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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...