Galactic Wrestling Preview

The wrestler roars with rage, summoning a power from deep within. In a flurry of action, he unleashes an incredible torrent of violence, culminating with grabbing his foe, shooting straight up 100 feet into the air, then locking in his foe and they plummet to the canvas for an incredible neck-breaking jackhammer move.

Remarkably, his opponent manages to rise up off the canvas, after only a moment to catch his breath.

Ban Dai recently sent out preview builds for the pending PlayStation 2 wrestling title Galactic Wrestling. Developed by the Aki Corporation, this game certain features some trademark Ban Dai graphical elements, and some interesting action.

Unfortunately, very little of this game was in English and there was no manual, making it almost impossible to determine what was being seen or how to effect some of the moves without random button mashing.

There are 32 playable characters to begin with as well as 15 mystery slots. The game also has several modes of play, including single player, a versus mode and team battles. Each of the characters sport some signature moves.

The game itself has a nice three-dimensional look with futuristic settings for the arenas. Some of the settings are rather sedate, as in the wrestling ring surrounded by water with lily pads, but don’t count on taking the action outside the ring. Even though this is Galactic Wrestling, all the environments have Earth-like backdrops.

As stated, this was a button-mashing nightmare. Although different combinations were tried, the actual key to unleash the special attack was either elusive or accidentally found. In spite of that, movement and unleashing a series of blows seemed to be one way to win most of the matches.

As with most wrestling titles, this comes with wrestler health bars. Run out and it’s a knockout. It also shows just how far along the wrestler is in achieving what is needed to unleash the power attack.

Those attacks have some rather interesting looks to them, and some involve whirling dervish moves while others will actually let one wrestler shoot another. The AI seems a touch on the slow side. Even without knowing what to do, it was possible to outmaneuver and win.

The game has clipping problems, and the wrestlers will perform different actions under similar conditions. For example, you have an opponent on his back and start tapping the punch/kick key. Sometimes this will allow you to stomp on the fallen foe, sometimes your wrestler just shadowboxes.

As for the wrestlers, they sport a variety of shapes and sizes though all the faces look like cartoon faces overlaid on three-dimensional forms.

Galactic Wrestling will have a tough time breaking the North American market against titles like the WWE franchise. The game seems to be a mish-mash of ideas, cartoony on one hand and then a touch of more ordinary wrestling action on the other.