Genre: Wrestling
Publisher: Nintendo
Total time played: 2 hour
Short review: The first wrestling game to be released on the NES and also the best.
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This is one of the first NES games I remember playing and loving. Pro Wrestling features 6 unique wrestlers and 2 player action. There is a lot of detail in the game. Each fighter has their own finishing move and along with punches and kicks the game features suplexes, body slams, pile drivers, off the ropes, out of the ring fighting, and jumping from the turnbuckle all while the crowd cheers and the referee and cameraman follow all of the action.
But, there are some drawbacks as well. There really is no direction to the game. I played as Starman and beat 5 fighters and won a championship belt and thought the game had ended. I was shown a screen that said “defend your title” which I assumed meant win as many matches as you can without dying. As this was an early NES game I figured after winning the title the game became a high score type of game with no end where you would just see how many fights you could win in a row. I was wrong.
After a little internet research I learned that to face the final match and become the true champion you must defend your belt 10 times. This took me several tries. As the game progressed the fighters went from easy to frustratingly difficult. This is expected in games, but what isn’t expected is that I didn’t see a way to get better. Early matches allowed me to body slam my opponents when we would grapple but later opponents would always break the hold or body slam me instead. I was using the same strategy and button combos, they just didn’t work any longer.
After several tries I was able to get to King Puma, the final fighter in the game. He looked like a regular dude wearing a tiger mask. He also possessed the ability to perform each characters special move. This was not an easy fight but after several tries I was finally able to knock him out and become the true champion.
The game is a classic and there are actual moves to learn and a little strategy involved but it does become repetitive and the CPU player gets almost too difficult in the later fights.
Hoz's 8-bit NES Quest 
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