0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - All Japan Woman Pro Wrestling

  

All Japan Woman Pro Wrestling known as Zen-Nihon Joshi Puroresu: Joou Densetsu In Japan, is a sports game released on the Playstation 1 on the 23^rd of July 1998 and released exclusively in Japan, the game was developed by TEN and published by GW.

The game is based on the real Japanese wrestling organisation All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling, nicknamed Zenjo was a joshi puroresu, (women's professional wrestling) promotion established in 1968 by Takashi Matsunaga and his brothers. The group held their first card on June 4 of that year. For many years it had a TV program on Fuji TV.

The All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Corporation, established in 1968, was the successor to the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Association, which had been formed in August 1955, to oversee the plethora of women's wrestling promotions that had sprung up in Japan following a tour in November, 1954, by Mildred Burke and her World Women's Wrestling Association (WWWA).

These promotions included the All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling Federation, and the All Japan Women's Wrestling Club, started in 1948, which was the first women's wrestling promotion in Japan. For a time the Club pushed female wrestling as a legitimate sport, booking sporting arenas.

Motion capture has been used for more realistic player movements during matches in an attempt to reproduce the individual wrestlers skills the game also features live action movies of each wrestler. The wrestlers that feature In this game are Yumiko Hotta, Manami Toyota, Takako Inoue, Kaoru Ito, Tomoko Watanabe, Kumiko Maekawa, Aja Kong, Kyoko Inoue, Mima Shimoda, Etsuko Mita, Chaparrita Asari, Rie Tamada, Yumi Fukawa and Akira Hokuto the last wrestler is hidden and an only be unlocked for challenge mode.

Controlling your wrestler is fairly simple, using the D-Pad to move the character around, the X button to kick your opponent, while the Square button is for punching, you can grapple your opponents using the circle button and submission moves are carried out using the triangle button.

Players are able to run using the R1 button plus the D-Pad for which ever direction you want to run, exiting the ring and climbing the turnbuckle use the same buttons. Wrestlers also have a finishing move a finishing bar flashes red when It can be used and is activated with L2+R2. The game also features the usual moves like pile drivers, body slams, and clotheslines.

The game does not really have a story mode live action cuts scenes of the wrestlers add something to the game but not much, the game only has the two modes a simple exhibition mode and the main part of the game the WWWA ranking match, where the player has 13 wrestlers to choose from.

Reviews numbers for this game are light with one critic review and a couple of user reviews, starting with the critics review which is from GameSpot.com who gave the game a below average 4.9/10, heavily criticising the games lack of content compared to other wrestling games of the time. In their conclusing while they did praise the easy pick up and play of the game the lack of content means there is nothing much to hold your attention for long.

The first user review which comes from Da Clyde who’s review title reads Short on substance, but It sure looks good, their 3/5 review concluding with All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling probably had the most unfulfilled potential if any game I've ever seen. Beautiful graphics, great referee, but lack of match options and limited move control prevent it from being the huge success it could've been.

The second user review which comes from alvarezccna, who’s review is titled Not the best Wrestling Game ever but good for Joshi Puroresu Fans. Their 3.5/5 review concluding with Overall I had fun playing this game and glad I finally got the chance to play it. Even though this game only has sinles matches, fans of Japanese Women's Wrestling will enjoy it. It's hard to recommend it to everyone else, but if you can find this rare game give it a shot.

Moving on to the GameFAQs user data where 15 users have rated this game at a decent average of 3.4/5, with a good spread of game rating, with 3 users giving the game the maximum 5/5, a couple of users scored the game a 4/5 while the majority of users rated this game 3.5/5.

A couple of users awarded this game a 3/5 while one user could not give this game any more than a 2/5, a couple of users were even harsher on the game scoring it at just 1.5/5. moving on to the games difficulty again a decent spread of user votes from the 8 users that voted on this category, with an even split of 3 users rating this game as tough or unforgiving, one of the remaining users rated this game as having just the right difficulty, while one user found the game too easy.

The games lifespan is up next with 6 users rating this category again a good split with a couple of users rating the games lifespan as 8 hours, three users rated the games lifespan lower with a 1 hours, 2 hour and 4 hour lifespan rating, while one user seems to have had a lot of fun with the game spending 20 hours with it, the average lifespan for the game comes in at 7.2 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where it is no surprise this Japanese only title is not available, likewise Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com don’t stock this title either. Heading to Amazon.com who have this game listed, the game is listed by its Japanese name Zen Nihon Joshi Pro Wres: Joou Densetsu: Yume no Taikousen.

A very good quality complete copy of the game can be picked up for $13.15 this comes with free shipping, please be aware import taxes may apply depending on which country you are from. The same goes for new copies of the game, speaking of new copies one can be picked up from Amazon for $24.63 which converts to £19.25 in the UK in Euro zone countries it will cost €20.88, while in Namibia it will cost you 326.62 Namibian Dollars.

Ebay.com is very light on copies of this game with just the one copy on sale at the time of writing this priced at $19.98 and comes with free economy international shipping, again this may be subject to customs processing depending on your own countries import regulations.

Written by

P J Gibbon