The History of Wrestling Video Games

It was in the mid to late 80's that I first became a fan of both video games and pro wrestling. So of course I was excited when I played a wrestling game for the first time. A friend and I played WWF Wrestlemania on the NES as a tag team for hours. Over the years wrestling games became the most fun games to play. Not only was it fun for the two player action in which you could either team up with a friend or beat up a friend. But somewhere along the way they added a Create a Wrestler feature that would allow you to make pretty much any type of bizarre character you like. So it got me thinking, wrestling games have come a long way since the days of the NES, let's take a look back at the history of wrestling games.

One of the best things about wrestling is all the different characters. When wrestling games first hit the Nintendo the first couple of games didn't have the WCW or WWF licensing so they had to make up their own characters. The first wrestling game I can remember was a game called Tag Team Wrestling and it did not succeed to make interesting characters. The game was very bland and not very interesting. Fortunately not long after that the Nintendo would have a little game called Pro Wrestling. As far as the game play goes Pro Wrestling was pretty basic but it really succeeded with the characters. To this day Pro Wrestling is a classic among NES gamers and Starman is one of the most popular NES characters.

Pro Wrestling's competition would come from Tecmo. After all they ruled the NES with their Football games; why not take a try at Wrestling. Tecmo World Wrestling was more in-depth than Pro Wrestling but also more difficult to play. Tecmo just couldn't match the fun you had playing Pro Wrestling. However, Tecmo did add a couple of new features. Tecmo World Wrestling was the first game to have commentary although it was in text form at the bottom of the screen. Tecmo World Wrestling was the first game that had reversals and it also implemented a training session that you could visit to improve your wrestler's abilities. So Tecmo World Wrestling was a more innovative and accurate game but Pro Wrestling was just so much more fun.