‘normal’ perspective.
Analysis
There’s no doubt that The Big Pro Wrestling is borne out of a deep love for Japanese pro-wrestling. The presentation evokes so much of that particular era: fans filing into the arena on a summer night, ring entrances, announcers, interference, cut play, and the classic tag team struggle between good and evil.
However, the gameplay has not aged well. The key game mechanic involves using the joystick to try to collide with your opponent while your hands are raised.
In practice, you often end up in a stalemate position when you lock-up. You then have to quickly disengage and re-engage, hoping that the arm position of your opponent will change.
Even when exploiting that strategy, the AI becomes increasingly unreasonable and frustrating as the matches progress, flying into a rage before it’s possible to win a grapple.
The menu-based grapple system is also a limiting factor.
It’s an interesting solution to a key conceptual issue with wrestling games: how do you allow players to perform a wide variety of moves when you’re limited to a couple of buttons?
A menu system is perhaps an obvious (albeit crude) way around this problem. However, it’s unsurprising that Technos Japan abandoned it for their subsequent wrestling games. It would make a reappearance in Sega’s poor 1985 effort, Champion Pro-Wrestling, before disappearing from the genre completely. The aggression, struggle and drama of combat is poorly simulated by selecting items from a menu. Even with the stress of a time-limit, it’s hardly high-octane action.
Without any depth to the combat, the game becomes repetitive fairly quickly. With no variation between the matches, once you’ve won 3 or 4 in a row, there’s little incentive to keep playing.
The Story Behind the Development
Planner and Artist Hirano Buncho has a hugely entertaining fictionalised account inspired by his early days at Technos Japan, much of it revolving around the development of a game called “The Bear Pro Wrestling”. You can find a translation of it here.
Other versions
An English translation, renamed Tag Team Wrestling was released in western arcades in January 1984.
In this version, Sunny and Terry have become Jocko and Spike while the heels are rebranded as the Mad Maulers. When translating the moves, they made some interesting choices (“Enzuigiri” becomes “Rabbit Killer”) and there are some things they didn’t bother translating at all – the message saying that the game was approved by New Japan and All Japan remains in Japanese.
The difficulty appears to have been toned down slightly, with the player having a little more time to make their move selection from the menu that pops up.
Home console versions followed in 1985 and 1986, but the gameplay is different enough from the 1983 original (‘push-button’ grapples being the key addition) to warrant covering those versions separately.
Verdict
It’s well known that Technos / Data East brass wanted to cancel this game halfway through development. They were persuaded otherwise and they ended up with a reasonably-sized hit on their hands, with The Big Pro Wrestling topping Japanese arcade charts in early 1984.
It is easy to see why. This is a charming snapshop of late 1970s / early 1980s Japanese pro wrestling, packed full of character and nice touches. It’s a hugely creditable first attempt at the genre featuring intros, larger than life characters, all the top moves of the day, interference and more. However, the gameplay itself gets dull pretty quickly and it cant really be said that The Big Pro Wrestling lays any gameplay foundations for future wrestling games … something that Technos Japan would rectify in their next attempt…
“This was my very first memorable hit game. It’s a work I’m extremely fond of.
At the time, Technōs Japan (now famous for the Kunio-kun series) was a small, unknown company with only five or six staff members. We desperately wanted to make a hit game and make a name for ourselves. One day, a colleague and I got excited, saying, “Why don’t we try making something based on what we’re personally most interested in?” The thing that caught our attention was pro wrestling, which was booming in popularity thanks to Ichirō Furutachi’s live commentary. So we planned a game with a new system built around pro wrestling as its theme.
However, the company president was opposed to the idea. “New things carry big risks. The chance of failure is high,” he said.
In the end, halfway through development, an order came down to cancel the project. All of the staff were completely disheartened.
But then a senior member of the sales team stepped in and said, like something out of a TV drama: “If you guys are confident it’ll be fun, then see it through to the end. I’ll go and persuade the president for you.”
Thanks to that senior colleague’s efforts, development was restarted. When the game was finished, it turned out that we all really did love pro wrestling — and the game was a huge success in the location test.
Back then, all of us staff used to encourage each other by saying: “Someday, let’s line up lots of the games we’ve made in that big game centre in Kabukichō.”
That dream of everyone on the team eventually became a reality.”
– Takashi Yoneda, Technos Japan Planner for The Big Pro-Wrestling
