As far as weird box arts go, a picture of wrestler who is either a) headless and has his bodiless opponent in a headlock, b) is headless but has his own head in a headlock, or c) simply has a very long neck and can bend it backwards in a way that makes it seem as though he’s headless and has his own head in a headlock, has to rank pretty high in the ridiculous stakes. 

The game surely can’t be as bad as the box art though, can it? The game’s called ‘Pro’ Wrestling, and that ‘pro’ bit probably stands for professional wrestling…or maybe it’s Probably Wrestling??

 

So here’s the game’s title screen. Everything looks in order. Though the fact it nicks the fist punching through the logo idea from Nintendo’s Punch-Out!! is a bit lame - especially as the game isn’t about punching, but more about grabbing men called Fireball.

 

 

We opted to play as Orient Express, but only because they had the best name, and one of the wrestlers sports the most diminutive and tightly packed facial features ever seen on a character sprite. The other, similarly, sports the most impressive mouth hair.

 

 

To be fair, the presentation is pretty good. Here you can see my wrestlers enter the ring. Either they’re wrestling at a school, or judging by the size of their heads in comparison to those of the spectators, they are 30 feet tall and man beasts.

 

 

One of the weirdest features about Pro Wrestling is the fact that whenever you attack, and it connects, the game tells you the name of the move you’ve just performed. Here, I’ve just been punched, and the game’s told me as such. Cheers game. Shame that I keep looking at the hot wrestling action and missing your helpful annotations.

 

[The Verdict]

This one is a clear case of pretty bad box art for an equally naff wrestling game. Nice colourful visuals, but sticky controls and god-awful collision detection.

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