Pro Wrestling was one of the early games made for the NES and was a surprisingly very fun wrestling game. It had unique and fun characters, a good sense of humor and a general charm about it. It stood out in the early days of the NES, for its gameplay and characters. Given the lack of great wrestling games for Switch, there is a unique opportunity for Nintendo to revive this game on Switch.
Wrestling games have a lot of appeal but WWE games taking up most of the genre, even with their declining quality. The recent release of Fire Pro Wrestling for PS4 and PC in the west, brought a breath of fresh air, especially with the New Japan Pro Wrestling license, but that game is not on Switch. There is room for new games that offer something different to the player on Switch and Pro Wrestling could be the game that does this. The Ultimate Muscle game on the GameCube was a fantastic anime wrestling game based on an anime about wrestling, and that is the perfect style for a reboot.
NES Pro Wrestling just felt like an Anime game with its characters and setting, so giving the game a complete anime feel would be very fitting. A new title would be needed, since pro Wrestling is too generic a title for a game now. The title should reflect some sort of zaniness, since this would be a more cartoonish game with an offbeat feel. The original characters from the NES game were great and if paired with some new ones that are even more creative, we would have an amazing roster, Nintendo is great at creating wacky characters, for example Starman from the NES game, so creating some new ones for a wrestling game is right up Nintendo’s alley.
The Switch is the ultimate multiplayer system, and wrestling games are the ideal multiplayer games. A wrestling game made for the Switch just sounds like a match made in heaven, and Nintendo already has the perfect developer to make this. Next Level Games has shown they can create action games and cartoonish games (and cartoonish sports action games), and at one point they proposed a game that was a Mario game that involved wrestling. It went against Nintendo’s vision for Mario, but for a Pro Wrestling reboot, it sounds like a good fit. This could be a good way to give Nintendo a genre their systems have become sadly deprived of, and at the same time, keep their unique Nintendo feel in with it.
Nintendo needs more variety in their offerings, and a Pro Wrestling reboot is just what fans may want. But this is just the opinion of this author. Let us know what you think.
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