Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling: Ouja no Kon

"My first review ever, Damn good game in my view"

Gameplay - 9
Story -9(I don't know Japanese)
Audio/Video -9(it was better than some would believe)
Replayability -I basically just got the game, but I think Smackdown won't be getting any more playing time soon.
To buy or to rent-I bought it...I doubt that any rental store will have it.......so buy it.
these are the suggested criteria for reviewing games.
A little bit of background info. I got online and saw the Japanese wrestling game craze, and Puroresu craze. So I looked and asked around for all of the info that I could. I like wrestling in general so if there is a game out there, I'll buy it. Well to make this short and sweet, I ran into a guy who was selling import games. I narrowed it down to Fire Pro G, NJPW3, and AJPW...but then I bought all three. But since everyone has reviewed FPG, and I haven't really gotten into the NJPW3.

AJPW-The graphics are a good 3D and the introductions are pretty damn cool. They even have Top Gun's Danger Zone as a theme. The ring announcer announces each wrestler's name, and the crowd gets into it as well with their chants of ''Baba Baba'' or ''Misawa Misawa''. The action is pretty fast and the cpu is very smart in this game. They go at you with a deliberate type of pacing, and they wear you down. You get a certain amount of powerballs for each character(different characters do get different numbers) and they can be used to free you from pins, or to pull off power moves). The more popular trademarks like the Burning Hammer, and the exploder are in the game...not to mention the Tiger Driver of Misawa. So if you are a huge mark for Japanese wrestling you will be happy about this.
The edit mode is not too great, but you can make the hidden characters...which I haven't unlocked as of yet.

The grappling system as other's have said is kinda of different from other games. You press R1 and another button to do a tie up. You can do powerball strikes(heavy punches, elbows, chops, kicks) or power grapplers(the powerful moves like a Powerbomb).

All in all a good game that Japanese wrestling fans,regular fans(I don't follow Japanese wrestling that much) can both enjoy.

P.S. I'm still waiting for a Lucha Libre game to come out...then I'll mark out like a bastard.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/27/00, Updated 04/27/00