AEW Fight Forever

When All Elite Wrestling (AEW) launched in 2019, its main goal was to bring back traditional professional wrestling, providing an alternative to WWE’s monopoly. As such, AEW's in-ring product focused more upon athleticism and physicality than the story and character-driven “entertainment” offered by the dominant yet creatively stagnant WWE. Moreover, AEW sought to be internationally informed, welcoming a diverse array of styles and cultures from Mexico, Japan, and the various wrestling “territories” of the United States. As of 2023, AEW has succeeded in all of the above-mentioned aims.

From its very inception, there was talk of an inevitable AEW video game. In accordance with the company's founding philosophy, this game would move away from the sclerosis and the stagnation of the yearly WWE 2K games. Way back in 2019, AEW headliner Kenny Omega stated his desire to see the prospective game follow after AKI's WWF No Mercy, the 2000 N64 classic that has gone unrivaled in terms of playability and fun factor throughout the two-plus decades since its release.

Now, after four years of tantalizing teasers and deflating delays, not to mention an agonizingly slow trickle of game-related information and a heap of speculation (see, for instance, this blog's "preview" from four years ago), AEW Fight Forever has finally been released. And it is worth the wait. True to the spirit of All Elite Wrestling, Fight Forever sticks to a multifaceted approach and successfully draws the good from a number of notable wrestling video games.

Fight Forever vs. No Mercy

The most burning question among video game wrestling fans is obvious: does Fight Forever play like WWF No Mercy? The answer is, for the most part, yes. No Mercy and other AKI-made N64 wrestling games such as WCW/NWO Revenge (1998) and the oft-imported Japanese classic Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (2000) are distinguished by their weak and strong grapple system. Weak grapples are performed by tapping A and then keying in a minor hold or strike to wear down the opponent. Strong grapples are performed by holding A and then keying in a more devastating maneuver to set-up the opponent for the finishing blow. Finishers become available when a wrestler's “spirit meter” reaches full charge, and this allows for a fleeting window of time in which said wrestler can initiate a strong grapple and then tap the analog stick, setting in motion a truly devastating move. 

This is, effectively, the system in Fight Forever. Weak and strong grapples correspond respectively to tapping and holding the main action button and then keying in a hold or a grapple-based strike. Fight Forever also utilizes a spirit meter. When this meter maxes out, specials are then executed in familiar fashion via strong grapple and a flick of the right analog stick. This process feels virtually spot-on when compared to the AKI N64 originals (which this reviewer was playing mere hours before firing up Fight Forever). In addition, “signature” moves have been added, serving as the precursor to specials. They are executed by pressing the D-Pad when the spirit meter is flashing “signature” just before full-on “special” status begins. 

With these welcome similarities to the AKI games, there also come differences. In Fight Forever, most specials and signatures occur from a front-grapple or, barring that, are turnbuckle activated. That is to say, there aren't really specials from positions like back-grapples and ground grapples, at least not like in the N64 AKI games, where every grapple situation opened up an opportunity for a special move when the spirit meter was maxed out. In Fight Forever, equipping multiple specials is a skill assigned to particular wrestlers, and the creation suite (see below) allows you to endow your create-a-character with this ability.

Also, standing strikes are now covered by two buttons, one for punches and one for kicks. This differs from the one-button strike system in the N64 AKI games, where tapping and holding the strike button corresponded to weak and strong strikes, which could be either punches or kicks. This change is appreciated.

On the whole, AEW Fight Forever is best described as No Mercy-adjacent. It feels like a veritable approximation of what the AKI games might have become had they continuously evolved from No Mercy in 2000 through to the present. Though many wrestling titles have tried to emulate the AKI games, this one does it the most effectively. For comparison, Fight Forever feels more like No Mercy than Def Jam Vendetta (wherein rap artists fought with a version of the AKI engine souped-up for the Gamecube and PlayStation 2). Fans of the AKI titles will find the timing almost precisely in tune with their beloved classics, even though the animations are, admittedly, somewhat quicker. The more rapid animations give the game a WWE Here Comes the Pain vibe, but this isn't a bad thing, as many fans consider that title the silver medal among wrestling games behind No Mercy’s gold standard. Whatever game you prefer, you'll approve of Fight Forever.

An Anything Goes Aesthetic

Fight Forever is also reminiscent of another wrestling game, and for some readers, this may come out of left-field. Yet undeniably, Fight Forever has something of a Wrestling Empire quality to it. Wrestling Empire is, for those who don't know, an independently built game authored by one man, the incomparable M. Dickie. Wrestling Empire delivers a so-bad-it's-good experience on account of a very fluid grappling system and madcap presentation, with exploding props and ridiculous arenas such as bathrooms and airplanes. Every match is a free-wheeling extravaganza, and Fight Forever has a bit of this feeling. Indeed, Fight Forever offers an exploding barbed-wire death-match option, which, as you might imagine, gets crazy in a hurry. Blood spills liberally. In no-DQ matches, you can hurl literal bombs at people, which explode in the ring. You can also grab a skateboard and go skating around the arena, doing ollies over felled opponents. 

Perhaps most progressively, Fight Forever allows players to put male wrestlers into competition against female wrestlers, a feature that hasn't been in a WWE game for nearly two decades. While WWE has opted for a sort of prudery in the matter of male/female in-ring interactions, Fight Forever lavishes in intergender action. For example, the game inserts women randomly among the entrants in Casino Battle Royale matches, amping up the arcadey, anything-goes feel. All told, once you get men and women facing off in barbed-wire matches with blood all over the canvas and explosions happening left and right, Fight Forever starts to feel like Wrestling Empire, but with a far better game-play system.

Customization

From the AKI-era onward, robust customization options have been a must in wrestling games. While nobody expected Fight Forever's creation suite to meet the standard of 2K23, which has evolved over two decades, the create-a-wrestler mode is still highly serviceable. In a matter of minutes, you can fashion a unique and visually arresting character with a compelling entrance.

However, the day-one iteration of Fight Forever doesn’t offer a lot of opportunity for fine-tuning with regard to facial features and body morphing, and so creators looking to make detailed versions of wrestlers from other eras and promotions will face considerable difficulties. On top of that, the creation suite has strange quirks. You can, for instance, have your character wear a T-shirt to the ring, but he/she/they can't wear it during the actual match. T-shirts are standard fare among death-match wrestlers worldwide, so a creator is limited then, when they want to make, say, a Nick Gage or even a Kevin Owens. 

Additionally, while the move-set editor has an abundance of maneuvers available to choose from, particularly the innovated signatures of AEW stars, it still feels like there's a paucity of moves in the game. To Fight Forever’s credit, there are plenty of variations of basic wrestling moves, but this seems to make up the bulk of the move-list at the expense of more esoteric holds. While Fight Forever’s move-list will not leave you hurting like the anemic offerings in Arcade Action Wrestling, the AEW title does not pack nearly the amount of moves as in 2K or Fire Pro Wrestling W (the latter of which benefits enduringly from its “Move Craft” feature).

A Matter of Consistency

If this reviewer has one true gripe with Fight Forever, it’s minor, and it involves the character models. Though the graphics have a generally agreeable look, the character designs display inconsistencies. While wrestlers like Penta El Zero Miedo and Jon Moxley look photorealistic, Kenny Omega appears very arcadey and almost kittenish, for lack of a better word. In real life, Omega is an agile heavyweight. But in Fight Forever, the impressive thicknesses in Omega’s frame, particularly in his upper torso and thighs, have been streamlined into a litheness. His Fight Forever representation gives the impression of being like unto a puppy-dog version of the real man. That said, the slightly uneven graphical style doesn’t detract at all from the fantastic gameplay.

Conclusion

Altogether, AEW Fight Forever marks a must-buy for the video-game wrestling fan, as it draws a plethora (to borrow Taz’s favorite word) of excellent elements from many memorable grappling games. 

Some reviewers have compared Fight Forever unfavorably to WWE 2K23, saying that the AEW game simply can’t compete with the WWE juggernaut. To those reviewers, this reviewer says that Fight Forever doesn’t have to compete with 2K. If the 2K games are, say, Grand Theft Auto, then AEW is akin to Saint’s Row. It’s an alternative take on a genre that contains its own uniquely appealing look and feel. In real life, AEW offers wrestling and WWE offers “sports entertainment”; in the video game world, WWE provides a “simulation” of “sports entertainment” and AEW delivers wrestling action that’s actually entertaining to play. WWE 2K23 is deeper, yes, but it’s also convoluted and alienating to the uninitiated. Fight Forever, by contrast, has achieved its goal of providing an accessible video game wrestling experience on-par with the classic AKI games, and that is no small accomplishment. 

Many wrestling games (most notably the reprehensible TNA Impact!) have attempted to recapture the No Mercy and Revenge experience, but every single one has missed the mark. AEW Fight Forever has hit near the center of the No Mercy dartboard, and it has added to the AKI experience in the process. This makes it necessary playing not only for the wrestling fan, but also for the non-fan. More than a few people who otherwise detest wrestling will enjoy Fight Forever’s pick-up-and-play style, which is far less involved than WWE 2K23. Just as the AKI games brought non-fans toward wrestling in the late 90s and early 2000s, Fight Forever might be able to do the same in 2023.

AEW Wrestling (Preview)

Any wrestling promotion worth its salt needs a video game, and the higher ups at All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the newborn potential competitor to the heretofore hegemonic WWE, seem to apprehend this. Evidently, no one understands this better than Kenny Omega, AEW's sine qua non who is widely renowned for his transcendent in-ring performances. Omega has not only flagged a good video game as a necessary part of AEW’s future, but he has also publicly stated that this hypothetical game should be built around the legendary AKI gameplay system.

This only further confirms Omega's aesthetic discernment. The AKI engine, with its grappling system based on weak and strong tie-ups, is widely regarded as the benchmark of videogame wrestling schemas. Though it relies on button-mashing, to some degree, and may not have the precision of Fire Pro Wrestling's timing-based system, the AKI mechanic is considerably easier to pick up and play. Flagship AKI N64 titles like WCW/NWO Revenge (1998) and WWF No Mercy (2000), as well as the Japan-only Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (2000), are still being played at present, holding their own against—and even outperforming—contemporary wrestling video games. 

That said, the AKI engine has not appeared in full force in nearly two decades, the 2000 release WWF No Mercy representing the last true iteration of the schema. Modified versions of the AKI system appear in Def Jam Vendetta (2003), Ultimate Muscle: Legends vs. New Generation (2003), and (to some degree) WrestleMania XIX (2003), but these games were little consolation for diehards, who have been consistently clamoring for a proper AKI sequel throughout the entirety of the twenty-first century. Said diehards have even kept afloat a dedicated modding community, which has produced many a buggy bootleg classic, including WCW Feel the Bang.

The AKI engine would be a perfect fit for AEW, as the company has predicated itself upon pleasing precisely this kind of diehard fan. With that being said, the system is not too involved so as to alienate newcomers, and thereby strikes a crucial balance between the uninspired WWE 2K games and the hardcore, sprite-based Fire Pro. As this sort of happy medium (and high medium at that), the engine can also help AEW court non-wrestling fans who might otherwise dismiss "entertainment" of WWE’s ilk. The AKI engine's minimal learning curve made the games eminently playable, and actually brought people to wrestling. Even wrestling skeptics couldn't deny the appeal of four-player AKI battles royal. As such, an AKI game could be an effective means by which AEW can create positive associations with its product and expand its fan-base, generating enthusiasts wholly unsullied by WWE.

A number of difficulties stand in the way of AEW's AKI game, however. First off, there is the fact that AKI doesn't exist anymore. Rather, it has rebranded itself syn Sophia, and mostly just releases fashion games for portable systems. Secondly, were AEW to convince syn Sophia to resurrect its wrestling engine, it remains to be seen how a schema so closely tied to the N64’s controller and graphical style will translate to the current generation. Graphics were never the main appeal of AKI grappling games (they rarely are for good wrestling titles), and the animations, in their purest form, might not satisfy the ragdoll-obsessed visual sensibilities of current-generation gamers. That said, an AEW game could be done up retro-styled with N64-era visuals, and this would still make for a highly appealing download. 

No Mercy, Revenge and Virtual Pro 2 quintessentially encapsulated peak historical junctures for the WWF, WCW, and All-Japan promotions, respectively, saving for posterity little dispatches from an era when wrestling was achieving its full potential. Can an AKI-styled game help hoist AEW to the pinnacle of professional wrestling? The question will remain unanswered for a while, as an AEW game by any company is at minimum two years away. And if AEW cannot compete with the WWE's lackluster but nonetheless entrenched product, the promotion itself might not even be around in two years.

WCW/NWO Revenge

From 1996 to mid-1998, Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was the preeminent sports entertainment company in North America. For this brief period, WCW surpassed even Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as WWE), which had to that point been to pro wrestling what Kleenex is to tissue paper. The Atlanta-based WCW proved that its southern-inflected style of wrestling could hold its own on a national and even worldwide stage, and for a two year period, its flagship program Nitro outpaced WWF’s Monday Night Raw in ratings. Curiously enough, WCW’s success was largely predicated on WWF aesthetic elements. For instance, the NWO, a dissenting faction within WCW around which a number of ratings-friendly storylines developed, consisted for the most part of ex-WWF stars. These included Scott Hall (nee Razor Ramon), Kevin Nash (nee Diesel), and, most extraordinarily, an evil version of Hulk Hogan, the man who had, in his benevolent 80s iteration, defined the WWF. All of these personages assumed characters identical or in counterpoint to their WWF iterations, and WCW reaped the profits, as many fans naively thought, at least for a time, that the WWF was legitimately invading WCW.

But despite these liberal appropriations, WCW still had its own unique aesthetic, and it is in part for this reason that WCW video games from 1997 and 1998 also rated better than those of the WWF. WWF released the multiplatform offerings Raw is War (1998) and Attitude (1999) through license-loving publisher Acclaim, with gameplay based on button commands resembling those of versus fighters. Down-forwarding did little to capture the ebb and flow of the grappling and counter-grappling around which pro wrestling is structured, and while Acclaim’s WWF games had good graphics, they played choppily. WCW, by contrast, borrowed its engine from AKI’s Virtual Pro Wrestling 64, one of the premiere wrestling games from Japan. This system, based on weak and strong grapples, captured the balletic fluidity of professional wrestling, and made for a game that was highly playable, even for the wrestling non-enthusiast. The first game to fully utilize this engine stateside, 1997’s WCW vs. NWO World Tour for the N64, played exquisitely, though it suffered from blocky, clip-happy graphics and an overly Japanese feel. Many of the characters were renamed wrestlers from Japanese promotions like FMW.  This was a boon for the hard-core puroresu fan (who could now see FMW legend Hayabusa take on Sting), though it came at the expense of the WCW characters, who also feel like reskins of Japanese guys, with inauthentic looks and move-sets. Chris Benoit, for instance, comes off as a generic jobber. Ric Flair looks less like the Nature Boy we know and love and more like Donald Trump in a Speedo. Scott Hall’s trademark Outsider’s Edge, meanwhile, finishes in a sit-out pin, which wrestling fans will recognize immediately as anathema. WCW/NWO Revenge, its 1998 sequel, rectified these issues, depicting the WCW aesthetic in fine form.

WCW/NWO Revenge embodies everything WCW was at its peak. On account of having deep-pocketed Ted Turner as its owner, WCW didn’t have to spare any expenses on its confines, and so its sets were expansive, colorful and multifarious in a way that the relatively claustrophobic WWF environs were not. Available from the outset in Revenge is the galvanized metal set from Monday Nitro, as well as the sets from WCW’s themed pay-per-views. These include the summery Bash at the Beach set, complete with a wharf-like boardwalk leading to the ring, and the October staple Halloween Havoc, with its eerie green aura and headstones at the top of the entryway. Along with these sets, you also get over-elaborate costumes to match. While late 80s and early 90s WWF set the bar for outlandish gimmick characters, WCW took this even farther all throughout the duration of the 90s. Thus, Revenge contains the pinnacle (or perhaps the nadir) of these experiments—namely Glacier and Mortis, part of an attempt on WCW’s part to facsimile the Mortal Kombat vibe and transfer it to a WCW ring. Glacier, a purported martial arts expert, is basically an unmasked Sub-Zero who looks not unlike Vanilla Ice, and Mortis, meanwhile, is a zombie-styled striker with a skull mask of near-Tom Savini quality. To fit with this fighting game feel, Revenge adds a combo system whereby certain grapple commands initiate an opportunity to chain together strikes, a feature which would appear in the Japanese release Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 but would not carry forward to future American AKI wrestling games.

La Parka vs. Mortis: WCW loved its skeleton men.

Beyond these superficialities, you also get an expansive roster of WCW and NWO talent, which remains the most enduring appeal of this game. This lineup includes both iterations of the NWO, the Hogan-led black-and-white and the Nash-led red-and-black (a.k.a. the Wolfpac). You also get WCW’s truly original success stories, most notably the singular Goldberg, known for his inordinately long unbeaten streak which led him to the WCW World Title and, at the time of the game’s release, was still two months from its end. As could be expected, he’s virtually unbeatable in this game. WCW was also unique in its championing of cruiserweight talent, providing ample TV time to showcase Mexican, Japanese and American light heavyweights. Luchadores like Rey Mysterio, Psychosis, Juventud Guerrera, and the chair-wielding, skeleton-masked La Parka are all on the cartridge, allowing the retro gamer to revisit these fast-paced, acrobatic matches that set apart WCW’s skill-based pro wrestling from WWF’s story-based sports entertainment. Among other WCW-built superstars available in the game are the incomparable Sting (in face-paint styled after Brandon Lee in The Crow) and the lovable yogi-to-be Diamond Dallas Page (along with his valet/yogini Kimberly).

The laundry-list of talent doesn’t end there. If an appearance in an AKI wrestling games is taken as the standard of millennial-era wrestling celebrity, then there are more than a few who make their only such appearance Revenge. These include beloved multi-time WCW champion Booker T and his Harlem Heat tag partner/brother Stevie Ray, grungy former ECW champion Raven and his "Flock" of gothic tagalongs, 80s WWF mainstay motor-mouth Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Canadian legend Bret Hart. You even get classically insipid gimmick characters like the Disco Inferno. For many of these legends (or legendary flops), Revenge represents their most playable video game rendering. Undeniably, WCW had loads of talent, and though its booking staff may have under-utilized many of the above names, Revenge offers gamers the opportunity to match them up in dream bouts WCW’s bookers apparently never could have imagined.

Ultimately, massive mismanagement proved to be the demise of WCW. As WWF grew more compelling with McMahon intensifying his futile assaults on the irrepressible Steve Austin, WCW became more madcap and aimless, and lost much of its talent base to its rival. Eventually, even AKI switched over to the WWF, and soon it was WWF talent benefitting from that fluid, grapple-based engine. EA quickly swooped up the WCW license, only to make the abysmal WCW Mayhem and its nigh unplayable sequel WCW Backstage Assault. Could this have been another factor in WCW’s demise? Truth be told, more than a few gamers were drawn to WWF and WCW through the games, and became wrestling fans on that account. That WWF had the pick-up-and-play AKI grappling system at the core of WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy may very well have facilitated a smooth transition into wrestling fandom for some. Either way, by the start of 2001, wrestling fans had sided with the WWF, and had tuned out WCW. In March of 2001, WCW folded, bought out by none other than Vince McMahon.

In its interactive capacity, a video game is, to some extent, a text that is never finished. WCW Revenge, then, stands as a living record of World Championship Wrestling. The game epitomizes a crucial historical moment in a promotion that was soon to die out. In that sense, this game is an artifact of a lost institution, an enduring landmark of a unique professional wrestling micro-culture. Unlike, say, a text from an ancient civilization, we can actually interact with this record—even alter it, in fact, and update it, to some extent, given the costume and name editor—at least in the realm of play. If nothing else, WCW was a lot of possibilities, many of which didn’t go anywhere. Revenge retains these possibilities for posterity, and so is chock-full of what-ifs which you can realize every time you fire up the game. For this reason, your correspondent recommends you pick up a copy of WCW Revenge if you haven’t already. And if you already do own a copy, pick up a second. On one cartridge, update the names and costumes; on the other, keep the names and costumes at their default setting. This way, you can enjoy WCW for everything it was at its pinnacle, and also for everything its many mainstays became.

Fire Pro Wrestling W

Fire Pro Wrestling W is the finest wrestling video game ever made. Some may make the case that AKI's Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 (or its North American equivalents, most notably WWF No Mercy) should hold that title, and others may vainly plead that WWE '13 or the later analog-grappling entries in the Smackdown vs. Raw series are contenders, but the games in those series are handily eclipsed by the precise gameplay and thoroughgoing customization that the Fire Pro series offers. Spike Chunsoft's Fire Pro Wrestling World (hereafter FPW) surpasses 2007's Fire Pro Wrestling Returns (hereafter FPR) in both control and creation options, and so it deserves to assume the mantle of wrestling's G.O.A.T.

The timing-based gameplay of the Fire Pro series, while tough to pick up and play, has always allowed for more meticulous match development than AKI's intuitive albeit mash-heavy weak/strong grappling system and the WWE 2K series’ ever-gimmicky approach, which annually reduces a wrestling match to a concatenation of mini-games. Pulling off a move successfully is never an accident in Fire Pro, nor does it feel like a boon born out of blunt-force button-mashing skills. This tried-and-true gameplay holds up in FPW, which proceeds even more seamlessly than in FPR. And don't let the world 'wrestling' in its title sell the game short: FPW, like its predecessors, contains solid MMA and kickboxing modes (along with respective ground-grappling and clinching systems), taking the game well beyond pro wrestling and into the sphere of virtually any kind of fight you can imagine. From boxing to street-fighting, you can do it all in style in FPW. Hell, FPW even has gravity-defying anime-styled moves inspired by Ultimate Muscle, if that suits your fancy.

Fire Pro Wrestling World boasts sharper, sleeker graphics. Note the Bam Bam Bigelow 

lookalike in the front row of the audience. Note also the bored girlfriend seated behind him.

Moreover, Fire Pro has always outpaced the aforementioned wrestling series with regard to its create-a-wrestler feature. This is truly saying something, given the admirable level of customization in the 2K and AKI games. FPW takes creation even further. Instead of just 2 or 3 layers of accessorizing per body part as per FPR, there are now as many as 9 in FPW. The permutations and combinations are practically limitless. There are far more parts available, too, including skirts and body hair, the former allowing you to make your girlish girl that much girlier, the latter making your man's man that much more masculine. Put the two together and you might just make a Scotsman. There are also dozens of new moves, including the pole-shift flowsion, Bray Wyatt's Sister Abigail and a more accurate rendering of John Cena’s Attitude Adjustment. Whatever your creative goals, in FPW you can fashion any wrestler from any era and give him or her an ultraprecise moveset, even detailing in head-bending depth the timing and frequency of move usage via the game's logic editor. Now you can make a spot-on Cena, spamming AA attempts in the late stages of his matches, something the licensed WWE games still cannot (or perhaps will not) do with much exactitude. Also, the process of searching through the thousands of moves is much more streamlined than in previous games, as FPW’s edit mode now sorts maneuvers by type. The new moves and outfit options alone make FPW worth buying, as does all the available save space afforded by the PS4. While FPR had a generous 500 slots for custom characters, the PS4's hard-drive means there really is no conceivable limit to the number of wrestlers, cage-fighters and kickboxers you can create. Moreover, the online network allows you to share creations with the most effete wrestling aficionados around the world (and then have them harshly judged thereby).

FPW also has the benefit of being licensed by the top promotion on the planet today, New Japan Pro Wrestling. Sorry WWE diehards, but New Japan has equal or greater talent, and unlike Vince McMahon's booking staff, it actually uses its roster to its fullest potential. The masters of New Japan's hard-hitting “strong style”—that is, strike-heavy wrestling with kicks and slaps that land harder and realer than in any other squared-circle worldwide—are all here. You may be tempted to dismiss names like Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega, but if so, you are willfully impoverishing your wrestling fandom. These wrestlers, in their mastery of the strong style, consistently put a compelling, physically intensive product in the ring, giving NJPW a “big-fight feel” that WWE can barely muster for a WrestleMania main-event. The new "Fighting Road" mode, a single-player campaign in which wrestlers climb their way up the ranks of NJPW, offers gamers a taste of this intensity. This mode should also appeal to traditionalist video game fans, who may have been disappointed by the admirable but exceedingly niche "Match Maker" mode from FPR, which simulated working as a pro wrestling booker rather than as a pro-wrestler proper.

Even if FPW is the best wrestling game ever, it is still not perfect. Many of the minor issues of FPR and other entries in the series remain unsolved in the Day One version of FPW. There is still, for example, no fighting outside the ring in the landmine death match, a feature that was enabled in the Japan-only Dreamcast release Fire Pro Wrestling Z but conspicuously absent in FPR. Moreover, there is still no falls-count-anywhere option, which could previously be found in Fire Pro Wrestling for the Gameboy Advance. These sorts of exclusions are inconsequential, though, and will only irk hardcore wrestling pedants. Perhaps more seriously, not a lot has been added in terms of bells and whistles, at least out of the Day One box. To the contrary, some features have actually been lost. FPW has fewer background songs, rings, and venues than FPR. The venues that have returned have changed, and not always for the better. The "Dojo", for instance, is just an unpeopled hall-of-mirrors matrix of wrestling rings, quite unlike the more intimate warehouse-style workout room bearing the same name in FPR. More strikingly, there are only two federations available from the outset: the licensed NJPW, of course, as well as Spike's fictional standby SWA, the wrestlers of which are half-baked, uber-generic characters such as the Maple-leaf masked "Canadian Sensation" Allen Hawkins. This is a marked change from FPR, which featured near-identical stand-ins for wrestlers from every major Japanese promotion, as well as some American talent, too. While the "Canadian Sensation" has signature moves borrowed from famous countrymen, including the Sharpshooter and the Crippler Crossface, he's still no Blood Love, FPR's none-too-subtle Bret Hart clone. Correspondingly, FPW only offers two referees to start with: NJPW legend Red Shoes Unno and some dude by the name of "Mr. Judgement". The paucity of rings, wrestlers and refs is cosmetic, though, and can be rectified in due time by the player's creativity.

There is perhaps no cosmetic issue more enduring for the Fire Pro series than its visuals. Some will stridently lament FPW’s graphics, a perennial bugbear for the series' detractors. Sure, the characters are sprite-based and not polygonal, but in FPW, the classic models benefit from the PS4's HD, which has made them less pixelated and therefore much snazzier. The NJPW guys look particularly spiffy, capturing the essence of their real-life strong-style equivalents in a workable, cartoonish form. To those people for whom graphics remain a nagging concern, your correspondent would suggest that you just might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater here, and in the process denying yourself the best experience of wrestling available in video gaming. And honestly, are the bland, lifeless graphics from the 2K WWE series preferable? At least the Fire Pro guys are well-drawn.

Although FPW's graphical style, like its features, may be sparse, the Fire Pro series is now sleeker than ever before. This slick, streamlined Fire Pro is ready to carry the torch of video game pro wrestling well into the next decade, until we are graced with a PS6 version. With FPW, the Fire Pro series retains the title of Best Wrestling Game, primarily because it empowers you to make it the best wrestling game ever, and to keep improving it with the evolution of not only wrestling, but of the imagination itself.