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Fire Pro Returns
  PS2WrestlingJ  
  opened by paleface at 04:10:56 09/27/05  
  last modified by paleface at 12:25:50 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PS2; cat=Wrestling; reg=JPN]
           
The venerable 2D wrestling series comes back to give its die-hard fans a massive helping of the incredibly detailed Japanese professional (ie, semi-staged) wrestling simulation that has far outlived any other games with which it could be compared. Go Fire Pro!
 
In this rebirth, you get hundreds and hundreds of wrestlers based on actual big sweaty dudes, and then you can make more in the inevitable Edit mode, which this time around lets you get all that much more detailed tricking out the last detail of your favorite real or fantasy bare-chested brawler. Or so I've heard--Edit mode is too much for me; and really, with hundreds of wrestlers that they've already made for me, I'm not gonna need Edit mode for much.
 
This game didn't really come back for me, you see. I really like the control scheme, and the 2D-ness of it all, but I'm not into the endless editing and match-making, which is really all there is to FPR, once you get right down to it. I'm disappointed that there's no "story" type of thing this time around, as there was in Fire Pro G (see entry 81), and even in the retroactively maligned Fire Pro Z (see entry 331). Let us not even speak of D's flimsy "Victory Road." But there's not even the shadow of an attempt at that sort of thing here, and that will keep the non-puroresu-fanboy like me from really sticking with the game for very long, at least at any one time.
 
I mean, hey, I like to get eight big fat scaling sprite dude battling it out in a ring or cage or whatever all at once just as much as the next guy, but there's only so much of that kind of senseless violence that I can take before starting to ask existential questions, and that leads to all kinds of dangerous things.
 
So, you know, I'll *want* to come back to this every so often for a big rumble, and definitely so if I can get some peeps together to do it with me (up to eight with two multitaps, even!), 'cause I really do like the battle system, what with the bajillion strikes, rope drops, submissions, throws, pins, flying knees, and other fun things you can do to the other sprites. That's just good clean fun, as anyone will tell you. But meantime, on my own, I'm more likely to try getting through some of the story/career modes in G and Z.
    
 
references:
· Fire Prowrestling G (PS1)
· Fire Pro Wrestling World (PC)
· Fire Prowrestling Z (PS2)

 
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