WWE Brawl (3DS, Prototype)

 Long, long ago, there was concept art going around for something called WWE Brawl, a game in which superhero-like cartoony versions of WWE wrestlers would fight in somewhat fantastical environments. It was no secret that this game existed, WWE even still have a bunch of the concept art up on their official website! I remember there being some excitement for it among wrestling fans, but unfortunately, it never materialised. Until earlier this year, when an unfinished prototype of the 3DS version leaked online, being the version about which I'm writing today.

 

The game was apparently in development since 2009, with the leaked version being supposedly from around 2011, which puts it very early in the 3DS' life. It also puts it at a time a few years before WWE started caring about female wrestlers, and as such, the roster is all-male (though the concept art on WWE's site does feature the infamously useless Kelly Kelly as a member of "the resistance", she isn't in this version of the game). There are twelve playable characters, though, and they're made up of who you'd excpet from a WWE kids' game from around 2010: there's Cena, The Undertaker, Kofi Kingston, The Big Show, and so on.

 

Most are pretty much as you'd expect, though two I thought were especially interesting are Kane, who's a big, white-skinned monster-man, and Randy Orton, who has a bunch of tubes attached to him, like the Batman villain Bane. Also, looking at the concept art again before writing this, I saw that Triple H was also counted as a member of the resistance, which makes little sense, not least because the game has him dressed as a medieval king. But WWE games are infamous for their insistence on always portraying him positively.

 

As for the game itself, it's kind of like Power Stone. You fight in one of the three arenas: a blank grid world, the lobby of a fancy building (you can also take an elevator to the roof, where an Adamski-type UFO will shoot lasers at you), and some kind of cartoony sci-fi factory/lab place. There's also crates lying around, which can be broken open to reveal weapons! There's a sword, a baseball bat, a bazooka, and a giant tire. The four face buttons are assigned to jump, attack, throw (your opponent, since this is a wrestling-themed game, after all), and pick up weapon.

 

It really seems like it'd be a pretty decent game, had it actually been finished and released. All the problems I have with it, other than the slightly boring roster, are due to it being a prototype. There are only three stages, though there are spaces on the menu for eight more. A bigger variety of weapons would also have been nice. And, of course, you can only take part in one-on-one fights in this version, and after the fight ends, you're sent straight back to the title screen. Plus, the CPU opponents are all incredibly easy to defeat. Naturally, it can be assumed that with proper arcade/story modes, escalating difficulty, and maybe also group battles, the finished product would be a lot better than this.

 

There's not really much point in recommending or not recommending WWE Brawl. I've said what I think of it, and if you didn't know it was out there, you do now, and can satisfy your curiosity on your own if you want to. I do think it's a shame it got cancelled, though. Like I said, it does seem like it was going to be a good game. Still, there were plenty of vaguely similar games released on 3DS in Japan, at least. Beast Saga: Saikyou Gekiotsu Coliseum, for example.

Air Rescue (Master System)

 The original arcade version of Air Rescue was a sprite-scaling version of the ancient game Choplifter, which saw you flying around in 3D rescuing very ugly soldiers from active battlefields. Though it might have been possible to make a decent job of porting it to the Mega CD, attempting to do so on the Master System would have been an act of Ozymandian hyubris. Luckily, that's not what's been attempted here, Master System Air Rescue is more like a decade-later sequel to Dan Gorlin's game.

 

Once again, you're in a helicopter, and once again, you're rescuing little guys. Most of the differences between this game and Choplifter are small, but there's also a lot of them, so it's a different enough experience. The controls are better: there's no longer a button to change which direction you're facing, there's a bunch of weapons to choose from, and you no longer have to sit around waiting for your rescued guys to slowly and individually disembark when you fetch them back to base.

 

The biggest difference is that Air Rescue has significantly more complex stage design than Choplifter. Which you'd expect, with there being a decade bewteen their respective release dates. Right from the first stage, you've got more interesting fields of engagement than Choplifter's flat battlefields. The first stage is a theme park that's been taken over by terrorists, then you're rescuing people from a burning building, a commercial airport, some sinking cruise ships, and some kind of giant underground facility. They all have their own unique feel and hazards, and it doesn't just feel like they're a bunch of hitboxes arranged into different shapes.

 

There is one problem, though. Every stage has terrorists shooting at you, and I guess all of the various disasters were caused by them too? I don't think the game needed that, to be honest. The disasters could just have been disasters, and danger could have been added through gradual escalation of the disasters: boats sinking with civilians still on them, explosions in the burning building, and so on. Maybe all this stuff would have been a little out of reach for the Master System? The game does look great generally, and it was ancient hardware in 1992, so it's likely they were already pushing it as hard as it could go? Still, the constant presence of the terrorists feels a little silly, and I think it would have been better to keep them as a final stage thing. Like "you saved people from passive disasters, but now you have to rescue them from an actively hostile threat!", you know?

 

Despite its shortcomings, I've enjoyed playing Air Rescue. It's a decent enough implementation of a classic concept. It's nothing special or life-changing or anything, but it's not bad, either. It is pretty unforgiving, though, so be prepared to have a little patience when you first start playing.