F.P.W. Hits A Powerbomb on it's GBA competition

From the first time I read about the Game Boy Advance, I knew I needed one. So, I pre-ordered one, and got it, with this game, at the U.S. launch day. You might be thinking, "It's a hand-held wrestling game! Those are always terrible!" You are so very wrong, my friend. This little title truly shows off the expanded capabilities of the GBA.

From the get-go, I realized that this game has tons of gameplay options. You can do so much. This game will keep you busy for weeks, even months. There are tons of moves, and each of the 150 pre-made wrestlers are well made and unique. Smackdown! wishes it had this kind of variety in its grapplers.

The matches are wickedly fun. If you've seen a wrestler do a move, it is probably in the game. Turnbuckle moves, suicide dives to the outside, illegal moves, holds, power moves, high-flying moves, running attacks, double and triple team moves... they are all in there. It would take me about twenty of these reviews to completely describe all of the match types that are in this cartridge, as well.

The wrestlers all look good, with tons of frames of animation, and little details, but sometimes it hard to tell what they look like. The moves in this game are fluid, easy-to-see, and look simply incredible... you have to see it in motion to believe it.

The sounds are awesome. The songs/ theme music are surprisingly catchy, even if they are like .midi music. The referee voices and the crowd's cheering and booing really complete the experience. The most captivating thing is when there is a match that goes for a long time, the crowd will count as the ref counts, as if they're on the edge of their seat! Truly breath-taking.

Last, but not least, is the great Create-A-Wrestler feature. Make a wrestler, a fed, change feds, move wrestlers between feds. I could play the game for months making a fed alone.

So, everything's great? No problems at all right? Well, not quite. First of all, the game is horribly dark. If you're not playing in direct sunlight, then you'll have a tough time seeing what's going on. Also, I consistently have trouble pulling off some of the running moves, or the moves where your character dives out of the ring, due to the fact that you need to press A and B together to do it.

Otherwise, it's all good. This is a truly great game, wrestling or otherwise, and is definitely worth your money. After a little practice, you can overcome all those little problems, and this will become a solid addition to your GBA collection.