Enter Tecmo. Tecmo was no stranger to unlicensed sports games with games such as Tecmo World Cup and the fondly-remembered Tecmo Bowl, so who better to take on the psuedo-sport? Nintendo’s plainly-named Pro Wrestling was the top of the wrestling heap since the early days of the NES, so would Tecmo World Wrestling be a top contender? Like most games that were unlicensed, there was a heavy borrowing of characteristics from Japanese and American wrestlers, such as Akira Dragon being a ripoff of Antonio Inoki, El Tigre strongly resembling Tiger Mask, and so forth. However, there was quite a unique feature that was never seen before in a wrestling game…

A training mode! That’s right, Tecmo World Wrestling would let you build up your wrestler to take on the game! Sure, it was mostly useless button-mashing, but it was ten seconds and unoffensive. There were three different kinds of training…

SITUPS! (Upside-down ones, no less! Truly brutal!)

PUSHUPS! (Look how happy the sumo wrestler is when you complete the pushup! How inspirational!)

SQUATS! (So much weight on the barbell! Your wrestler is a mountain of muscle!)

So while the training sessions were mostly useless, as they didn’t really do much for how you performed in a match, it was still a neat idea. The only problem is that, for kids with turbo controllers, you could fill up your power meter fully in two matches, so then it just becomes an annoying break between matches. Give Tecmo credit for trying, though! But let’s get down to the meat and potatoes of any wrestling game… the wrestling itself.

Right away, Tecmo World Wrestling does an awesome job of capturing the glitz of pro wrestling, with a brightly colored versus screen. I always loved this. Then, once you get past the versus screen, you find yet another innovation for a wrestling game… Tom Talker.

As a kid, this made me go insane. There’s a guy talking at the bottom of the screen! While some may cite this as a distraction, this was mindblowing in 1990 and a huge addition to a genre that was dead in the water for a few years. As a wrestling commentator, I can appreciate the goofiness of Tom Talker.

Tom Talker’s face changes with each sometimes oddly translated sentence, as does his physical motions. The wrestling was fun, and Tom just helped add to it. Even better was the detail given to the finishers, which I, uh, willingly let the computer perform on me? Yeah, I’ll go with that story.

The enzuigiri (or the "fanatical back brain kick", as Engrish-speaker Tom Talker describes it), is detailed incredibly, and the animation is the same solid Tecmo style that, if you’ve ever seen the cutscenes following a touchdown in Tecmo Bowl or even turned on the original Ninja Gaiden games, you will know and appreciate what Tecmo World Wrestling’s finishers look like. But it’s not just the same angle, oh no.

Even today, Tecmo World Wrestling is simplistic yet solid, and the gameplay is still fun. Hopefully some day it will arrive on the Virtual Console on the Wii, but if you have an original NES, pick this game up, especially if you’re a wrestling fan. It’s well worth your time.

What are people saying about "WrestleRetro #5: Tecmo World Wrestling (NES)"?

Krotch Re: WrestleRetro #5: Tecmo World Wrestling (NES) Another Favorite game for me growing up. El Tigre was my favorite character if I remember correctly. WRestling Gold

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