Best wrestling arcade games

This is because the majority of the games were never released outside of Japan, despite receiving praise from importers that were looking for a more die-hard wrestling experience.

However, Fire Pro Wrestling and its sequel Fire Pro Wrestling 2 landed on American shores and brought one of the best wrestling experiences ever developed to the handheld screen.

Despite the limitations of the system's button layout, Fire Pro Wrestling on the GBA worked surprisingly well considering how in-depth the move and control system is.

A successor to the WCW vs. NWO World Tour took advantage of the extra power offered by the N64 to lay the foundations for one of the greatest wrestling series of all time. Developed by AKI the engine is still considered by many fans to be the best that wrestling games can offer. Released in North America in , Fire Pro Wrestling Returns was considered to be one of the most complete wrestling games of all time. While it lacked licensed wrestlers there are still lots of unofficial lookalikes in the game and a robust character creation system.

Matches are tactical affairs that develop over the course of the match. The quality of a match is graded on how exciting it is for the fans with near-misses and back and forth action.

The gameplay takes a little getting used to but practice makes perfect and patience is rewarded. The AKI wrestling engine was refined even further with its momentum-based gameplay feeling better than ever. As with its predecessor, matches between good players can be a back and forth affair with reversal having countermoves and counters that can be reversed. Released in , Fire Pro Wrestling World is considered to be the greatest and most complete iteration of the Fire Pro series.

There is a huge variety of matches, a promoter mode, and thousands of wrestlers that can be downloaded and added to the roster. These wrestlers don't just look like their real-life counterparts but thanks to the game's adjustable AI they behave like them too. The timing-based gameplay can take some getting used to but as with its predecessors, patience is rewarded.

Matches are thrilling whether pitting oneself against the clever AI or against another gamer. Since WCW folded in , the WWE has held a monopoly in the wrestling entertainment business for close to two decades.

Sadly, this has been reflected in the gaming industry too. The WWE 2K series is the only licensed wrestling franchise released in the West that has been worth players' time. This was also reflected in the gaming world too as WWE videogames were the only mainstream wrestling franchise that most fans were aware of.

As a result, many fans will take what they can get just so they could play something different. While many games didn't score well with reviewers they still managed to find a way into the wrestling fan's hearts.

It's also interesting that despite the huge budgets, the two most critically acclaimed games on this list aren't WWE games. Cross the Line is a wrestling game designed for handheld consoles. However, PSP gained something of a fan following because of its roster. In addition, the game features a solid amount of match types from Free for All and the Ultimate X match. It was built using the Unreal Engine and the visuals definitely looked the part.

It did suffer from stiff animations, however, and the gameplay is very reminiscent of its WWE counterparts. Furthermore, it was probably a little too slow when compared to the real-life Lucha style of high-flying wrestling.

That said, it was still considered a good alternative to the WWE wrestling games that were getting released on a yearly basis. WWE 2K18 marked a visual step up from its predecessor.

It brought back several long-requested game modes from the previous entries that had been missing for a few years. The game could now feature eight wrestlers in the ring at once, meaning Royal Rumbles look closer to their TV counterparts. In addition, the game brought back the Backstage Brawl mode.

Here, players can take their wrestlers backstage, fight with a myriad of available weapons, and even use the environment to gain an advantage. Instead of playing for hours to level up your character or unlock new ones, now you have to enter your PayPal information. The Venn diagram of video game fans and arcade fans no doubt had significant overlap, but the arcade was more of a destination than the full-time activity console gaming became.

But instead of paying a flat admission to this activity, it was strictly pay-to-play. What the total showed on the balance sheet at the end of the night was irrelevant.

In that sense, we were primed at a young age to pay not just 25 cents to play The Simpsons Arcade Game. No, that was just the ticket to get into the show. Maybe the show would last for 20 minutes. Or maybe it was just 20 seconds. Regardless, when that death counter clicks on and the number five explodes to reveal the number four, you know you have just four seconds to fumble around in your pocket for those extra two quarters you swore were there just a few seconds ago.

My earliest memories of entertainment consumption include heavy doses of wrestling. I was in awe of the characters on my television screen at home, which translated to a similar fascination at arcades across Detroit. The pageantry of pro wrestling combined with the glitz and glamour of an arcade created a powerful concoction that demanded a full plastic bucket of quarters at all times.

And it worked. You could walk, strike and perform one of two grapple moves. Instead of move lists that spanned dozens and dozens of rows in WWE 2K or Fire Pro, each wrestler in these games had maybe 10 total moves. But the game never felt overly simplistic. This was not just due to the era, but also, ironically, due to the mode limitations. Neither game allowed you to have a singles match.

Having multiple wrestlers involved at all times, breaking up pins and whatnot, certainly led to a lot more chaos than you would have otherwise seen during a singles match. In fact, for Superstars, tag team wrestling was it. You picked two wrestlers to take into battle. Beat the first three teams and then you face off against Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase for the belts. He was a true final boss. But if you managed to overcome those odds and win the belts, you got four more matches — the fourth again against Andre and DiBiase — before the game ended.

When WrestleFest made its debut, we were greeted with bigger, more detailed wrestlers, some more moves and even a new mode: the Royal Rumble. With WrestleFest, it was unfortunately the Rumble in name only. The screen had a six-character limit, which was not a big deal at the time.