Thankful to the Community (WARNING: gushing nostalgic post)
Aug 5, 2018 15:28:36 GMT
Senator Phillips, Tex "Chainsaw" Ferguson, and 6 more like this
Post by s1zzle on Aug 5, 2018 15:28:36 GMT
Hey Everyone,
First of all, I am sorry for this wall-of-text fluff/gush post, and I am also sorry if i put it in the wrong section.
I'm new to the community, but have been lurking and benefiting from all of your amazing Fire Pro Creations for years (or decades now), through many previous iterations of the game. This thread is literally just me gushing about Fire Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling in general, and how FPWW got me back into it all after almost 20 years. I apologize if this is cringy and out of place here, but I just wanted to share this weird little story of how Fire Pro Wrestling has impacted me in a weird way, but I am sure some of you can relate.
It starts back in 1996/1997, when I was 14 years old and was a die-hard wrestling fan that basically would eat, sleep, and breathe wrestling. If I wasn't watching an episode of RAW or Nitro, one of my many taped PPV's, then I was probably playing WCW vs. The World or WWF Warzone for playstation, or WCW vs. NWO: World Tour or WCW/NWO Revenge for n64.
I was essentially stuck with WWF and WCW back then because, being in a small town in Canada, it was difficult to get access to ECW and Japanese stuff at that time. I was raised by a single mom with health issues and 3 kids, so we were pretty broke most of the time. Tape trading was difficult because we couldn't afford costs of shipping until I had my own job a few years later. My only exposure to ECW and Japanese wrestling was watching animated gifs on a 28.8k dial-up modem. I remember, once, waiting close to 45 minutes to watch a 10 second GIF from the Sabu vs. Terry Funk "Born to be Wired" match, and it was the best 45 minutes and 10 seconds of my 14 year-old life at the time. I had this image built-up in my mind of all these hardcore guys from ECW and Japan, such as: Sabu, Hayabusa, Terry Funk, Atsuhi Onita, Mr. Pogo, Tarzan Goto, etc.
So, when I somehow came across Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium and snes9x around 1997/1998, my world changed. It blew my mind that there was a game featuring (unlicensed versions of) all of those guys and more. But, even in the mid/late 90's when home PC's and internet were becoming mainstream, my household was always a few generations behind in technology. For example: We had just got a hand-me-down x486 when most other people were upgrading their Pentium I to Pentium II with a CD Burner! When people were upgrading to cable modem or DSL, we had just upgraded from 28.8 to 56k. Point being, even SFPWXP ran like shit on my old PC and was ultimately just a tease, so I ended up having more fun browsing all of the "Fire Pro Animations" websites that people had back then, essentially living vicariously through all the fun other people were having with the game.
I used to chat with people in #FirePro or something like that on irc.alternativenet.org (my nickname was either rand0mher0 or mrsocko469), and it was a lot of those guys who were making all those animations and CAWs. I was a regular in that channel when Fire Pro Wrestling G was released. I suppose my desperation was obvious, so one guy in the channel whose nickname was "Allen" was nice enough to send me burnt copy of Fire Pro Wrestling G for playstation when it came out. Problem was, I didn't have a modded playstation. I tried the old swap trick with the wrong version of the pro action replay. Somehow, I got it to work once or twice on the day I got it but it never worked again after that - and neither did my playstation. It actually made me really sad and I used to yearn about playing Fire Pro Wrestling G. It made me hate all the other wrestling games that were released in North America, just because I couldn't play Fire Pro. At that time, I had managed to collect a decent pile of ECW and Japanese tapes, but they just made me want to play Fire Pro.
Eventually, around 2001 or 2002, my interest in wrestling dwindled for a multitude of reasons; mostly that I lost interest in the characters and storylines, plus I was starting college, had a girlfriend and active social life with people who weren't interested in wrestling. I still watched some PPV's because my dad had one of those "illegal black boxes" for cable back then, but I don't think I watched an episode of RAW or Nitro after 2002.
Time went on, and I rarely thought about wrestling with anything other than nostalgia, until about 2011. I was 28 at this point, and in my mind, wrestling had become just a part of the memories of my childhood and early teen years. Until I was living in Montreal and randomly walked into a pawn shop one night simply to escape an abrupt downpour of rain. I nonchalantly browsed the ps2 games with literally no interest in buying anything, but I was nearly knocked to my ass when I realized that I suddenly had my eyes fixed on the cover of that elusive gem from my past; Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for $9.99. I did not even know a North American version of Fire Pro Wrestling existed until it was right in front of me. Without hesitation, I bought and immediately went home to hook up my dusty old ps2. I certainly had quite a bit of fun and made up for lost time, but once again, was only able to partially experience the glory. By that time, it was exceptionally difficult to come across the appropriate ps2 peripherals required to download and transfer Edits from Fire Pro Club. Plus, it seemed like the Fire Pro community had died down quite a bit and Fire Pro Club had a lot of dead links. So, I had to rely on using online templates to manually create all of my Edits, one by one. I can't lie though, I still had a lot of fun reliving and satisfying all of that yearning from years before. I FINALLY got to fulfill my fire pro dreams, at least somewhat.
But again, interest dwindled, and my ps2 and FPWR ultimately wound up collecting dust on my shelf for years.
And then, we all heard the glorious news a while back that Fire Pro Wrestling World was coming to Steam. I bought it was soon as it became available, but somehow had a hard time getting into it. The workshop is annoying to navigate, and I became annoyed with the droves of nonsensical and ridiculous creations i would find, making it harder to browse and find awesome edits of real wrestlers. I didn't have enough patience to weed through the shit, and I had absolutely no interest in pro wrestling anymore merely because, any time I tried to watch WWE between 2003 and 2016, I was ultimately disappointed with what I was watching. It was my own fault though, because I have been WAY too hung-up on the attitude era, and sort of refused to let it go. Because of that, there were numerous times during that period that I did try to watch WWE again just to see what's happening, but I just couldn't get into the product. It seemed like it was geared for an audience far younger than me, and I just couldn't get into it - which did make me kind of sad. I wanted to enjoy it but felt like WWE wasn't providing a good enough product at the time, or at least it wasn't good for me.
But something changed recently. One day recently, I randomly started playing FPWW out of mere boredom and decided to force myself to find a bunch of good edits from the attitude era and prior, and set up some classic matches in classic rings and whatnot. In my searches, I found that we seem to, once again, have a thriving Fire Pro community, which made it much easier to find what I needed.
I was having so much fun with FPWW and my classic matches that it made me feel nostalgic and want to watch a bunch of the classic stuff. I had heard previously that you can watch it all in the vault on the WWE Network, so I signed-up and started watching a bunch of old stuff. Thinking back to when I was that 14 year-old wrestling fan with no money or access to watch ECW TV or PPV's, now I could watch it all. And it lit something inside me. I blew through all the classic WWF/WCW stuff that I had been longing to see again, all the old ECW stuff of which I had still only seen clips. I started chatting with people on iRC and discord who referred me to check out NXT, and I was blown the hell away. As someone who has not watched wrestling for over 15 years, something about NXT is just incredible. It seems to encapsulate that gritty old ECW vibe but mix it with solid in-ring work akin to AJPW/NJPW and a mix of really old-school toughness rather than hardcore over-booking. I have been absolutely amazed, and working through the catalog of NXT TV and Takeover events and loving the shit out of it. This has lead to me spending a ridiculous amount of time reliving all of the glory my 14 year-old self longed for when I didn't have the resources, re-creating all these promotions in FPWW, and watching awesome stuff on the network constantly.
Long story short, I am having a ton of fun with my journey back into being a Pro Wrestling fan, reconnecting with that 14 year-old version of myself that used to have SO much fun with all of this stuff 20 years ago. And I wouldn't be having so much fun with it right now it wasn't for all the creations provided by this community. Some of you create some truly awesome edits that are as close to real-life as possible within a game engine, and it just blows my mind. Thank you all for your contributions. And a special shout-out to those of you who have been the back bone of the fire pro club since the beginning. I keep seeing nicknames on Critical Club that I remember from the IRC Chat, Fire Pro Club, and those Fire Pro Animation sites in the 90's. Thank you for keeping it alive.
It also seems as though I'm lucky and am getting back into wrestling at the right time. I thought Extreme Rules 2018 was a quite good show, and from what I have seen from all of the amazing talent in NXT over the last year or so, the industry is going in a great direction right now. This was basically a very long way of saying, basically; I am excited to even be excited that, for the first time in over 15 years, I have tuned into Pro Wrestling and became excited rather than disappointed.
First of all, I am sorry for this wall-of-text fluff/gush post, and I am also sorry if i put it in the wrong section.
I'm new to the community, but have been lurking and benefiting from all of your amazing Fire Pro Creations for years (or decades now), through many previous iterations of the game. This thread is literally just me gushing about Fire Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling in general, and how FPWW got me back into it all after almost 20 years. I apologize if this is cringy and out of place here, but I just wanted to share this weird little story of how Fire Pro Wrestling has impacted me in a weird way, but I am sure some of you can relate.
It starts back in 1996/1997, when I was 14 years old and was a die-hard wrestling fan that basically would eat, sleep, and breathe wrestling. If I wasn't watching an episode of RAW or Nitro, one of my many taped PPV's, then I was probably playing WCW vs. The World or WWF Warzone for playstation, or WCW vs. NWO: World Tour or WCW/NWO Revenge for n64.
I was essentially stuck with WWF and WCW back then because, being in a small town in Canada, it was difficult to get access to ECW and Japanese stuff at that time. I was raised by a single mom with health issues and 3 kids, so we were pretty broke most of the time. Tape trading was difficult because we couldn't afford costs of shipping until I had my own job a few years later. My only exposure to ECW and Japanese wrestling was watching animated gifs on a 28.8k dial-up modem. I remember, once, waiting close to 45 minutes to watch a 10 second GIF from the Sabu vs. Terry Funk "Born to be Wired" match, and it was the best 45 minutes and 10 seconds of my 14 year-old life at the time. I had this image built-up in my mind of all these hardcore guys from ECW and Japan, such as: Sabu, Hayabusa, Terry Funk, Atsuhi Onita, Mr. Pogo, Tarzan Goto, etc.
So, when I somehow came across Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium and snes9x around 1997/1998, my world changed. It blew my mind that there was a game featuring (unlicensed versions of) all of those guys and more. But, even in the mid/late 90's when home PC's and internet were becoming mainstream, my household was always a few generations behind in technology. For example: We had just got a hand-me-down x486 when most other people were upgrading their Pentium I to Pentium II with a CD Burner! When people were upgrading to cable modem or DSL, we had just upgraded from 28.8 to 56k. Point being, even SFPWXP ran like shit on my old PC and was ultimately just a tease, so I ended up having more fun browsing all of the "Fire Pro Animations" websites that people had back then, essentially living vicariously through all the fun other people were having with the game.
I used to chat with people in #FirePro or something like that on irc.alternativenet.org (my nickname was either rand0mher0 or mrsocko469), and it was a lot of those guys who were making all those animations and CAWs. I was a regular in that channel when Fire Pro Wrestling G was released. I suppose my desperation was obvious, so one guy in the channel whose nickname was "Allen" was nice enough to send me burnt copy of Fire Pro Wrestling G for playstation when it came out. Problem was, I didn't have a modded playstation. I tried the old swap trick with the wrong version of the pro action replay. Somehow, I got it to work once or twice on the day I got it but it never worked again after that - and neither did my playstation. It actually made me really sad and I used to yearn about playing Fire Pro Wrestling G. It made me hate all the other wrestling games that were released in North America, just because I couldn't play Fire Pro. At that time, I had managed to collect a decent pile of ECW and Japanese tapes, but they just made me want to play Fire Pro.
Eventually, around 2001 or 2002, my interest in wrestling dwindled for a multitude of reasons; mostly that I lost interest in the characters and storylines, plus I was starting college, had a girlfriend and active social life with people who weren't interested in wrestling. I still watched some PPV's because my dad had one of those "illegal black boxes" for cable back then, but I don't think I watched an episode of RAW or Nitro after 2002.
Time went on, and I rarely thought about wrestling with anything other than nostalgia, until about 2011. I was 28 at this point, and in my mind, wrestling had become just a part of the memories of my childhood and early teen years. Until I was living in Montreal and randomly walked into a pawn shop one night simply to escape an abrupt downpour of rain. I nonchalantly browsed the ps2 games with literally no interest in buying anything, but I was nearly knocked to my ass when I realized that I suddenly had my eyes fixed on the cover of that elusive gem from my past; Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for $9.99. I did not even know a North American version of Fire Pro Wrestling existed until it was right in front of me. Without hesitation, I bought and immediately went home to hook up my dusty old ps2. I certainly had quite a bit of fun and made up for lost time, but once again, was only able to partially experience the glory. By that time, it was exceptionally difficult to come across the appropriate ps2 peripherals required to download and transfer Edits from Fire Pro Club. Plus, it seemed like the Fire Pro community had died down quite a bit and Fire Pro Club had a lot of dead links. So, I had to rely on using online templates to manually create all of my Edits, one by one. I can't lie though, I still had a lot of fun reliving and satisfying all of that yearning from years before. I FINALLY got to fulfill my fire pro dreams, at least somewhat.
But again, interest dwindled, and my ps2 and FPWR ultimately wound up collecting dust on my shelf for years.
And then, we all heard the glorious news a while back that Fire Pro Wrestling World was coming to Steam. I bought it was soon as it became available, but somehow had a hard time getting into it. The workshop is annoying to navigate, and I became annoyed with the droves of nonsensical and ridiculous creations i would find, making it harder to browse and find awesome edits of real wrestlers. I didn't have enough patience to weed through the shit, and I had absolutely no interest in pro wrestling anymore merely because, any time I tried to watch WWE between 2003 and 2016, I was ultimately disappointed with what I was watching. It was my own fault though, because I have been WAY too hung-up on the attitude era, and sort of refused to let it go. Because of that, there were numerous times during that period that I did try to watch WWE again just to see what's happening, but I just couldn't get into the product. It seemed like it was geared for an audience far younger than me, and I just couldn't get into it - which did make me kind of sad. I wanted to enjoy it but felt like WWE wasn't providing a good enough product at the time, or at least it wasn't good for me.
But something changed recently. One day recently, I randomly started playing FPWW out of mere boredom and decided to force myself to find a bunch of good edits from the attitude era and prior, and set up some classic matches in classic rings and whatnot. In my searches, I found that we seem to, once again, have a thriving Fire Pro community, which made it much easier to find what I needed.
I was having so much fun with FPWW and my classic matches that it made me feel nostalgic and want to watch a bunch of the classic stuff. I had heard previously that you can watch it all in the vault on the WWE Network, so I signed-up and started watching a bunch of old stuff. Thinking back to when I was that 14 year-old wrestling fan with no money or access to watch ECW TV or PPV's, now I could watch it all. And it lit something inside me. I blew through all the classic WWF/WCW stuff that I had been longing to see again, all the old ECW stuff of which I had still only seen clips. I started chatting with people on iRC and discord who referred me to check out NXT, and I was blown the hell away. As someone who has not watched wrestling for over 15 years, something about NXT is just incredible. It seems to encapsulate that gritty old ECW vibe but mix it with solid in-ring work akin to AJPW/NJPW and a mix of really old-school toughness rather than hardcore over-booking. I have been absolutely amazed, and working through the catalog of NXT TV and Takeover events and loving the shit out of it. This has lead to me spending a ridiculous amount of time reliving all of the glory my 14 year-old self longed for when I didn't have the resources, re-creating all these promotions in FPWW, and watching awesome stuff on the network constantly.
Long story short, I am having a ton of fun with my journey back into being a Pro Wrestling fan, reconnecting with that 14 year-old version of myself that used to have SO much fun with all of this stuff 20 years ago. And I wouldn't be having so much fun with it right now it wasn't for all the creations provided by this community. Some of you create some truly awesome edits that are as close to real-life as possible within a game engine, and it just blows my mind. Thank you all for your contributions. And a special shout-out to those of you who have been the back bone of the fire pro club since the beginning. I keep seeing nicknames on Critical Club that I remember from the IRC Chat, Fire Pro Club, and those Fire Pro Animation sites in the 90's. Thank you for keeping it alive.
It also seems as though I'm lucky and am getting back into wrestling at the right time. I thought Extreme Rules 2018 was a quite good show, and from what I have seen from all of the amazing talent in NXT over the last year or so, the industry is going in a great direction right now. This was basically a very long way of saying, basically; I am excited to even be excited that, for the first time in over 15 years, I have tuned into Pro Wrestling and became excited rather than disappointed.
