... And how to make it Better.

When last I left off, I was trying to used car salesman Adam Ryland's Wrestling Spirit 2 as a viable entry to any gaming library. But like all used car salesmen, I wasn't entirely up front concerning the less than shinier bits.

While there are several tournament-type modes in Wrestling Spirit, the drawing card of the game is in its Career Mode. It is there that you have the option of either starting your own wrestler from scratch, or taking on an existing wrestler and guiding their career. Promotional inner workings (card lineups, title matches, hirings and firings, etc.) was largely built off the core of Ryland's Total Extreme Wrestling 2004.

Frankly, it never really worked for me. Besides the actual 'fight engine', for lack of a better phrase, the single most important aspect to a wrestling game needs to be a logical method of match-making.

Mr. Ryland's booking engine works... for Total Extreme Wrestling. After all, the player is doing the booking of their own promotion in that series. What the AI-controlled promotions do is always on the peripheral - and even when studied, makes enough sense.

In Wrestling Spirit, the AI controls all promotions; your character takes the bookings assigned to them. Sometimes those bookings make sense. Sometimes not so much.

Adam Ryland's Wrestling Spirit 2...

Adam Ryland is known as the King of Text Based Wrestling Games. It's true. You can ask him yourself.

If modesty prevents him from admitting as much, his fans will certainly back it up.

Mr. Ryland started his ascent to the throne by way of his freeware Extreme Warfare series of text-based wrestling promotion simulators. After hooking his fans with a heroin-like addiction, he would eventually tire of providing freebies to the masses. Total Extreme Warfare, released in 2004 out of the now defunct .400 Software Studios, was his commercial breakthrough.

The following year, and to incredulous looks by no man, Ryland would cement his status as the wisest of the wise. Not only would he jump from .400 Studios to Grey Dog Software - a much more stable company, he would also change the completely inappropriate name of his series to Total Extreme Wrestling. The TEW series, as it would come to be known, would see updates in 2007, 2008, and 2010.

Never one to beat a dead horse - unless the glue factory demanded it, Ryland released part one of the Wrestling Spirit trilogy in 2004. Rather than plot a successful wrestling promotion, Wrestling Spirit focused on the individual's career in the 'Sport of Kings', as Mr. Gordon Solie called it. Being text-based, the game was an imagination-fueled depiction of life as a professional wrestler; finding bookings, making friends backstage, earning money from fight purses... basically everything a fan of kayfabe wrestling 'believed' to be true of the 'sport' (wink, wink - nudge, nudge).

The game pretty much sank like a rock*.


* = in relative, uninformed comparison to Mr. Ryland's previous titles.

Death of the Territories, aka 'The Wrestling Game'

Prologue:

An interesting cat named Charlie Warren runs an even more interesting blog entitled, The Semi-Retired Gamer. As the name implies, Mr. Warren is an old school gamer (and game designer), mainly focusing on tabletop role-playing games. His recent discussions on game design have provoked a lot of thought amongst his followers; myself, included.

One thing his musings have inspired me to do is to finally post this here bloggy bit. I've kept it in dock for several years now simply because it clashed with the disjointed (and low key) concept here.

Tip of the hat, Mr. Warren.

_____________________________________


Games have pretty much been in my blood for as long as I can remember.

My father inspired in me a great love of dice and chits and game boards. Countless games were played between us during my more formative years; Stratego, Dogfight, Mille Bornes, Dungeons & Dragons, Brian Blume's Boot Hill, and TSR's Vampyre: Game of the Hunt for Dracula; Frankly, I've forgotten more titles than I can remember.

Another thing the old man gave me was a healthy dose of do-it-yourself creativity.

The Chorus declares, "Barest of Bones!"

** spoken in the voice of Homer Flynn of The Residents **

You smell that sound? Huh... Do ya?

It's anger. Pure, unapologetic anger.

Look around! Anger in the news. Anger in music. Anger in comments left at the Betty Crocker forum. Anger in the half-played axis and allies game board collecting dust on a forgotten table somewhere.

Even in the eyes of your 40 year old Teddy Bear.

And he's pissed.

It's scary, man. But I've got a plan.

I'm gonna collect all those people that matter to me; all those people that I love. I'm gonna collect them and tell them there ain't no more anger. Or bitterness. Or cynicism.

Those days as an angry young dog are behind me.

Are they behind you?

.
.
.

But then I get to thinkin'.

Hey, Dad! Remember the time you were called in to pick me up at the Parma Police station at 3 o'clock one Saturday morning? Remember how you spit in my face and declared me a disgust?

I do.

I remember it like one of those grainy VHS tapes of something recorded off late-night t.v.; low contrasted and jagged-edged with just a whisper of disjointed sound crackling through the static.

Still... I do have to admit my admiration. With nothing but Colt 45 and saliva, you managed to create a black hole.

There isn't a scientist alive who can say the same.

I kid myself more than I kid you all.

The angry young dog will always morph into a mistrustful hog, rooting not for truffles - but for fragmented memories.

Finding slim pickings, self-consumption typically begins with the tail and ends at the snout.

But...

But I do got a plan.

I'm gonna collect all those people that mattered to me; all those people that I loved. I'm gonna collect them and bury them like a dog does his bone.

Those days as an angry young hog are behind me.

Are they behind you?