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.
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| 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."
