PLATFORM: SWITCH | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Big Bang Pro Wrestling was originally released towards the end of the year 2000 on the short-lived Neo Geo Pocket Color, a portable console that only managed to amass a library of just over 80 titles during its two year existence, most of which have been forgotten about over the last two decades (and many of them – including this one – were never officially released outside of Japan). The popularity of wrestling at the turn of the century made it pretty much inevitable that wrestling games would be released on every console imaginable. Competing with the Game Boy Color, whose grappling delights were limited to a couple of severely downgraded 64-bit ports and a bizarre side-scrolling beat ’em up (which challenged players to rescue Stephanie McMahon from some evil kidnappers in exchange for a guaranteed WWF title match), the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s single grappling-based offering was Big Bang Pro Wrestling, an all-new title featuring a roster of ten completely original characters.
Being a handheld game, BBPW is fairly limited but it does offer a couple of unique match types. There’s the standard singles match against either a computer-controlled opponent or a human player, a tournament mode, and the “IEW Champion” story mode in which you work your way through the entire roster until you earn a match against the champion. Three “special death match” one-on-one options are available too – a No Rules match where you can batter your opponent with a chair and pin them outside the ring, a Coffin Death Match which can only be won by throwing your opponent into a coffin at ringside, and a Reward Death Match, the object of which is to grab a bag of money from the top of a pole. Madness!
Each wrestler has their own unique moveset, consisting of a handful of timing-based grapples (think Fire Pro), a couple of strikes, running attacks and dives, and a finishing move. There’s very little depth to the gameplay, but giving each member of the roster their own moves (and entrance music) at least makes each character feel different to the others. Including a scan of the original game’s manual is a nice touch, as are the interchangeable background skins and optional CRT filter, and there’s even a rewind feature in case you need to go back a few seconds to avoid taking a loss. It won’t take too long to see everything that BBPW has to offer, and to be honest it’s very much one for enthusiasts only, but if you’re a fan of obscure retro wrestling games this is certainly a curiosity worth looking into.
