All Girl Wrestling: Ultimate Angels Hands-On

We threw down with Tecmo's All Girl Wrestling: Ultimate Angels and gathered a couple of impressions on this upcoming release. The game is a port of a Japanese Super Famicom title that never made its way across the ocean, until now. From what we've seen so far, the game is coming along nicely and is certainly doing its part to maintain Tecmo's "Our girls are better than your girls" theme from E3 this year.

In All Girl Wrestling: Ultimate Angels, you control one of six female wrestlers to start, with the opportunity to unlock a seventh through gameplay. The meat of the game is in tournament mode, which is composed of six rounds of three-minute bouts, where you fight an array of other Angels in search of the Ultimate Angels Championship Belt. Although the perspective is 2D, this doesn't limit the gameplay much, as there is certainly quite a bit to do within the ring. All of the characters have the same fundamental move set, consisting of punches, kicks, and four traditional wrestling moves, throws, or grabs. However, each individual character has a unique power hold, which can be brought into play once the appropriate meter is filled up. We played around during a couple of rounds against a few interesting opponents and noticed that the gameplay is going to rest entirely on how successfully you switch up your maneuvers. You can't get away with mere punches and kicks, as your opponent will take advantage of your lack of ingenuity. One of the most useful moves, it seems, is to climb up onto the ropes and pile-drive the other lady, if she can even be called that.

Ultimate Angels looks like it will appease the mobile fan looking for an excuse to watch ladies fight each other, and it will appeal to the wrestling game fan's interest in fighting strategies. Stay tuned for more information on All Girl Wrestling: Ultimate Angels when we have it.