Tag Team Wrestling

Tag Team Wrestling is a 1983 arcade video game developed by Technos Japan and released in the U.S. by Data East. In 1986, the game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The Famicom/NES version was developed by Sas Sakata, a company which also developed the NES versions of Karnov and Burgertime.

In the NES version, two professional wrestling tag-teams, the Strong Bads and the Ricky Fighters, battle against each other in tag-team action, or a single player competes in a series of tournaments to win ever larger trophies. The Strong Bads provided the basis for the character Strong Bad on the popular Homestar Runner website, which abounds with obscure 1980s popular culture references.

As an 8-bit game, Tag Team Wrestling has a limited number of wrestling moves and characters. Moves and counters are performed through the use of a real-time, menu-based action-reaction fighting module. After engaging in a grapple, players quickly scroll through a menu and choose a technique to perform. Each of the four characters has a unique move that can only be used against one other "rival" wrestler.

The name of the game in Japan is The Big Pro Wrestling! for the original arcade version and Tag Team Pro Wrestling for the Family Computer version. In North America, it is Tag Team Wrestling for both the arcade and NES versions. The game was also ported to the Commodore 64 and IBM PC computers before it even made it to the Famicom, in 1984.