Gensokyo Pro Wrestling Muscle Tag Match (PC)

 In the early 00s, there was a craze among doujin game developers to remake aracde and Famicom games from the eighties, but reskin them with the settings and characters of the various visual novels and slice of life manga that were popular at the time: To Heart, Azumanga Daioh, Clannad, and so on. A few years later, that trend was replaced with a slightly different one that still doesn't seem to have gone away even now: remaking arcade and Famicom games from the eighties, but reskinning them with the setting and characters from the Touhou series of shooting games. This is one such example, remaking Kinnikuman Muscle Tag Match (also known as Tag Team Match: M.U.S.C.L.E, because Americans in the eighties and nineties were just addicted to pointlessly rebranding Japanese properties).

 

I assume the developers of this game must have had some strong nostalgia for their source material, as it's a terrible game. Awkward, fiddly, and buggy to the point of being close to non-functioning. This remake is at least better than it in the respect that it does actually work properly, and it's also a lot more colourful and has much bigger sprites than its inspiration. It still suffers from its biggest problem, though, which is unavoidable as its a fundamental one: this is a wrestling game with barely any wrestling in it.

 

You pick two characters to form your tag team, and you'll fight other teams in the ring. Fighting mainly consists of just walking up to your opponent and punching them, or bouncing off the ropes for a flying punch. If you manage to get behind your opponent and press the attack button, you'll do a German suplex, and there seems to be some way for performing a running neckbreaker, though there's a chance that it just happens randomly. Occasionally, a glowing orb will enter the ring, and collecting it temporarily increases your attack power, and your movement and recovery speeds. Also, when you're powered up, you'll sometimes do a huge dramatic finishing move that summons portraits of other characters looking on in awe and instantly wins the round. But like the neckbreaker, this seems to be a random occurance.

 

There's not much more to say about this game. It's a slightly improved remake of a terrible game, and neither are really worth your time. I don't think there's anyone out there who's attempting to play every Touhou fangame in existence, but such a person is really the only one who should bother with this. Or someone seeking out obscure games to review, I guess. It's not painful to play or anything, and I did once play it for almost half an hour before getting bored of it. But still: don't even waste the time it would take to track a copy down, let alone the time you'd spend playing it.