Description

Luchadore fighting is more of an American thing, I guess, but anyway—it sure looks cool, and so does the 3 Count Bout, or Fire Suplex in its native Japan. But that’s about where it all ends. It looks cool, it sounds cool, some gameplay mechanics indeed are cool, but the overall sum of all those aspects just doesn’t quite feel as good as one would expect it to be. Really, the controls are like one of the worst you could possibly imagine for a joystick controlled game. I kind of like the idea of ‘shaking off’ your opponent when you are pinned down on the ground, but… let’s just say I don’t feel quite comfortable shaking my joystick in such a way at all. The whole fighting system desperately wants to be innovative but the result eventually falls a bit short from the desired goal. I think the controls were summed up rather neatly here, so see for yourself. You know, I really tried to like this game, even if it should be just for the sake of the basic premise, that is dudes and dudettes (and no, you won’t find those in Fire Suplex) wearing funny costumes and fighting each other in a ring. But I just couldn’t. There are ten playable characters available in the game, each with a different *quotation marks* fighting style and a different set of moves and animations. However, if I say that the combat system tries to be overly innovative, then the character design goes exactly the opposite way. Man, what an unimaginativeness parade! Like really, SNK, two pairs of essentially same dudes, and you thought nobody would notice? But put all that bashing aside, I wouldn’t go as far as to call Fire Suplex a bad game, because it—essentially—isn’t one, it is just broken. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that cannot be easily repaired when it comes to arcade games and it really is a shame. Because, you see, the audio in the game, is one of the best I’ve ever heard in the games from the same era (keep in mind, that Fire Suplex was released in 1993!). And at first I couldn’t even believe my own ears, when I actually understood what the presenter was saying. Indeed Fire Suplex features a crystal clear sound. And though they are not that astounding like the sounds, the visuals sure do not offend as well. The length of the game is incredible (25 fricking hours reported!), though I can imagine that only like twenty percent of all those people who ever got to play it eventually managed to finish it. You see, the game is split into three ‘championships’, each featuring several stages. First championship is fought in a classic ring, second is located in the streets and features weapon wielding, and the third final one takes place inside an electrically charged cage and again features weapons. Given the difficulty of the game, man, let me give a real salute to everyone who got through it without losing their sanity! All and all, the idea was good. The audio is excellent and the visuals are nice. And I think that some of the game mechanisms might have actually worked out good, were they given a bit of tweaking (which they unfortunately weren’t). But the character design is bland and the overall gameplay could be best described as a frustrating crap-storm. And that drags whole Fire Suplex down.