PRO WRESTLING MANAGER ROTATES THE BACKGROUND ONE MORE TIME

Since the wrestling simulator community grows ever quieter, with no signs of an imminent boom period, Skittle and I decided the time was ripe to throw our hats into the slightly limp-wristed fray once more. Extreme Warfare Revenge was eaten up by the evil, moustachioed, cat stroking nemesis of commercialisation; Promotion Wars and its even more lacklustre successor dissolved into their own bitter aftertaste; Head-to-Head Wrestling miscarried in the bloody mess of its developer’s womb; 5th Generation Wrestling Simulator sucked ass (no really, I still have the rash); whilst there was one simulator which remained a beacon of hope for some. For a very select few (probably the ones who ended up choking on their own vomit after a particularly gnarly kebab), this simulator was the last chance to achieve a quality product at the best kind of price – namely jack-squat.

Whilst Adam Ryland’s Total Extreme Wrestling irrefutably remains at the top of the wrestling simulator heap, and there is no direct competition to speak of, the developers are quite within their rights to charge whatever they ruddy-well-feel-like for the privilege of playing it. In the industry we refer to that as having ‘good business sense’. For this reason, my hat goes off to Adam Ryland; he has made every success of what is a essentially a career involving sitting in his increasingly darkening bedroom, tapping away at a filth-ridden keyboard, all the while his trained midget works tirelessly to send nachos and other grease-filled products, up from the basement, for Ryland’s general consumption. My hat, however, does not go off to Ryland for continually producing a product which he has seemingly over evaluated in terms of monetary worth. He has, and likely always will, charged $35 dollars for a game which, in terms of quality, is still piss-poor in several areas despite having had five versions released thus far. The design is a residual by-product of the Extreme Warfare Revenge days, always requiring maximum effort from the user to navigate whilst rolls of cash bounce happily into Ryland’s ever growing heap; the programming language used to build the game is now virtually redundant in all serious developer circles and, whilst arguably solid if anything programmed in Visual Basic can be deemed as such, still requires ridiculous load times from a relatively uncomplicated database; the graphical interface is nothing short of a punishment.

It is with this in mind that both Skittle and I decided to rekindle the love that initially drew us together and reboot the Pro Wrestling Manager franchise. We hope to, over a period of time, build a visually pleasing wrestling simulator series, on a par with currently available commercial games, with a view to providing an innovative slant on the game engine aspect of the simulation. The game will remain freeware. That is all.

Check out the first publically released screen of PWman,