13 Comments

People can complain all they want about M.U.S.C.L.E., but at least it's mildly playable. Tag Team Wrestling has some of the worst controls known to man.

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Preach it, brother!

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I remember playing Tag Team on the Apple II and remember being frustrated how bad in general the wrestling games of that era were and not understanding why they couldn't be made better This game, however, would be the case example. It likely tainted my interest in wrestling video games, and I've always leaned more towards sports games, particularly soccer and basketball starting back then.

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I don't blame you for eschewing the 8-bit wrestling titles after Tag Team, but did you ever get into the N64 wrestling games?

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No, not really. There were one or two WCW titles I played a few times that were ok I thought but I didn’t get into them and play on the frequency anywhere near what I did with the sports and fighting games. Do you have any recommendations?

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I just remember playing them with a friend of mine who was really into wrestling. Can't remember any specific titles, unfortunately. They seemed fine to me at the time, but hard to say how they've aged these days.

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Well, Tag Team Wrestling has cool box art so there’s that.

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Like John Hammond, Data East spared no expense

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Looks like Nintendo was already transitioning from the requisite screenshot on the front cover format…

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Yeah that was short lived for sure

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I guess you weren’t a Homestar Runner fan, because you didn’t mention that the Strong Bads are the namesake of Strong Bad, the villain (I guess?) from that. Which is definitely the most noteworthy thing about that game.

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I caught the Strong Bad reference but failed to mention it. Agreed that it's the most noteworthy thing about the game.

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I really don’t know much about the creation of HSR though. I imagine there’s a backstory we can all relate to of its creator being stuck with a copy of Tag Team Wrestling as part of a very limited NES collection.

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