With all of the great strides in the gaming industry, there still always seems to be some areas that are lacking. For instance, over the course of the past few generations of gaming, we have seen a steady increase of quirky titles that never would have seen the light of day back when the Genesis and SNES ruled the gaming scene. Today, we have our Parappa the Rappers, Monkey Balls and Animal Crossings, however, one area has always been lacking in my eyes, and I have had to consistently turn to imports to fill the void.

I am talking about wrestling games here, folks. Why do the US companies (for the most part) shovel us complete crap? Why, dear god, WHY do people line up to buy them?!!? For the exceptions like "Wrestlemania 2000" for the N64, there are far more games like Legends of Wrestling. Other people have done at least a respectable job with the "sports entertainment" industry and similar types of games like the notable UFC series prove that you can pull off a decent game of grappling.

Look, I realize that I'm in the minority of wrestling fans out there. I realize that most people have never seen an independent match in their lives. I know that most people think that Johnny Ace stopped having a career once he left the Dynamic Dudes, or than Stan Hansen just retired many moons ago. Japan has its own wrestling federations as well as plenty of games for wrestling fans like me, who have taken in a ton of wrestling from around the globe. I like all kinds of wrestling, from the WWE to indy leagues and old WING tapes from Japan. Garbage wrestling, technical wrestling, brawling, high flying... it's all good, except the backyard stuff... those people are friggin morons.

I have been playing wrestling games for as long as I can remember. I even remember a wrestling game for the Atari 2600, which sucked, but it was still there. My first notable game was on the venerable Commodore 64 called "Bop N' Wrestle." It was a decent enough game. Poor graphics but it did feature an attempt at digitized voice, a rarity during that time. With only one button the game managed to have a respectable grappling engine which allowed for many of the great moves of the time including press slams and even airplane spins. From there we had the Microleague WWF games which were an interesting concept at least. The 'games' featured black and white digitized low grade video clips of a real match, and you could pick the moves you wanted to do. With its limitation of only two wrestlers on a disc, you can imagine the replay value. Epyx had a good thing on their hands with "Epyx wrestling" which was a lot of fun and played really well. However, it didn't have any real wrestlers, which is really what everyone wants to play, right?

Then we had the NES which provided the first real mass market examples of wrestling games. My buddy and I were huge wrestling fans. We played them all from the classing NES "Pro Wrestling" to "MUSCLE Wrestling" to the venerable "Tecmo World Wrestling." We played "Tag Team Wrestling" with its lousy interface and the equally bad "WCW Wrestling," but Tecmo had the winner on their hands, for us at least. I'm sure that it probably sold the least out of all of the other wrestling games, but it was the only one that felt like a real wrestling game for us. It had tons of moves, and great gameplay for its time. We would play it for hours. Hey... it was the only game that acknowledged the existence of moves like the "Power-Bomb" and "Northern Lights Suplex" years before anyone saw them in the WWF or WCW. "Tecmo World Wrestling" was to us what "Tecmobowl" was to so many football fans back in the day.

The dark years began for me after that. There just didn't seem like there were any wrestling games worth it out there. My buddy and I still remained big fans of the industry. We followed around a the local TWA (Tri-State Wrestling Association) shows and watched DC Drake pound on Larry Winters over and over again. I was excited when TWA seemed it would go completely under but instead lead into Eastern Championship Wrestling, which of course became the innovator of the US wrestling scene when it became EXTREME. The games just were not there though... or so I thought.

When I was in college, I picked up a Sega Saturn. Also in college, this little thing called the internet started to pick up steam. The World wide Web wasn't even really anything yet and Microsoft wasn't even thinking of a product called Internet Explorer. I was checking out USENET groups and found some wrestling groups. Through those groups I discovered some people who were talking about wrestling games. One wrestling game seemed to stand our above the rest, and it happened to only be on the Saturn. I figured it was perfect. And thus began my quest for "Fire Pro Wrestling: 6-Man Scramble."

Above all else in a wrestling game, I want gameplay. Gone are the days of button mashing every single grapple. We don't need that anymore. Gone are the days of every wrestler having basically the same sets of moves besides their finisher. Any developer still leaning on these techniques should be shot. Fire Pro was the answer to everything I was looking for in a wrestling game. Not only were there 1000's of moves in the game, but each wrestler was capable of performing over 50 moves, with wildly different move sets from wrestler to wrestler. You could actually work a match like the pros did. Not only that, but the game featured the likenesses of all of the pros. Apparently, the license law structure in Japan is set so that they could look like the real life counterparts, as long as the name wasn't the same. However, the developers over at HUMAN (now Spike) included a rename feature in the game, which allowed you to correct that last little flaw.

Sounds like we have a game so far, right? But wait... there's more. Fire Pro featured all styles of wrestling, from the American style flash to the classic style of mat grappling to lucha styles and even UFC matches in an octagon ring. The roster of wrestlers totaled over 170 and featured unlockable superstars like Andre the Giant and Ric Flair. You could win the belts and even defend them after you won, and winning the belts usually meant beating down EVERYONE in the game. There were battle royals, tournaments, tag, 6-man tag, electrified barbed wire steel cage matches, etc etc etc. The game just had it all.

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