Bop N Wrestle

What a pleasure to find an old friend! I had almost forgotten about Bop'n'Wrestle but upon reflection I do remember it fondly. This was one of the earliest and (to my mind) best of the wrestling games to come along - it's so old I first played it on a PC Junior. Game play was a little hard to master and really needed a joystick to play properly although I imagine one could "make do" with the keyboard (I doubt a mouse would work with this game).

One had a choice of several moves and worked through several levels of opponents. Naturally, the opponents became harder to beat as you progressed from facing a "jobber" to the champion, each opponent had a different costume (sometimes as simple as a different hat) to let you know who you were fighting - every wrestling cliche from a hillbilly to an Indian. The cover listed them all with their finishing holds.
The graphics, for the time, were fairly good but not great. Animation, for the most part, was a little clunky but the game was entertaining enough to make one forget these small deficiencies. As for the moves, they ranged from the usual punch and kick (usually effective if you could get in the first blow) to top rope maneuvers (hard to master at first but very effective when used properly). Progress was marked by power bars for you and your opponent. When his power bar was completely depleted you could pin him. If he had enough power left he could "kick out".
There were no submissions or disqualifications (or a referee). If your opponent was trying to pin you it was possible, by wiggling the joystick, to kick out if you had sufficient poser left. If the game had a fault it was mainly that the order of opponents never changed and there was no save as I recall. Unfortunately, as well, the game is so old that most modern computers won't play it - I know mine won't. Perhaps an emulator can be found to make game play possible for others. Seeing this game makes me wish I'd kept at least one of the many XT's I used to own just so I could play some of these wonderful old classic games. On the whole, though, if you can get it working it's well worth a download. Hope you enjoy it half as much as I used to.