I have to be honest... I am a wrestling fan. I have watched all kinds of matches from all over the world. I myself used to wrestle for real in high school. (3rd place in the city of Philadelphia in the Public League, thank you very much. ;) ) I have played all kinds of wrestling games from Epyx Championship and Bop N Wrestle on the Commodore 64 to Pro Wrestling and Tecmo World Wrestling on the NES. My wrestling game nirvana arrived the day I received Fire Pro Wrestling: 6-Men Scramble for the Sega Saturn.

The Fire Pro Wrestling series is considered to be one of, if not *THE* best wrestling game series ever made. Fire Pro started the while "create a wrestler" mode that almost every other game of grapple has tried to implement with sometimes horrible results. The Fire Pro series features 'real' wrestlers from around the globe with slightly changed names. The looks of the wrestler along with his moves are usually spot on. Fire Pro A for the Game Boy Advance shares the most with its 32-bit cousin Fire Pro G on the Sony Playstation console which was released after the Sega Saturn version. Well... I've wasted enough time already... on to the review.

Fire Pro Wrestling A for the Game Boy Advance has literally hundreds of hours of built in gameplay. The amount of options in the game is awe inspiring for any console game and completely unheard of for a handheld. The game features 200 wrestlers once you unlock everyone. You start with roughly 170 wrestlers and there enough save slots to create 77 more wrestlers. The built in templates in the game feature about 340+ wrestlers, most featured in the game as well as others that you can create. You can also re-name all the wrestlers in the game to their real name and even do it in English. It may take a little time... but it can be done.

The create a wrestler mode is extremely detailed. You can pretty much make anyone you set out to create without having to sacrifice much, if anything at all. There are numerous outfit types that you can mix and match to get the desired look and you can fully customize the coloration of the outfit, skin tone, hair, etc. The move list alone can take you hours to go through. There are literally thousands of moves to chose from. There are the standard grapple moves, your standing punches and kicks, jumping moves to the outside, off the top rope moves, moves on downed opponents, etc etc etc. You can even create the CPU logic for the game so the CPU will control the created wrestler the way you want it to play him.

You can choose to play a single match, tag match, electrified barb wire cage match, tag match, UFC octagon match, Battle Royale, tournaments, etc. There is a lot to do. You can set options for the match such as time limit, pin or submission to win, which arena, which ring, which ref, etc.

The way you unlock wrestlers is by entering into the "AUDIENCE MATCH" mode which is a really interesting mode where you have to choose a 'style' of wrestling which you must adhere to in order to 'please' the crowd. If you do not give the crowd what they want, you won't perform well in the rankings and you won't unlock the hidden wrestlers.

In addition to these modes, there is also a 'survival' mode where you fight through 10 matches in a row, with the wear and tear on your wrestler carrying over from round to round. You may also create your own "League" where you can have as many as 64 wrestlers battle it out in a round robin style tournament to determine who the best is.

The Fire Pro series feature the tightest control that gives you more options than any other wrestling game to date. The grapple system is the core of any good wrestling game. The Fire Pro system is reasonably simple. Wrestlers will automatically grapple when they get close enough to each other. To win a grapple, you must enter the button combo for a move at the moment that the two wrestlers 'lock-up'. Since most wrestling games used 'button mashing' to win grapples or some other type of system, the Fire Pro system usually takes a little getting used to. After you get the hang of that... the game is a breeze and a joy to play.

Graphics are never the strongest part of the Fire Pro series on any system. However... it works very well for the gameplay and everything and every wrestler is recognizable. The game features 2-D graphics in a 3/4 style overhead ring view. The graphics compare favorably to the source material from the other 32-bit consoles. People usually down the series because it does not feature bleeding edge 3-D graphics however I find that to be one of the series best strengths. Without the complexities of a 3-D polygon engine, the gameplay is perfect and tight.

Sound and music are a mixed bag, as always with the Fire Pro series. Sounds are reasonably well done. The slams sound like real ring slams and wrestlers grunt and groan every once in a while. A lot of the usual Fire Pro voices have been cut from the game since the move to a pocket sized cart. It doesn't take away from the game at all though. The crowd sound pretty good but, let's face it, that would probably be easy even on the Game Boy Color. The ref has the most voice work and it is very well done.

Music is not the best example of what the GBA can do either but it gets the job done. You may even recognize a couple entrance themes since some of them are curiously similar to the real wrestler's theme.

This is *THE* wrestling game for a portable machine. The developer at SPIKE, (formerly from HUMAN) have been doing these games for a long time now and get better each time. If you are a wrestling fan... you cannot go wrong with this game. For years people have whined about not being able to have wrestlers from different federations grapple with each other in their video games and for years Fire Pro importers have been enjoying just that. I imported a GBA just because Fire Pro was a launch title. But... like I said... I am a Fire Pro junkie.