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Main Page » video games

Monday, November 19

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns: The game they tried to keep from me!

by Mike on Mon 19 Nov 2007 07:56 PM EST

From the first time I read about Fire Pro Wrestling Returns a few months back, I have been totally psyched about it. Exploding death matches, extensive create-a-wrestler features, customized logos and venues...I mean, this game sounds like it has just about everything I have ever wanted in a wrestling video game. By the end of September, I couldn't take the anticipation any more and I started mapping out my quest to land a copy of the game. So one afternoon in late September, I called a local GameStop store just south of Dayton to try to reserve a copy and I ended up talking to the store manager. Now, I have been shopping at this particular GameStop location for years and I know from experience that the individual in question purports to know everything there is about every game for every system. Seriously. So, I really thought that I would make out okay. One might imagine my surprise when I was met with some brief silence and then the curt response, "It's not on my list." I explained a little more about how Fire Pro was supposed to ship on the same day as SD vs. Raw 2008 (an historic event in and of itself), how Fire Pro has a cult following amongst wrestling gamers in the US and Japan, and how the game was to retail for $15 – a mere fraction of the SD vs. Raw 2008 retail sticker. Still nothing. The manager said again, "It's not on my list. I have no information about it." Never mind that it was all over the Internet. GameStop had nothing for me. The same day, I called another location and I talked to a guy who was somewhat familiar with the game. He explained that GameStop did not provide shipping details on cheaper games and they did not allow customers to reserve cheap games out of concerns that people would not buy the more expensive games like SD vs. Raw. Now that was interesting.

I continued to watch trailer videos and read up on the buzz surrounding Fire Pro in the following weeks and by the time November 13 rolled around, I was pretty excited. I went into the Dayton Mall GameStop that evening and there were plenty of copies of SD vs. Raw 2008 available, but I couldn't find a single copy of Fire Pro. I asked at font counter and the guy looked at me like I was speaking another language. I told him a little more about the shipping date, the cult following, the buzz, etc. He was still clueless. He started looking through the computer as the queue of customers grew behind me. I am sure he must have gone through 20 different computer screens. I eventually told him to forget it and I was almost out the door when he yelled, "I found it!" I hurriedly returned to the counter and he looked again at the screen, saying, "Yeah, we don't have any." He then explained that since the release date was November 13, that meant I had to wait another day for the games to actually make it to the store. SD vs. Raw was an exception because it was a big seller and GameStop had those games shipped to them via some kind of overnight express shipping. But when I asked if he was sure they would have a copy of Fire Pro on November 14, he could not really guarantee it.

I went home and thought on it a bit more. I looked at the Amazon.com listing for Fire Pro Wrestling Returns and thought about just ordering a copy from there, but I wanted to try once more to find a local copy. I remembered there is an EB Games in Beavercreek, so I looked up a listing on the 'net and called. Turns out it's not an EB Games any longer...Now it's a GameStop. The guy I talked to told me the same thing about adding a day to the release date to cover shipping time and he again went through the whole story about how GameStop doesn't want people to be able to reserve cheap games. I was beyond annoyed with all this nonsense. But the guy was very nice and he told me to call him first thing the next day and he would check through all the new games for me and even hold a copy if they had one. I really thought things were going to work out. Then, the next morning I called and got the same guy. He told me that right after I had called the day before, he had gone to the official Fire Pro web site and found that they had postponed release of the game until November 23. Really. I was stunned. Stunned and pissed. Really stunned and really pissed.

As the day went on, I became really suspicious. Why change a Tuesday release date to a Friday release date? What kind of arbitrary crap is that? The Amazon listing did not indicate that the release was delayed and I was finding blog article and news items featuring excepts from Agetec press releases regarding the shipping and distribution of Fire Pro – on schedule. So, on November 15, I ordered Fire Pro through Amazon (via Hubbagames). The next day, I got my shipping confirmation. And today – November 19 – when I arrived home, there it was on my front porch. Just like that.

As irrational or paranoid as it sounds, it really feels like GameStop didn't want me to have Fire Pro. They are apparently far more interested in forcing an artificial demand for their top-tier titles than giving customers what they actually want. So much for the Randian argument that the happiness of consumers is actually important to capitalists. Since I am not a big gamer, losing my business will be a negligible loss for them. But I don't need the aggravation of shopping at GameStop – any GameStop – ever....e-eh-ehh-ever again. Besides, Fire Pro Wrestling Returns is as good as I think it will be, I won't need to buy another wrestling game for a really long time.

The only bad thing about getting Fire Pro today is that I won't have a lot of time to take it for a test run. Any wrestling fan worth his or her tights knows what's going down tonight...

For those about to rock, set the clock!

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Tuesday, October 23

Fire Pro Wrestling Returns: The best game I've never played

by Mike on Tue 23 Oct 2007 10:18 PM EDT

I know it's probably hard to believe, but I am practically ready to declare "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" my favorite video game ever without ever having played it. The game isn't even available in the US yet. I read about it a few months ago after finding an article during my daily Google News search for wrestling gossip. Apparently, Fire Pro debuted in Japan many years ago and it was a big hit there. There were some attempts at releasing US versions, but the effort never really picked up momentum. Even still, "Fire Pro Wrestling" is something of a legend in the US. So, the news that there will finally be a US version that is easy to fund and very affordable is creating quite a buzz on the Internet.

I have been playing wrestling video games for years, but I really just have a few favorites. The first wrestling game I played on a home system was probably "WWF WrestleMania" for the original Sega Genesis. It was pretty good for its day, but it didn't really blow me away. I played a few other games over the years and some time later, I picked up a copy of "WCW Mayhem" for the original PlayStation system. I loved this game. I mean, it was really what I had been looking for all along. The fact that I could create a bunch of my own characters and pit them against each other was a huge deal to me. See, what I really, really like to do is to create characters based on real life to make things more interesting. I even have based characters on Thomai and me. In fact, if you're reading this now and we know each other from high school, college, or from any previous or current employment, there is a strong chance that I have based one of my created wrestlers on you at one time or another. Okay…I've really only done that with a few people to be honest. Seriously. I don't just create characters based on people I know, though. For example, I've also created some wrestlers based on the Indian Revolutionary Bhagat Singh (complete with tweed pinstripe suit and fedora) and Venom frontman Cronos (wearing vintage-era black and red spandex). The thing of it is, up to now I've only been able to create maybe 20 to 35 characters for each of my favorite games. The memory space for created wrestlers is pretty limited. So, while I can still delete "stale" characters and add new ones, my options for match-ups get pretty limited after a while. And believe me when I say that I put a lot of thought into this stuff. I mean, I create my own storylines, venues, stables, titles, etc. A lot of it's in my head because gameplay options can kind of limit things no matter how good the game might be.

The Red Menace and Elektra vs.
Glenn Danzig and Cronos

Currently, I'm playing the original "SmackDown vs. Raw" for PlayStation 2. I just bought it around the end of 2006 when my interest in wrestling picked up after a long hiatus. I really enjoy this game, particularly due to the fact that I used GameShark to unlock all the features. That way, I could access all of the venues, create my own custom titles and max out attributes on created wrestlers without having to play all of the ridiculously boring "season" features of the game itself. Currently, I have 35 created characters in my own "federation" and those characters are the only ones that I play on the game. I did pick up a copy of SD vs. Raw 2006 a while back, but my GameShark codes only unlocked the venues and some other stuff and I couldn't do much in the way of attributes for my created characters. If I can't maximize my created characters, the game is pretty much useless to me. I think I'll pass on the 2007 and 2008 versions.

So, this is where "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" comes in. Apparently, the "create a wrestler" feature on this game is tremendous. I have read several articles that indicate that you can store up to 500 created wrestlers for gameplay. That's in addition to the 327 wrestlers already on the Fire Pro roster, some of which – perhaps many of which – resemble well-known superstars like Terry Funk. And the options for gameplay are absolutely astounding, including bizarre matches like an "Exploding Death Match" and some kind of match where wrestlers hit each other with fluorescent light bulbs.

The big compromise to this game is that it apparently not a three-dimensional game like the SD vs. Raw series. That's not really too much of a concern for me, as I tend to like games with a "retro" feel anyway. The screenshots that I have seen seem to indicate that players can have some action out of the ring, so the fact that the perspective might be a little skewed or stiff is not a big deal at the end of the day. There is some give-and-take involved in building a better wrestling game, I guess. From what I've read, "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns" is a very big threat to the SD vs. Raw line, especially considering that both games ship on the same day – November 13, 2007 – and that Fire Pro will retail for somewhere between $15 and $20, compared to $50 and up for SD vs. Raw. Even if Fire Pro Wrestling isn't the end-all of wrestling games, maybe the challenge will force WWE and THQ to think out of the box.

411mania.com has a fantastic article that covers the entire history of the Fire Pro game. Click here to read Ramon Aranda's "Fire Pro Wrestling: A History Lesson."