Famimaga Disk Vol. 1 - Hong Kong (Famicom Disk System)

This is only going to be a shortish review, because there are Playstation games about which I intend to write, but I like to ensure a bit of variety by making sure that each new review is a different genre and system than the previous one. So the first update in months, and it's essentially filler. Woo.
So! I recently started exploring the romset of the Famicom Disk System for the first time, and found out about a few cool games I hadn't played before (plus versions of Metroid and Kid Icarus that allow for saving). Anyway, this is the one about which I have chosen to write, because it took me by surprise, I hadn't heard of it before, and since it was apparently a coverdisk for a Japanese magazine twenty years ago, I'm sure it fulfills the obscurity quota.
So, looking at the screenshot, you might make the same mistake that I did on first sight of this game and think it's a Shanghai clone. It's not. It's actually slightly more complicated than Shanghai. Although you are removing tiles in the right order, so it is a bit like Shanghai.
What happens is, you are given this arrangement of tiles (there are a few shapes from which to choose, plus an option to create your own, and before you start, you enter a 3-letter code, which decides how the tiles will be arranged, which I guess means there are... 17576 different tile arrangements for each shape), and you can take away one tile at a time. The game randomly (I think) decides what character of tile you can take, and you recieve between 20 and 320 points for removing a tile, depending on how many other tiles are touching it, more tiles touching equalling more points. The catch being that if a tile doesn't have any others touching it from below, it falls and your game ends, which makes going for the big-money tiles inside the pile a lot riskier than the 20-80 point ones on the outside. Clever!
But is it actually fun to play? It's alright. A nice enough diversion to emulate on a handheld or laptop while watching TV, but not interesting enough to devote a decent amount of time or concentration to. And you probably won't play more than one game in a row without getting bored of it.

Simple 1500 Series Vol. 52: The Pro Wrestling 2 (Playstation)

This game is a bit of a curious oddity now, since it was made by Yukes, shortly before they made the first WWF Smackdown game for THQ. It doesn't have any licence, obviously, so, when faced with the chance to create any kind of colourful, outlandish characters the likes of wshich pro wrestling is famous for, Yukes chose to fill the roster with... lots of pale, balding men in underpants. And a martial artist woman.
Other than that, though, thje game plays pretty well. As you would expect from a budget game, it doesn't have a ton of modes, just an arcade-style single player mode, exhibition matches, and a create a wrestler mode.
I didn't save anything from the CAW mode, but i had a quick look, and you could just mix and match heads, bodies and torsos.
The single player mode has you choosing a character and then having a series of fights against the other guys.
In exhibition mode, you can create your own matches. There's only three to choose from, though: Single, 4-Way Dance, and Deathmatch.
Deathmatch mode is the coolest part of the game. It's a single match, but you can apply a bunch of crazy modifiers to it. You can choose any combination of normal rope/ electric barbed wire/no rope and normal mat/straw mat/concrete mat, as well as turning on and off Inferno mode, in which the ring is surrounded by flames, and the winner is the wrestler who throws their opponent out of the ring to a firey death. (Amusingly, you can still get out of the ring yourself, resulting in an instant loss). Having a match set to concrete mat/no ropes/inferno looks pretty cool!
An interesting thing about the game is the fact that a lot of the animations for moves and taunts are being recycled in yukes' WWE games to this day. Is that interesting or just insulting?
Anyway, this is a pretty fun game, despite its simplicity and boring cast.