Whether or not you have a full-on Undertaker shrine on your TV set, or do ridiculous crap in front of the mirror, or tie your shirt around your head for no reason but to play ninja, you will find decent, but average play in All Japan Woman Pro Wrestling. Enjoyment of Wrestling, the sport, may be a matter of fanaticism and histrionics, but wrestling games all come down to three things: control, moves, and modes.
This is one slow wrestling game, for starters. Response time stinks. Like a lot of weaker wrestling games, you spend a lot of time pushing the action button, waiting for your opponent to stop with her whining before the next hold can be applied. It's just one of those things about wrestling games that boggles the mind. Like you can't slap somebody while they're just standing there doing nothing. You have to wait for them to be ready? That doesn't seem tactically sound. Much of the fun of the game hinges on your enjoyment of the challenge of timing - not your moves, but when the PlayStation will allow you to make them. Duh.
You'll be surprised to find the number of moves that are limited in their control options too. Take the patented drop kick. You know the one. All the kids are doing it, where you send your opponent running into the ropes, and jump-kick him with both feet on his return - dubious physics, but it looks great. Well, in this one you are only able to produce that kick in one of the four cardinal directions, making it tricky to pull off. It seems to me, if I were a young athletic woman, I'd be able to jump in any direction I wanted, but not so here.
Not that the game is without its interesting moves. Sure, there're pile drivers, body slams, and clotheslines. Heck, it even sports some of the weirdest turnbuckle moves I've ever seen: prop your opponent up, then climb up behind her and hoist both of you over, back flopping onto the mat. Nice. The problem is that nine-tenths of the moves are executed with the same buttons. Tap the O-button to grab your opponents, the O-button to send them running into the ropes, the O-button to toss 'em over your shoulder. Stun your opponents with a humiliating kick in the crotch (ah, the X-button), then grab them from behind and do a crazy backbend pin. With what? The O-button of course. Plus, the really interesting moves don't require anything like finesse or combination mastery, just enemy fatigue. Pile drivers and choke holds just happen unprovoked when you attempt to throw a tired opponent. There's nothing wrong with simplicity, but this game never comes off as much of a challenge.
All Japan Woman Pro Wrestling offers a tiny handful of modes compared with current wrestling games. Weapons matches, cage matches, even the simple tag-team - none of them is represented here. The only difference between the game's two modes is whether you're going for the belt or just a one-off fight. In actual gameplay, it's always one-on-one with the same rules, and that's just not going to cut it in 1998.
The look and feel are all right but nothing to write Kanji about. Wrestlers look and feel solid. Unfortunately, each is armed with a smallish number of sound-bite exclamations that tire fast. Maybe if you know their real-life counterparts it's a real laugh riot; maybe not. And for better or worse, there is an innocent but noticeable sexiness to a lot of the pins and submissions that might worry or thrill parents or creeps. You have been warned.
In short, this one comes up short. While fun to play for a while, and easy to grasp right out of the box, there is little here to hold onto for long. It would be a dubious decision to shell out the dough for this import.
