Fire Pro Wrestling

"Fire Pro Wrestling (ファイヤープロレスリング) is a long-running professional wrestling video game series originating from Japan, started in 1989 by Human Entertainment and continued by Spike in 2000.

The Fire Pro Wrestling series of games distinguish themselves from other wrestling games by combining several unique features. One feature is the focus on a timing-based grappling control system, which encourages the use of complex strategy, built on working up to using increasingly powerful moves on your opponent. The timing-based system stands in contrast to the button-mashing tactics with which most 2D wrestling gamers are familiar. Another feature of Fire Pro Wrestling games is the inclusion of a large roster of wrestlers from different promotions around the world, representing many different styles of professional wrestling: from North American WWE style sports-entertainment, Mexican lucha-libre to various styles of Japanese puroresu: athletic junior-heavyweight style, realistic strong-style, women's' joshi wrestling, and violent hardcore wrestling, as well as different styles of shoot fighting and mixed martial arts.

A third distinguishing feature of the Fire Pro Wrestling series of games, particularly the later games in the series, is the inclusion of a detailed wrestler creation and edit mode. The edit mode of Fire Pro Wrestling games allows players to build game characters with a high level of attention to detail. Appearance characteristics such as clothing and ring attire, physical build, head and facial features, can be customized for a created wrestler. A detailed set of wrestling and fighting moves, drawn from a large pool of moves built into the game, can also be assigned to a created wrestler. Later titles in the series allowed for customization of other aspects of professional wrestling, including changing the design of the ring mat, creating customized championship belts, and creation and editing of referees. The extensive edit mode in the Fire Pro series of games also allowed players to make detailed changes to the CPU logic of an edited wrestler, making it possible for a skilled creator to create a wrestler that behaves very much like his real-life counterpart even when controlled by the computer. The highly detailed character creation and edit mode of the Fire Pro Wrestling games became an influential feature that was eventually added to other wrestling and sports games.

This combination of features included in Fire Pro Wrestling games allows players to create "dream matchups" of wrestlers from different promotions, different eras in the history of professional wrestling, as well as bouts between real-life wrestlers and fighters, fictional characters and non-wrestling celebrities."

Source: Wikipedia, "Fire_Pro_Wrestling", available under the CC-BY-SA License.