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A playthrough of Data East's 1986 wrestling game for the NES, Tag Team Wrestling. Since the game doesn't have an ending, I played until I went down in Round 36. There are no titles beyond “Super Champion“ awarded for winning Round 35, so I didn't see much need to go any farther. Tag Team Challenge is a port of a 1983 arcade game made by Technos, and I believe that it was one of the first NES wrestling games. It was released in 10/1986 alongside . (), meaning that both games predate Pro Wrestling () in the US by five months. It actually reminds me a lot of MicroLeague Wrestling () which is well worth checking out if you aren't familiar with it. To be completely upfront: Tag Team Wrestling is unquestionably terrible. The controls are laggy and slow, the AI brazenly cheats at the higher levels, there's no choice of characters, and that's all before you take into account that it's an action game that relies on awkward pop-up menus. I'm not kidding. I'm sure it was an interesting, exploratory step forward for fighting games when it popped up in arcades in 1983, but Tag Team's gameplay was already overly simplistic and badly dated by the end of 1986. You play as the “Ricky Fighters“ as they work their way up the rankings, and every fight pits you against “The Strong Bads.“ If you were a fan of Homestar Runner, you'll immediately see the connection. The game goes like this: when you land a hit, you get a short bit of time to select the move you'd like to execute from a menu. When this menu pops up, you hit the B button to cycle through the available moves and then whack A to lay the smackdown. (Side note: you *have* to resist the urge to button mash if you want to avoid accidentally doing the first move over and over!) Certain moves can knock your opponent out of the ring where you'll be able to body slam him, ram his face into a pole, and occasionally smack him in the head with a weapon. I have no idea what the weapon is supposed to be, but it's effective. Though the system is weird and counterintuitive, it does allow for some amusing back and forth. I enjoyed the comically garish graphics, the distorted voice samples, and the awkwardly suggestive sprite animations, and at the lower levels, I find the game to be really fun so long as I limit my exposure to 10-15 minute bursts. The problem that ultimately wrecks the game is that the AI is as dumb as a sign-post, and the game attempts to compensate for this with what the manual refers to as a character's “rage.“ In rage mode (which is a CPU-exclusive “technique,“ mind you), the character turns red and becomes temporarily invulnerable. This happens when, again per the manual, you “avoid“ your opponent too much. In practice, the mechanic becomes something akin to rubber banding in racing games. It's tolerable in the earlier rounds, but by the time you've reached the Super level, the AI mercilessly abuses rage mode, leaving you to pray that they'll knock you out the ring so that you can cheese them with a ring out. It's so unbelievably frustrating to lose a match when you can't even get off the mat after the first hit, especially when continuing after a loss puts you all the way back at the first match of the trophy ladder you're currently on. That stretch from Rd. 26 to 35 is truly designed to test your temper. Tag Team Wrestling is one of those games that I can pop in and have fun with, but it's also one that I rarely spend any length of time with. There's just not enough substance to it to warrant more than a few minutes of play, and even if there was, the ridiculous AI would ultimately still undermine it. Oh well. It is what it is. I don't hate it, but I can't recommend it, either. You can find more of my NES playthroughs here if you're interested: _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
