Game designer Goichi "Suda51" Suda, of No More Heroes and Killer7 fame, is stepping back into the ring to write a DLC story for Fire Pro Wrestling World, developer Spike Chunsoft has announced.

Suda51 cut his teeth on the long-running wrestling series, and directed Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout in 1993. He wrote a famously dark story for Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special a year later, and it sounds like whatever he has planned for Fire Pro Wrestling World—which came to Steam in 2017—will be similarly disturbing. 

We don't have a release date yet, but it'll no doubt be a good reason to boot up the game again. We reckon it's one of the best sports games on PC and, as Matt said when he played the Early Access version, it puts every WWE game to shame in a number of important ways.

If you're interested in the series, you should read Ramona's excellent feature on how its loyal community gave it a second win.

On March 2nd, 2017, Spike Chunsoft made a surprise announcement: Fire Pro Wrestling was coming back, with a new entry on Steam and PlayStation 4. And when I say a surprise announcement, I mean it—it came out of nowhere, preceded by none of the teasing that would typically come with bringing back a series dormant since 2005. 

In a normal situation, this would lead to an already niche game quickly forgotten in Steam’s massive library. However, Fire Pro Wrestling has created and fostered a very passionate fanbase over the last 20 years. A fanbase that managed to turn what would otherwise be a blip on the radar into a hit.

A bit of history 

Fire Pro Wrestling’s rise in popularity began in the early to mid-90s (the first was released in 1989 for the NEC PC-Engine, produced by the late Masato Masuda and HUMAN Entertainment). This period was the peak of pro wrestling’s popularity in Japan, and the lowest point of its popularity in the West. 

Non-Japanese fans who read wrestling magazines and had the resources for it would take part in tape trading: swapping recordings of various wrestling promotions with other fans via classified ads, making your own copies, and trading them back. Tapes of Japanese wrestling shows were often included. For fans who had grown tired of the bland, sanitized product of the 'Big Leagues' like the WWF and WCW, Japan became something of a Holy Land for exciting wrestling action. And chances are, if you knew how to import Japanese wrestling tapes, you probably also knew how to import Japanese videogames. That’s where Fire Pro comes in.

Like its real-life counterpart, WWF videogames of the time were tedious at best, with characters that were obviously nothing more than mere head-swaps. If you wanted exciting wrestling games, you were not getting them from the US. Thanks mostly to gaming magazines, but also a little bit of word-of-mouth, Fire Pro became known as the game to import. 

Having Fire Pro described to me long before I ever actually played it made it sound like the most incredible game in existence. Fire Pro World isn’t (or at least wasn’t) a licensed game, it was less a simulation of one particular promotion, and more a microcosm of Japanese wrestling. It had the athletic, technical style of New Japan Pro Wrestling, in addition to the high-flying action of its Junior Heavyweight division. It had the hard-hitting intensity of All Japan Pro Wrestling. It had the dirty, hardcore brawling of places like Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling and the International Wrestling Association of Japan. It also had "Shoot Fighting", a no-holds-barred style that would later evolve into what we now call Mixed Martial Arts. 

And the roster was loaded with copyright-friendly versions of the wrestlers and fighters you had probably already seen on imported tapes. It sounded like a wrestling fan's dream come true. Then you played it and found out that it was.

With the dawn of emulation came fan translations, of which Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium on the Super Famicom enjoyed several. That was the Fire Pro game that introduced something new, which carried over into every subsequent release and was improved significantly in Fire Pro World: AI Logic. It let you not only edit a wrestler’s appearance and moves, but how and when they do those moves. 

For example, if you wanted to make Triple H, you could set various attributes to fit his style of wrestling: lots of grappling, keeping things inside the ring, doing illegal moves when the referee isn’t looking, hitting his finishing move when the opponent has taken a critical amount of damage, then going for the pin. 

The introduction of AI Logic, with all its variables and conditions (which are surprisingly easy to understand), ensured no two matches are alike, even with the same competitors. This is a problem that plagues other wrestling games, even ones as recent as WWE 2K18, where the matches can become dull and repetitive pretty quickly, with wrestlers not even remotely acting like they do on TV. It also brought about something of a meta game: rather than picking up a controller and playing as a wrestler you made against another wrestler you made, you could set the match to CPU vs CPU, and see how well you had programmed their AI.

The mod scene

This feature, in addition to a number of improvements the game brought and the accessibility of emulation, made it one of the most popular Fire Pros. It also began the sharing of save files—whether emulator savestates, actual SRAM files, or during the PS2 era, the use of things like Dex Drives and Action Replays to upload wrestlers you made and download and import ones made by other players. Of course, this process has since been completely alleviated by World’s use of the Steam Workshop: what once required third-party peripherals and fan-made programs can now be done with a simple click. The ability to share your creations is a major part of Fire Pro Wrestling’s continued success, despite the series having been dormant for over a decade.

As I’ve been mentioning, Fire Pro Wrestling revolves entirely around its community. There are YouTube channels and Twitch streams dedicated to fictional promotions showing off CPU-simulated match cards. Fan sites with archives of created wrestlers, ring logos, and modding tools to import those things, in addition to mods made for Fire Pro World have been around for years. Fire Pro Arena is the biggest and most well-known fan site, and is absolutely worth checking out. And with all these years of support, it has absolutely helped Fire Pro Wrestling World become as successful as it is. 

There are, as of this writing, 34,616 uploads to the game’s Steam Workshop page. Wrestlers take up an average of 7kb each, meaning that you can have an almost limitless roster, wrestling in an almost limitless amount of rings, in matches officiated by an almost limitless amount of referees.

Image via Incredibly Plump Dragon on the Steam Workshop.

And the creations they’ve made are staggering. Very meticulous, near-lifelike recreations of today’s wrestling stars, such as Kenny Omega and John Cena. Just about every era of wrestling has been catered to, from the '90s all the way back to the carnival wrestling days of the early 1900s. Not just wrestlers, but boxers, mixed martial artists, musicians, actors, even anime and videogame characters. Want to see Minoru Suzuki have a match against Night In The Woods’ Mae Borowski? You probably had no idea you wanted to see that, but now you do! Did you want to see a Barbed Wire Deathmatch between Sailor Moon and Utena Tenjou? That exists! A six-man tag team match between the Cheetahmen and Aqua Teen Hunger Force? How about an MMA match between Chelsea Manning and Bonzi Buddy? And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the literal BEARS as well. 

The game’s tools and the community’s imagination allow for goofy, over-the-top matches you don’t have to be a wrestling fan to be able to appreciate. And as for mods, Carlzilla’s Mod Suite is the go-to. The ability to mix up match stipulations (such as an MMA Battle Royale) is fun, and the FreeCam mod, with its ability to let you show the game off with different camera angles besides the default isometric view, is probably the most used of the bunch.

In addition to being creative and showing a lot of ingenuity, the community is shockingly nice, given that this is a crossover of videogame and wrestling fans, which isn’t exactly a bastion of empathy. Recently the producer of Fire Pro World, Tomoyuki Matsumoto, tearfully announced the introduction of paid DLC for the game during a Spike Chunsoft livestream. And later, an announcement was made that the DLC was going to be delayed. His big fear was that the announcements would drive fans away from the game, a passion project he had spent years trying to get greenlit. And normally, that would be the case: complaints, demands for refunds, maybe even death threats. Instead, there was an almost universal showing of sympathy and support. 

It helped that the first piece of DLC was for charity. All the proceeds went to help support Yoshihiro Takayama, a wrestler who was paralyzed from the neck down after a wrestling move went wrong in the middle of a match. But even with the subsequent announcements and delays, there has still been very little in the way of negative reaction. That’s just the kind of community the game has fostered after all this time. Like the tape traders of the '90s, they’re very passionate.

That is Fire Pro Wrestling World. It was born from a series of cult classics kept alive by a determined fanbase, the proliferation of the internet beyond a handful of message boards, and a growing disinterest in the WWE 2K series. And with the current resurgence in popularity of New Japan Pro Wrestling, and a downturn in WWE’s business, it looks like history may very well repeat itself, with wrestling fans tired of a bland product tuning in to Japan’s promotions instead, and telling everyone they know about "this great little videogame you probably haven’t heard of" called Fire Pro Wrestling.

Sports games come in many shapes and sizes. Football Manager and Rocket League have almost nothing in common, but they’re both undeniably sports games. Meanwhile Fifa has added a story driven campaign, and Pyre is a fantasy RPG that plays like a sport.

To try and help, I’ve broken this list down into four broad categories. Sports Simulations, which attempt to realistically depict a sport, Sports Management games (self explanatory), Arcade Sports, which depict a stylised version of a real sport, and Fantasy Sports, which are wholly invented.

There’s obviously a lot of crossover, since even Rocket League is loosely based on football, but hopefully this will help you tell your QWOPs from your Fifas. 

SPORTS SIMS

Fifa 2018

Developer: EA SportsRelease Date: Sep 2017Link: Official site

EA's annual football series is on a high right now, with the addition of a surprisingly compelling single player story mode. Unlike PES, Fifa's strength is in a Xavi-esque short, quick passing game. If you’re looking to play online, Fifa will be your football sim of choice, as a strong and healthy online community ensures it's always easy to find a game. 

PES 2018

Developer: KonamiRelease Date: Sep 2017Link: Official site   

While Fifa will draw in those interested in the single player story or online multiplayer, PES is my preference for local multiplayer, or when I want to sink into the signature Master League. The two games also play slightly differently, with PES leaning more towards long passes and lofted through balls for a faster paced, more frenetic game.

NBA 2K18

Developer: Visual ConceptsRelease Date: Sep 2017Link: Steam

Basketball is one of the few annual sports franchises not dominated by EA, and 2K's NBA series is one of the few that releases on PC. 2018's installment confused people by adding a strange MMO-esque hub called The Neighbourhood, but what really matters is that the slamming and jamming is as strong as ever. 

MANAGEMENT GAMES

Football Manager 2018

Developer: Sports InteractiveRelease Date: Nov 2017Link: Official site

It’s hard to overrstate the enormity of Football Manager. It is consistently one of the most popular games on Steam, its scouting network rivals real life clubs and once a player received an international call up from the wrong country because of it. It's also incredibly absorbing and fun, even more so since they added the streamlined variant Football Manager Touch. Play it with care: it is all-consuming.

Out of the Park Baseball 18 

Developer: Out of the Park DevelopmentsRelease Date: Mar 2017Link: Official site 

It's strange how few other sports have a Football Manager equivalent, but understandable that the highly stat-driven baseball is one of those that does. Out of the Park Baseball doesn't seem to change that much from year to year, but the underlying game remains an engrossing way to live out your Moneyball fantasies.

Motorsport Manager

Developer: Playsport GamesRelease Date: Nov 2016Link: Official site

Another sensible sport to adapt into a management game, Motorsport Manager is half about the strategy, half about the cars. Between races you’ll spend time improving and upgrading your vehicle, then make strategic calls like what tires to use and when to make a pit stop, but all without having to bother getting your hands dirty actually steering the thing. 

ARCADE SPORTS

Sensible World of Soccer

Developer: Sensible SoftwareRelease Date: Jan 1996Link: GOG

"I don’t like football but I did enjoy Sensible Soccer" is a thing I’ve been told by more 40-year-old game journalists than I care to count. By stripping the sport down to its essentials, SWOS finds a purity in the tick tock of precision passes. GOG only stocks Sensible World of Soccer 96/97, so expect to be stuck in the days of David Seaman and Ian Wright. 

Super Arcade Football

Developer: Out of the BitRelease Date: Early AccessLink: Official site

Super Arcade Football is built on the classic top down approach of Sensible Soccer but with some more modern touches, the most impressive being a physics defying slow motion aftertouch shot. Unlike SWOS it also works online, making it much easier to get a game against a human. 

QWOP

Developer: Bennett Foddy Release Date: Nov 2008 Link: Official site

QWOP is, in many ways, the anti-sports game. Most sports games are about using easy, accessible controls to allow anyone to simulate being a peak athlete. QWOP on the other hand uses an overly complicated control scheme to make the relatively simple act of running a 110m hurdles (yes there are hurdles, most people don’t make it far enough to realise that) astonishingly difficult and hilarious. It’s the Eddie the Eagle of sports games.

Fire Pro Wrestler

Developer: Spike ChunsoftRelease Date: Early AccessLink: Steam

Is wrestling a sport? According to Vince McMahon it’s 'sports entertainment', which is close enough for this list. Unlike the awful official WWE games, Fire Pro Wrestling World leans into the fact that wrestling is a performance, subtly pushing players to put on an entertaining match, rather than just trying to win. That, coupled with its astonishing Steam Workshop-supported character creation makes it unique among wrestling games. 

OlliOlli

Developer: Roll7Release Date: Jul 2014Link: Steam

OlliOlli's great success is in taking all the fun of older skating games like Tony Hawk and distilling them down to two dimensions. The simplicity of OlliOlli's side on approach makes it easier to learn a track while constantly embellishing your performance with tricks and flourishes.

Desert Golfing

Developer: Captain GamesRelease Date: Aug 2014Link: Official site 

I was actually surprised to find viral mobile hit Desert Golfing is available on PC, but it is, via the Windows Store (remember that?). It's a strange, minimalist game that can lulls you into an almost zen mindset. Each hole achieves a lot with a simple geometric layout. Crucially, there is no going back, so every wasted stroke is there forever.

Tennes

Developer: Jan Willem NijmanRelease Date: Nov 2012Link: Official site

Originally a bonus game for people who backed the SportsFriends Kickstarter, Tennnes is a simplified tennis game with a flexible approach to rules. The game does not mind if, for example, you jump over the net and play on the other side of the court. If you liked SportsFriends, you'll like this.

FANTASY SPORTS

Rocket League

Developer: PsyonixRelease Date: Jul 2015Link: Official site

I've had Rocket League installed on my PC for nearly two years now, and I still find myself jumping in for a quick 15 minute game every couple of weeks. The premise is simple: it’s football with rocket powered cars. What makes it work is the strange physics: the ball seems to be moving almost in slow motion, resulting in great slapstick comedy and much rage on the part of PC Gamer editor Sam Roberts. 

SportsFriends

Developer: De Gute FabrikRelease Date: Dec 2014Link: Official site

SportsFriends is a bundle of local multiplayer indie games loosely themed around sports. Hokra is a very fast, minimalist ice hockey game, BariBariBall is a blend of Super Smash Bros and volleyball, Super Pole Riders is a strange pole vaulter jousting game and Johan Sebastian Joust is a kind of full contact musical chairs played with motion controllers. What they have in common is that they’re all a amazing fun with a group of friends.

Bloodbowl 2

Developer: Cyanide ReleaseDate: Sep 2015Link: Official site

The Blood Bowl board game is as old as I am, which is testament to its enduring appeal. It is simultaneously one of the most frustrating and entertaining games I've ever played. Dice rolls are required for everything, meaning sometimes players fall over and die because they ran too fast. The digital port is solid enough, but the real charm lies in the time tested rules.

Frozen Cortex

Developer: Mode7Release Date: Feb 2015Link: Official site

Frozen Synapse's trademark interpretation of turn-based combat, where both sides plan their moves and execute them simultaneously, turns out to translate really well into sports. A paired down version of American Football featuring big stompy robots on a small pitch, Frozen Cortex excels at replicating the execution of a single play, but lacks the back and forth of larger, more fluid sports. 

Pyre

Developer: Supergiant GamesRelease Date: Jul 2017Link: Official site

Pyre is essentially an RPG with a sport instead of random battles. The story and atmosphere are the kind of strong stuff you'd expect from SuperGiant (who also made Bastion and Transistor). The sport itself can end up a little one dimensional, as attacking players can’t move without the ball, there's little point in the passing game. Still, the way in which the fiction and the sport combine is a unique delight. 

This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 309. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US. 

I’m going to make a new stable in Fire Pro Wrestling World. My goal is loftier than simple recreations of famous wrestlers, though. I’ve set myself an objective of Promethean arrogance: I’m going to create a compelling sports entertainment story using members of the PC Gamer team. 

I’m going to limit myself to members of the team I know, because the only thing stranger than meticulously creating a colleague is doing it to someone you’ve only met once. I’m also going to be realistically unrealistic about stats. PC Gamer might be the most physically imposing team in the games industry, but they’re not wrestlers. To represent this, I’m giving them stats that are good, but not great. Fire Pro is as much about the quality of the match as it is about who wins and loses, which is handy, because I’m expecting a few failures. 

I start with Phil. I could have saved time by downloading Damien Sandow from the Workshop, because he and Phil have the actual same face, but the rules dictate I must make him myself. This is my first ever creation in a Fire Pro game and I strive for perfection. I get the height about right—Phil’s a solid six foot three inches, which is wrestler-big anyway—but I exaggerate the weight. I’m struck by how creepy this idea is around the same time I’m checking Facebook to get all the birthdays right. I can’t stop now, though, because details are important and I’ve already been commissioned. Thus, Big Daddy Savage is born. 

Making his model is more complicated. The character creator in Fire Pro Wrestling World is a lovely paradox—it looks basic, but everything slots together to allow a staggering degree of creativity. I get stuck early on—there’s a blank space where a human ass should be—but I get the hang of it. I subconsciously cast Phil in the image of Decker from a long-forgotten Taito coin-op called Champion Wrestler, a game that was almost certainly terrible, then move on to tweaking stats. I decide to give him insanely high defence because fighting Big Daddy Savage should be like punching a multistorey car park, but again, the rules dictate that I’m not allowed to max him out. His finisher is a chokeslam I call ‘Savatage’.

Samuel Roberts is next, and he’s relatively easy—I call him Slamuel (because why wouldn’t I?), give him massive arms, then spend 20 minutes trying to find the right face. I give up when I realise there are over 300, and just go back to my first choice. He’s a monster: if you say ‘suplex’ three times in the mirror at midnight, Slamuel will appear and drop you on your neck. My favourite creation, however, is Tom Senior. Because his Twitter name is PCGLudo, Tom becomes The Ludodor—the world’s only videogame-based lucha libre wrestler, complete with a PC Gamer-themed colour scheme. You can add another layer of authenticity to his character by producing Tom’s surname in the style of Speedy Gonzales (don’t do that). I’m tempted to keep going—art editor John Strike has a name that screams ‘spin kicks’ and Drew Sleep already sounds like a finishing move—but it takes ages to make each one, and I’m keen to get my slam on. The only thing left is a name for my new stable. After discarding some dogshit ideas (The Beta Males, The 4K Horseman, and The Roguealikes), I settle on The Noob Day. Yes, that was honestly the best one. 

I set up a three-on-three tag match between The Noob Day and a team of NPC wrestlers. I was aiming for a boisterous tornado match, but I miss the option to change it from a normal tag team bout. It’s not bad for a debut, but the chemistry isn’t there—that’s another way of saying it takes me ages to find the tag button, and that The Ludodor refuses to tag out even though he’s getting pulverised. He reaches Big Daddy Savage, who charges in and chokeslams Bobby Bobby (yes, that’s really his name) for a muscular win. The match gets 82%. Not bad.

It’s then I realise I’m doing Fire Pro all wrong. Not the fighting itself—the match was a slobberknocker—but the structure. Why the hell am I using cabbagey default wrestlers when I could download a superstar? The game’s only been in Early Access a week and there are already over 150 pages of custom creations featuring every notable wrestler that is, was, or ever will be. I open up the Workshop to find pristine versions of the biggest names in sports entertainment. I think about pitting The Noob Day against Shinsuke Nakamura, Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, but then something changes my mind. 

It’s Bob Ross. Someone has actually made Bob Ross, and he’s perfect. The clothes, the beard, the trademark sunrise of curls. Even the height is correct (a surprising six foot two inches, not including permed Afro). I decide that pitting The Noob Day against niche wrestlers will only entertain 50% of readers, so I cast my net wider. I scroll past Solid Snake, Chris Redfield and A Bear (description: ‘IT’S A BEAR’), but they’re not good enough. No, I need to pick cultural touchstones that every PC Gamer reader will understand and adore. I chose Gabe Newell, Geralt of Rivia (complete with three different clothing options) and, erm… Bob Ross. I was always going to pick Bob. I’m not apologising.

I set up a mighty Battle Royale and pick the teams, forgetting that a Battle Royale, by its very definition, is all-against-all. I decide there’s a very good wrestling reason why Samuel, Tom and Phil are enemies now—fast friendships strained to destruction by arguments over the positioning of Dragon Age 2 in the Top 100. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Whatever the cause, as soon as the bell goes they’re kicking the hot takes out of each other. 

I’m playing as Big Daddy Savage (BDS for short, which is an ‘M’ away from being a far more sinister gimmick). Phil locks up with Gaben first—two mastodons of the squared circle, smashing into each other like angry ice cream trucks. The match breaks up, and Savage hits a monstrous double powerbomb on Bob Ross, helped by Geralt of Rivia. A high spot early in the match? This is going to be good.

I notice a red stain in the corner of the ring—Gaben has been busted open. He staggers across the ring wearing a crimson mask that matches his shirt. On the other side, Bob Ross has mounted Slamuel and is headbutting the devil out of him, blows apparently not softened by Bob’s fuzzy hair. The referee checks to see if he submits. Roberts is made of sterner stuff, but the damage is done. 

The trauma of being brutalised by the man famous for popularising the wet-on-wet oil painting technique has left Samuel physically and mentally wrecked. He stumbles around the centre of the ring like a child lost at a car boot sale, and the canny Geralt sees an opportunity. He wraps Roberts up in a La Magistral cradle, pins his shoulders to the canvas, and we have our first elimination. Sam leaves the ring, disgusted with himself, but maybe, just maybe, relieved to be a safe distance from Bob Ross. 

Phil forgets the probably-betrayal of his former colleague, picks up Geralt and hits the Savatage. It’s enough to keep Geralt down for three, but the match doesn’t let up. Gabe takes a superkick from Tom Senior and Phil capitalises, snapping Newell into a figure four leglock. There is no escape. Perhaps this is revenge for those bankrupting Steam summer sales. Or perhaps Phil was trying to hurt Tom and got confused. Whatever, Gaben taps and we’re down to three competitors. Phil, Tom, and softly-spoken submission machine Bob Ross.

But there are no friends here. Tom and Phil go at it, and Bob Ross lurks in the corner, like a panther in double denim, darting in to apply cruel submission holds to anyone unlucky enough to fall. Tom is next. Bob locks him in a modified kabel naria—a type of surfboard stretch with a facelock, which I’ll rename to The Happy Little Tree if I ever remember. Phil could save his former colleague, but this has become more than just a wrestling match: this is war. Battle war. The pain of betrayal and actual pain is too much for Tom, who submits, and we’re down to the final two. 

Big Daddy Savage isn’t underestimating Ross. He might be a pacifist with a fondness for waterfalls, but he’s dangerous. He locks Phil in yet another horrible submission move, but Savage powers free and takes his chance. He draws a deep breath, grabs Bob Ross and hammers him into the mat with a chokeslam. He falls on top of him and the referee counts. The unholy bloodbath ends. The dance of slams is over. The lights in the nightclub are on, and Violence and Spectacle are leaving together. Phil has done it. The Noob Day have splintered after just two matches, but a long and illustrious singles career awaits the one they call Big Daddy Savage.

Most wrestling games get it wrong. Matches shouldn’t just be about who wins or loses, but how entertaining they are. WWE games are historically bad at this—they’re afraid to reflect ‘real’ wrestling, where two athletes work together to tell a story while legitimately knocking the piss out of one another, so instead they play like confused fighting games. They often feel indecisive, lacking the sense of momentum recognisable in every worthwhile wrestling match. Fire Pro Wrestling World, out now on Steam Early Access, is different. 

It’s a deceptive game. It looks simple, with stout 2D graphics and graceful animation that recalls ancient coin-ops such as WWF Wrestlefest, but it’s actually complex title that demands finesse. It has excellent heritage, too. While mainstream wrestling games were busying themselves with improved likenesses, entrances, and subsurface scattering, the Fire Pro series was diligently learning to be a more thoughtful  experience—a trend continued in Fire Pro Wrestling World. 

The focus is on the flow and feel of matches. Things start small. Light attacks such as snapmeres, armbars, and haymakers signal the match is in its early stages, easing you into the competition before the high spots. There’s nothing stopping you from hitting big attacks early on, but you’re more likely to land the light ones. In this sense, Fire Pro does a fine job of representing the escalation and narrative of a professional wrestling match. But it’s deeper than that.

It’s not just about how much damage you do. Every move acts like the link in a chain, leading you onto something else. As mentioned above, light attacks are aperitifs, used to kick things off. Medium attacks act like momentum shifts. Opponents stay down longer after receiving them, giving you time to apply holds, draw breath, or climb the turnbuckle. Big moves, however, don’t necessarily keep your opponent down as long. 

This seemed weird to me at first—I expected powerbombs and piledrivers to stagger my opponents—but now I can see the logic of it. Hit a big move and your opponent will struggle back to their feet, dazed, letting you execute more flamboyant attacks you’d normally struggle to land. In real life, wrestlers often pop back up to take another bump to  increasing the pace towards the end of a match, and that’s exactly what this represents. It gives Fire Pro a dynamism that’s missing from WWE games. 

Because of all this, the final two minutes of every match are where it’s at. I found that I didn’t mind when an opponent kicked out of my finisher on a count of  2.9,  just because the match rating was always in the back of my mind. Likewise with the option to play dead. When your opponent climbs the turnbuckle, you can hold a button to remain on the mat. You can be conniving about it, and use the opportunity to roll out of the way at the last minute, or you could choose to sell your opponent’s frog splash for the sake of the match. What could be more like real wrestling than that?

Although the feel of the matches is familiar, the execution takes some getting used to. It’s all about timing. You have to pinpoint the right moment to execute a move. Input an attack too early and you’ll lose your chance; press it too late and your opponent will beat you to it. I struggled to get the timing right until I started listening for the ‘stamp’ that goes with every grapple. It’s a strange system at first, but the precision of it works well in context: lose your timing and you can be on the receiving end of a chain of moves before nailing an attack that will let you shift the momentum. 

There are other limitations that might seem jarring. You can only throw your opponents into the left and right turnbuckles, because you can only run laterally. It feels like an odd thing at first, but I soon discovered it didn’t alter how I felt about matches, in the same way I neither know nor care which corner of a real wrestling ring is being used. In fact, the slight limitations encourage you to use your imagination, in a way that nicely recalls the likes of Warzone or No Mercy. By giving us less, Fire Pro Wrestling World somehow encourages players to be more creative. There are gaps, but you fill them in yourself. 

Nowhere is this more obvious that in the character creation mode, which is comprehensive enough to deserve a feature of its own. After just a week of being in early access, Fire Pro Wrestling World had thousands of custom wrestlers, covering the complete history of the business. Think of a wrestler, living or dead, and somebody has probably made them. Bastion Booger sits alongside Bam Bam Bigelow; Karl Gotch can fight Rugged Ronnie Garvin. It’s the best use of the Steam Workshop I’ve seen, almost as if the community sees creating the most obscure, forgotten wrestlers as a challenge.

And, as you’d expect, it’s not limited to wrestlers, either. My favourite custom match was a Battle Royale featuring Tom, Phil, and Samuel from the PC Gamer team (I was writing a magazine diary, okay?) facing off against Bob Ross, Geralt of Rivia, and Gabe Newell. Always believe in the beauty of your dreams. 

The downside of the focus on matches and wrestlers is that everything else feels sparse. This may come in time—this is an early access game, after all—but right now, the stuff outside ring is the only thing WWE games do better. There are tournaments and leagues, but they lack the long-term drama I want as a wrestling fan. 

When you’ve got such a rich, overwhelming bank of wrestlers (as well as bears, game developers, and wet-on-wet oil painting experts), you want stories that engage those personalities. This can only come from building feuds, beating rivals, and driving storylines. At the moment, there’s nothing in Fire Pro Wrestling World that gives that option, and the lack of a persistent programme of matches is disappointing. The Universe mode has been the most consistently worthwhile element of recent WWE games - something similar would be incredible here. 

I’m having more fun in the matches than I have in any recent WWE title, but the problem is that it selfishly makes me want more. For me, the ideal wrestling game would fall somewhere between a management sim and an RPG—I want to make a character, build their career, and have power over their ultimate success. That extra level of narrative direction is the biggest thing missing from Fire Pro Wrestling World. All the story currently comes from the matches themselves—which is a purist’s dream, perhaps—but more depth would turn a good game into a great one. 

Announced at GDC back in March, Fire Pro Wrestling World marks the return of the enduring decades-spanning rasslin' series this time with Spike Chunsoft at the helm. It's without a concrete launch date as yet, however is expected to land on PC, via Early Access, at some point in the first half of this year. And we now have an idea of what it'll bring with it when it does. 

As reported by Hachima Kikou, and translated and reported by Gematsu, Fire Pro Wrestling World will enter Early Access with the following game modes and so-called 'Gameplay Rules': 

Game Modes

• Offline Play
• Online Play
• Edit Mode

Gameplay Rules 

• Normal Match
• Steel Cage Deathmatch
• Electric Current Blast Deathmatch
• Land Mine Blast Deathmatch
• Battle Royale
• Mixed Martial Arts Rules

I'm not entirely sure what they involve, but both Electric Current and Land Mine Blast Deathmatch modes sound like they could give even the likes of Mick Foley a run his money. Gematsu also reports the game will include a number of new maneuvers such as the turn-around short range lariat, the pole-shift flowsion, and the twist-style pulldown face buster. 

Again, no hard launch date for Fire Pro Wrestling World just yet, but its Steam page suggests a "Q2, 2017" arrival.

Goichi Suda is best known for crafting quirky games such as Killer 7, Killer is Dead, and 1999's The Silver Case—the latter of which was remastered and released on Steam to middling reviews last year. But Fire Pro Wrestling is the fighting series that Suda51—as the developer is known—cut his teeth on, having directed Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout in 1993. It was announced at GDC this week that Spike Chunsoft is bringing the series to Steam as Fire Pro Wrestling World, and that was enough to convince Suda to get into the ring one more time to show it some support.

Set to enter the platform's Early Access initiative at some point in "Q2" of this year, Fire Pro Wrestling World aims to introduce a new generation to the self-proclaimed "greatest grappling game" ever with a host of current-gen features. 

Playing online lets players organise exhibition bouts, tournaments, leagues and battle royals; while Deathmatches comprise steel cage scuffles, barbed wire battles and, um, landmines—whatever that entails. The game's Steam page notes MMA rules and no-holds barred "Gruesome Fighting" as being on offer too, as you strive to "mix up the rules".

Customisation suites are always good fun in wrestling games, and Fire Pro promises "unlimited" options. "Create your dream wrestler from over a thousand devastating moves and even more body parts to battle for custom championship belts," reads its Steam page. "Personalize the ring, mat logos and even the referee"

And now, here's the man himself (no, not the man, I mean Suda51) giving it a push: 

No concrete launch date just yet, but Fire Pro Wrestling World is due in the first half of 2017. 

Update: The post originally indicated that Suda51 is heading the development of Fire Pro Wrestling World. He's actually not involved in this one—he's just a supporter.