Segaiden #37: The Ninja & Pro Wrestling
Added 2023-02-08 12:29:59 +0000 UTCSome of you will be happy to know that I've finally dunked on the box art of a Master System game. I mean, come on. Pro Wrestling has one of the finest "what were they thinking?" packages of all time. Of. All. Time.
However, that dunkage happens to be relevant to the bigger issue afoot in this episode, namely that of lady erasure. Sayonara, Kurumi-hime; au revoir, Dump Matsumoto: On Master System, you have been replaced by large sweaty dudes. I feel like you could quite easily draw a line between Sega of America's creative choic here and the Video Games Discourse going on this week, but that is waaaay outside my remit here (and a bit outside of my lane, if we're being honest), so instead I will simply Rod Serling it up this week and submit this pair of games For Your Consideration. Let it be a mental exercise for you, the viewer, to partake of.
Comments
Also, the WWF added a team called the Orient Express in 1990, although there's no connection. Probably just a play on all the other Express tag teams running around in the 80s (Midnight, Rock and Roll, US, Zambuie)
Sven Mascarenhas
2023-02-08 16:32:11 +0000 UTCYeah, after the Wendi Richter thing, women's wrestling was dead in the US and would basically remain so until the T&A era kicked into play in the Attitude era (amazing Jumping Bomb Angels cameo at the tail end of 1987 notwithstanding). You'd have to be out of your mind to think that a women's wrestling game would sell in 1986. Sega was right to make the switch. Dump worked in Japan because she was actually a bigger, more colourful personality than a lot of the male Japanese wrestlers of that period (AJPW in particular turned "boring stoic Japanese face" into a trope when Misawa rose to the top). Needless to say, with a landscape dominated by people like Hogan, Savage, and Flair, that lane wouldn't have been open here.
Sven Mascarenhas
2023-02-08 16:29:05 +0000 UTC
