Original Release: NEC, 1990, Turbografx 16
A simplistic wrestling game that focuses on a five-way free-for-all.
Battle Royale (Turbografx 16, NEC, 1990)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
As the name indicates, this is nothing but a battle royale (eliminate other people by throwing them over the top rope) between five fictional rasslers. It’s really meant almost exclusively as a multiplayer title, as solo players have nothing to do but play this one same match over and over and over.
Even if you’ve got four controllers and four homies down to tussle, however, it’s still not very good. This is mostly thanks to the choppy-as-hell movement, stiff attacks and lack of any meaningful difference beyond visual for each of the wrestlers. It’s a neat touch that eliminated wrestlers can hang around outside the ring and mess with the competitors by bouncing the ropes when they get close, and I also enjoyed the gratuitous Wilhelm Scream whenever a dude gets tossed from the ring, but that’s about all that’s really enjoyable here.
You just keep clunking around spamming the same stiff punches and kicks at each other, and while it’s not immediately obvious how to pick people up, once you look up the controls it’s overly easy to chuck people out ending most matches in only a couple of minutes.
Great visual style here, but this needed way more work in every other area. There are reams of amateur one-man Flash games out there that are more substantial than this.
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