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Wrestling Universe: Fire Pro Joshi - Doumu Chou Taisen
  PCCDWrestlingJ  
  opened by paleface at 01:16:35 06/30/04  
  last modified by paleface at 16:16:24 03/23/24  
  paleface [sys=PCCD; cat=Wrestling; reg=JPN]
           
References added: 81, 331
  "Woman's Dream Bout doesn't stack up to later Fire Pros, but the sprites are cute."
 
The title's full literal translation is something like (babelfishing and googling) "Wrestling Universe - Fire Pro Woman - Longed for Dream Super Woman Great War - All Women vs. JWP." Now that's a mouthful.
 
What you have in short is Fire Pro, the early kind by Human with full character sprites, rather than the segmented style of the later Spike games (Fire Prowrestling Z, for instance, entry 331), with all female fighters, six-button controller support, four-player support, and an edit mode. Arcade Card required.
 
There are earlier Fire Pro games on PCE but none of them impressed me at all on quick demo play--they don't seem to support controllers with more than two buttons, which takes away a lot of the possibilities in the classic Fire Pro fighting system, and well they look pretty darn ugly.
 
Woman's Dream Bout looks better, and you can tell in particular that they were careful to get in some heaving breast animations in those cute sprites. The funny thing is that the sprites look nothing like the digitized character portraits of these real female wrestlers... and I'm sorry to say that for the most part that's probably a good thing (please don't let them catch me or I'm a dead man).
 
You can do two on two matches with a multitap, co-op tag matches, 5-on-5 elimination tournaments, bracket-style tournaments, and all kinds of things in between. I hope you can play four player with all players in the ring at once but I haven't had a chance to try that yet.
 
Edit mode looks nearly comparable to modern Fire Pros in terms of being able to set the character's moves and logic, but as far as visual customization goes you can only pick from the pre-existing full character sprites. Aw. I'm not sure how many characters you can store on the PCE's internal memory.
 
Fighting itself is pretty similar to the more recent Fire Pro's I've played. I haven't found a "breath" button, and there don't seem to be as many actions available to perform on a downed adversary (pin, strike, submission, but maybe only one or two variants per strike and submission), but you've still got the selection of grapples with button press + direction, in a variety of strength types, and also Irish Whip moves, post moves, and so forth. Am I any good at those? Well no, but it's nice to know they're there.
 
Significantly lacking is any kind of single-player story or adventure mode. By yourself you really just do one-off bouts, or I suppose you could set yourself up in a tournement vs various CPU opponents. But it would have been nice to have some kind of main "Fighting Road" style thing like Fire Pro's G (see entry 81), D and Z.
 
So there you go. The menu art and character sprites look nice, and the digitized portraits are a hoot. You probably don't need this if you have a later Fire Pro since you could whip up all these characters in the later Edit Modes, but it's kind of fun to have a reasonably full-featured Fire Pro on PCE--and those sprites are cuter than the segmented females in the later games. :p
 
  paleface 22:24:15 07/02/19
           
 
  paleface 05:23:05 03/22/23
           
The usual romanization of the title is something like "Wrestling Universe: Fire Pro Joshi - Doumu Chou Taisen."
 
According to this review https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/turbocd/589293-wrestling-universe-fire-pro-joshi-doumu-chou-taisen/reviews/128656 it's a 1995 port of a Super Famicom game from the year before, "Zen-Nippon Joshi Pro Wrestling Kounin: Fire Pro Joshi All-Star Dream Slam"--and they say the PCE version has inferior graphics and sound FX, although the music is better, being on CD, and it has additional wrestlers.
 
According to GameFAQs, this port was not handled by Human themselves but by a company called HuneX--who are still around, making mostly romance games. According to Wikipedia, HuneX was formed "as a partnership" between PC Engine maker NEC, and Fire Pro maker Human in 1992. This port was their fifth game.
 
  paleface 05:36:14 03/22/23
           
At a quick glance, HuneX's only other wrestling may be their sixth game, which came out a few months after this one: "All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling: Queen of Queens," where it looks like the wrestling graphics are all short video clips, sort of a mini Dragon's Lair type of thing to get through wrestling matches, or, I don't know.
 
Human's other female wrestler Fire Pro was a month or two after that, only for SFC: "Super Fire ProWrestling: Queen's Special."
 
HuneX's female sprites are done in a much more cute/pretty style than Human's.
 
Oh I just got the name, HuneX is kind of Human X NEC.
 
Wikipedia gives the SFC and PCE titles of this game as "Fire Pro Women: All Star Dream Slam" and "Wrestling Universe: Fire Pro Women: Dome Super Female Big Battle: All Japan Women VS J.W.P," respectively.
 
  paleface 15:04:09 03/22/23 [title updated]
           
I had titled this "Wrestling Universe: Fire Pro Woman Dream Bout - All Women vs JWP" for some reason, that seems to have been my own fanciful take on the literal title translation. : P
 
  paleface 15:26:13 03/22/23
           
HuneX's "All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling: Queen of Queens" was for PC-FX.
 
  paleface 15:12:30 03/22/24
           
This is the last Fire Pro game that used full character sprites. The SFC game after it--another female wrestling game, Fire Pro Wrestling: Queen's Special--introduced the segmented sprites the series has used since: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fire_Pro_Wrestling_games
 
But check out the game right BEFORE it, "Fire Pro Gaiden: Blazing Tornado" on Saturn--the route not taken! = oo
 

 
Dang. There IS a apparently non-piratical means of getting a Saturn BIOS using a Saturn console, an old Action Replay Plus cart with the 25 pin connector on top, and a "Sega Saturn USB Datalink" gadget from GamingEnterprisesInc on Etsy ( https://www.etsy.com/listing/205863217/sega-saturn-usb-datalink -- but they say the software is on their site, then link to an archive.org archived version of it that doesn't have the downloads archived : P), apparently:
 

 
And Blazing Tornado is super-cheap. But well yeah it looks nice but it's just simplified Fire Pro touch timing gameplay. But why aren't there more super-huge-sprite wrestling games since then??
 
  paleface 15:18:13 03/22/24
           
I mean I guess for me it would have to be Big Bang Pro Wrestling (see entry 420) for NGPC, when run on a big screen. ^ _^
 
  paleface 16:15:37 03/23/24
           
Big Bang has some mechanical problems despite its Fire Pro lineage, though. Thinking about it more, big sprite wrestling also happened in 3 Count Bout (see entry 1435)--with terrible mechanics, or at least ones that are way too much for me to handle--and--slightly less big-Saturday Night Slam Masters (see entry 1662), which is quite playable.
    
 
references:
· Arcade Card Duo (PCE)
· Big Bang Pro Wrestling (NGPC)
· Fire Prowrestling G (PS1)
· Fire Pro Wrestling World (PC)
· Fire Prowrestling Z (PS2)
· Pro Wrestling (NES)

 
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