Super Fire Pro Wrestling (1991) - Questions

Hello and welcome to the Critical Club forums. It's always nice to see new members bringing up the older Fire Pro titles here.

The original Super Fire Pro-Wrestling is certainly a tough title to start with. I'd even go as far as calling it one of the more
difficult entries in the Super Famicom installments.

For starters, the first loop of World Championship mode should be treated as the standard difficulty setting. This setting was intended
for casual players and newcomers looking for a moderate challenge. The second loop is known as hard mode, which was intended for players
looking for an extra challenge with it's higher difficulty setting.

Essentially, the second playthrough/hard mode was modeled after arcade games of yesteryear which gradually increased in difficulty.
By Final Bout, the concept of facing the exact same cast of opponents multiple times at an unforgiving difficulty setting was done away
with, and after enough complaints from other players, the difficulty of the CPU in future Fire Pro titles was drastically reduced.

When going for medium moves, you really have to weaken your opponents first. A good way to do this is to bring an opponent to their
feet and see if they have stars circling around their head. That's usually a good indication that your chances of pulling off a medium
move will be favorable.

With Hitman Saber, you can weaken opponents easily with Saber's spinning backfist (A in close range). This attack also has a high chance
of making your opponent bleed (making many opponents weaker in general). I also recommend Vader's Body Check (Y while running), as it is
considered one of his signature moves in the game.

Every character has medium moves. In fact, the BIG moves in the game (input with the A button) are just submission holds. The Medium
moves in Super Fire Pro-Wrestling contain most character's finishers.

Luckily, the games get much, much easier. If I were you, I'd start with the following titles:


Super Fire Pro-Wrestling X/ X Premium - Simply the best Fire Pro on the Super Famicom. Also a majorly-reduced difficulty setting, best graphics,
largest cast, and so on.

Easy Type - The first time ever where a Fire Pro's difficulty setting was reduced. Has all of the hidden characters unlocked as well. Only caveat is
the Edit mode was removed in this version.

Queen's Special - Great animations, large cast, and a roster inspired entirely by Joshi Wrestlers. One of the later titles in the SFC pantheon with
it's own cult following.


Also, honorable mention: Zen Nippon 2:3-4 Budokan - Not a Fire Pro title, but plays awfully close to it. Has a more arcade style, easy to pick up
and tons of fun. Many consider this the greatest Wrestling game on the SNES/Super Famicom. If you love early 90's All Japan Pro-Wrestling,
you'll love this title even more.

It wouldn't be until Final Bout (two sequels later) where BIG moves could be pulled off with the A button.

As you already mentioned, the big difference between X and X Premium is the number of save slots included for CAW's. X required
an add-on peripheral (I believe it was called the Turbo File - kind of like the precursor to the memory card). X premium has the
extra storage space already included in the game.

Gameplay-wise X Premium also features minor tweaks to Wrestlers' stats and fixes certain bugs performed by the CPU.

Additionally, X Premium was also the first Fire Pro to feature use of the X-Band accessory; an adapter that connected players to
the internet (via the player's telephone line) for online matches. Unfortunately, the service also required a (no pun intended)
premium of it's own to use, and matches were limited to just players across Japan (the internet was in it's infancy, and
X Premium wasn't legally for sale outside of Japan upon it's release).

Needless to say, I've never heard of anyone here who actually owned an X-Band to play SNES/Super Famicom games back
in the 90's; let alone playing X Premium 'online'.