Action Arcade Wrestling
Develop Action 937
Cost: 1 dollar
I’ve played a lot of wrestling games over the years, from No Mercy, to Fire Pro, to Raw Vs. Smackdown to Rumble Roses. Action Arcade Wrestling does not hold a candle to any of those more more modern games, having more in common with 8/16 bit wrestling games, but for a one dollar Indie title, I didn’t expect much more.
The game is simply a bunch of match types, from singles to tag team to steal cage. You pick one of eight wrestlers and go to town. There’s no story, no wider context, but I didn’t expect it. However, you can create your own wrestlers and arenas. Character creation boils down to swapping the features of existing wrestlers, but I wasn’t expecting anything I’d find in Raw Vs. Smackdown. Arena creation boils down to coloring each part of the ring and surrounding area, but you can change the arena mid-match if you want.
Somebody call security!
If you’ve played any wrestling game, you’ll have no problem fitting in. The game has three different grappling systems for used to Fire Pro’s system as opposed to Raw vs. Smackdown. You can do all of the standard wrestling move types, including top rope moves and submissions. While different wrestlers have different moves, each wrestler has one or two of each type, so expect to see the same slams a lot.Fortunately, the game is not sluggish so nothing feels awkward.
Graphically the game is 2d, though the wrestlers themselves look 3d. While there are strange graphical anomalys, like wrestlers literally wrestling though the ropes, it’s nothing too jarring. Sound-wise, the crowd sounds like it was tapped at a live wrestling event, while the sound effects are stock.
You won't be making anyone unique.
This isn’t modern wrestling title. There isn’t a deep wrestling system with oodles of replay value.There isn’t a wrestler creation system with seemingly infinite options. What there is, is a game straight out of the 80s and early 90s, that simply got the job while wowing few and with even fewer remembering them.
While it may seem a little harsh comparing Action Arcade Wrestling to modern titles, those games revolutionized the genre, more or less erasing the previous games from memory. Still I can’t expect much more than what’s here from a one dollar Indie title.
Therefore, if you want a simplistic and occasionally fun wrestling game, buy this. Just don’t expect anything mind-blowing, deep, or long lasting.
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