SUPER FIRE PRO WRESTLING X PREMIUM (SUPER NINTENDO)

A long, long time ago, video games about pro wrestling were mostly garbage. Pixelated blobs that barely bore a resemblance to Hulk Hogan or Antonio Inoki (if you look back at any old game without a WWF license, there's ALWAYS a fake Inoki) would bumble around the screen, doing karate kicks and a few of the exact same token wrestling moves until a screen popped up telling you that you had lost. Later on, once the hardware got to a point where it could actually do things, there were a few Street Fighter-style fighting games like Saturday Night Slam Masters or Wreslemania: The Arcade Game that were fun, but really not rasslin' games at all. Even with a few winners here and there, (good job, WWF Wrestlefest and Tecmo World Wrestling) I can say without an ounce of hesitation that the best game produced under the guise of being about professional wrestling (and this is even with several in the Fire Pro Wrestling series already out there) was Pro Wrestling for the NES in 1986. They hadn't been able to put out a purely wrestling-oriented game to top that one, and for most of us, it was the very first one.

Then, if you lived in Japan, this all changed in 1995, and the wave hit the rest of us probably around 1998, via illegal emulator technology and translation patches. (Or e-commerce for all you hard-ass game-importing, kanji-reading motherfuckers) Super Fire Pro Wrestling X was insane. It had all the real wrestlers from everywhere, (or at least copyright law-skirting facsimiles of them) doing all their real moves at all the right times, and while this wasn't a new thing for a Fire Pro game, this was the first time it all felt right. They weren't little block-men doing choppy animations of theoretical wrestling moves anymore; they did it, they made the perfect wrestling game. It was so good that people who couldn't figure out the controls would still have a good time setting up a CPU vs. CPU fight and just watching.

even if the Great Muta vs. regular Keiji Mutoh match ended up kinda one-sided

And that's not even getting into the Crown Jewel Pride and Joy of the game, which was the wrestler edit mode. Finally, a way to make your own dudes (no ladies yet, so you can't make Riki Choshu fight Sasha Banks or your anime waifu or whatever yet, weirdos) where you can set everything. Coming from a world where a "custom wrestler" was just typing in your name next to a picture of a generic redheaded guy on Wrestlemania Challenge, this was craaaaaazy. The game came with hundreds of wrestlers, and if anyone wasn't on there, you could just add the sonovabitch. And it would always work, because every conceivable wrestling move was available (again, hundreds to choose from) and the graphical limitations of the 16-bit era meant that if you had to use Tiger Jeet Singh's face to make Tajiri, it still looked okay.  THEY MADE THE PERFECT GAME, AND THEN ADDED SOMETHING BEYOND OUR WILDEST IMAGINATIONS, HOLY GOD DAMN. That's double-perfect, y'all.

Finally, we could answer the age-old question of whether or not Colossus could beat up Minoru Suzuki (he couldn't; no one can)

And then, a year later, they released Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium, which was the same game, but with a whole crapload more room to make your own customized guys, so they made a double-perfect game, and somehow made it even more perfect, and my mind had just exploded at triple-perfection, oh god.

SPECIAL LIST-MAKING TYPE ADDENDUM: So, there are a whole lot of Fire Pro Wrestling Games, and a few more of them deserve to make the TOP MILLION-BILLION VIDEO GAMES OF ALL TIME list, there are probably only a couple more that had enough uniqueness beyond "it was like the one before it, but better," that I could theoretically string together enough words to make a full page for them. (I'm thinking Final Fire Pro Wrestling and Fire Pro Wrestling World) So with that in mind, I'm going to add a small handful of honorable-type mentions from the 16-bit SNES/Genesis/Turbografx/etc. era that I've logged enough time on to form a solid opinion of:

Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special: Pretty much Fire Pro X, but maybe 15% as good. Which is still super-good. Until Ric Flair kills your tag team partner and you end up committing suicide. I am not making that part up.

Super Fire Pro Wrestling Queen's Special: This came out between Fire Pro Spoecial and Fire Pro X, and had the added advantage of a fully-licensed roster (mostly AJW, with a few here and there from places like GAEA and FMW) at a point when the Japanese women's wrestling scene was absolutely insane. I remember reading somehere that this was a test-run for some stuff they wanted to try on the upcoming Playstation/Dreamcast/etc generation of games, and has better graphics and animation than Special or X, so it seems plausible. This pretty much has the same general depth and feel of Fire Pro X, making it pretty close to a perfect game, but the wrestler edit mode kinda sucks by comparison, though.

Gekitou Burning Pro Wrestling: This isn't actually a Fire Pro Wrestling game, but it's definitely the Fred's Dollar Store fake version of one, and the title suggests that Bullet-Proof Software didn't care who knew. Thing is, aside from a massive downgrade in visuals, it's really not bad at all, and probably better than most of what came before Fire Pro X.

(Also, I'm just making a list entry for Super Fire Pro X Premium and leaving regular X off entirely, because it's the same game)

CURRENT RANKINGS AS OF April 2, 2018

1. Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium (Super Famicom/SNES, 1996)

2. Fallout: New Vegas (XBox 360, 2010)

3. Castlevania (NES, 1986)

4. Tecmo Bowl (NES, 1989)

5. Brütal Legend (XBox 360, 2009)

6. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out !! (NES, 1987)

7. Fallout 3 (XBox 360, 2008)

8. Super Fire Pro Wrestling Queen's Special (Super Famicom/SNES, 1995)

9. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sega Genesis, 1992)

10. Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis, 1991)

11-10,000,000,000,000,000 - TBD

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