“Introductory Wrestling Course.”
“With only one ball left, your ability to
jump is eliminated.”
North American NES box art.
Hot dang, it’s been a hot minute since we last covered a wrestling game here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame! Needless to say, I’m a fan of professional wrestling as performance art, as well as some of the various attempts that have been made in the decades to recreate its magic in video game form. Lucky for me (for the purposes of this website), those games do end up being pretty lousy more often than not — especially titles hailing from the 8-bit era. Today, we get to cover a release that bears some historical provenance for the genre: The first wrestling game available on Nintendo’s Entertainment System / Family Computer. And which promotion was it who lent their license and blessings to this cartridge? The world-famous WWF? Perhaps Japan’s own NJPW?
As it would turn out, the brand to lend their intellectual properties to this pioneering game – also representing the console’s first third-party release and first licensed title [in North America] – weren’t even involved in the business of the professional wrestling industry. Rather, the game would be made to represent a line of collectible toys, simply made to depict fictional cartoon wrestlers. Actually, if we’re tracing things back to the source here; the toy line is the by-product of an established manga series, which the Japanese audience would more readily identify with their release of the game on the Famicom. But seeing as the toy line managed to muster up an international appeal independent of its source material, the USA too would receive a release of the game on the NES: Tag Team Match: M.U.S.C.L.E.
Now, I like to think I’m pretty well clued in to the history of professional wrestling. By contrast, I couldn’t tell you the first thing about M.U.S.C.L.E. / the Kinnikuman franchise… until the crash course I took prior to penning this article, that is. And while I’m certainly still no “domain expert” on the subject, I reckon I’ll at least know enough to take you through this unfortunate bit of video game adaptation. By my estimation, M.U.S.C.L.E. represents some of the worst of licensed laziness on the NES; with a developer putting the bare minimum effort into developing gameplay, so that the excuse can be made to plug in the pixelated likenesses of established characters and promptly call it a day. The end result is a release which not only fails to represent its source material, but which also fails to convey the basic concepts and conceits of wrestling. This article hopes to serve as the dirt sheet on this cash-grab cartridge, as well as the oddly enduring legacy that it seems to hold in its home country.
In professional wrestling terminology / slang, ‘Dirt sheet’ is the catch-all for newsletters and publications which report on the business details and internal politics of the industry — shattering the illusion of wrestling as being “real” in the process.
