David’s Retro Rewind: Galactic Wrestling

This is a weird one to cover in a Retro Rewind, I know. As I recall, my first experience with Galactic Wrestling Featuring Ultimate Muscle was many years ago, back when I was just a lad with a PlayStation 2 and a lot of free time. I was browsing GameFly for new games to rent, saw this title and decided to give it a shot. The rest, as they say, is history. As some among our audience might know, I’m a fairly big fan of wrestling games of yesteryear, with a few exceptions.

What I didn’t know when I first tried out Galactic Wrestling is that it’s apparently based on a manga series entitled Kinnikuman, which was published in weekly installments in Japan from 1979 to 1987. The manga was later adapted into an anime series that was also exclusive to Japan which aired for three years in the 1980s. In my boyish mind back then, I thought it was just a game about a bunch of weird-looking characters who were all employed by some strange parody of WWE or something.

Don’t get me wrong, given several aspects of this title’s art and gameplay, I don’t think I’m entirely off the mark by describing its roster of playable competitors as “weird-looking.” I’ll do my best to express my point via several of the screenshots in this article. In any case, Galactic Wrestling was originally released for the PlayStation 2 on June 30th, 2004 in North America. Its reviews were largely mixed, according to what records I could find. It appears that the game was viewed somewhat more favorably stateside than it was in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Honestly, folks, Galactic Wrestling seems to be little more than a bog-standard wrestling title with a peculiar cast of characters. It features a few elements you can choose from that make for slightly different match types, like ring floors made of ice and ring ropes made of barbed wire or pure electric current. Essentially, nothing that hasn’t already at least been considered (if not actually done) in real-world promotions like early Extreme Championship Wrestling or New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Having said that, though, even as close to a standard wrestling game as Galactic Wrestling comes, I’ll be darned if I don’t find it at least somewhat fun when I’m in the mood for it. I think a near-perfect example of why lies in the game’s roster of playable fighters that I keep going on about. Take King Muscle, the Kinnikuman series’ protagonist, for example.

In this incarnation, I would almost assert under oath that he’s voiced by Dan Castellaneta, which amuses me to no end. When I went back to Galactic Wrestling for this piece, I kept expecting him to yell, “D’oh!” whenever one of his moves was countered. In addition, most wrestlers on the game’s roster have a specific tag team partner with whom they work most efficiently, like the teams of two British men dressed like knights named Robin and Kevin Mask, or Ramenman and his partner Lomeinman. I swear to you I’m not making this stuff up.

In terms of game modes, Galactic Wrestling features three that I consider noteworthy enough to discuss: Single Match Mode, Tournament Mode, and Mask Hunt Mode. Single Match Mode is virtually identical to any WWE game’s Exhibition Mode. You pick two or four competitors and have them go at it in single or tag-team action under normal (or at least somewhat normal) rules. Tournament Mode is also fairly straightforward, with its only real change being the number of fighters you select to participate in your tournament.

That brings me to Mask Hunt Mode. In this section of gameplay, you control the tag team known collectively as the “Hell Missionaries,” Big Budo and Neptuneman. Your ultimate goal in this mode is to win a series of matches by using your team’s finishing maneuver on every masked wrestler on the roster other than yourselves. You do this in order to claim their masks as trophies of some sort. The primary catch is that this mode operates on “survival” rules, meaning that your team’s health meters don’t regenerate between contests.

I honestly don’t know why I so thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with Galactic Wrestling as research for this article, but I’m willing to hazard a guess. One reason I can think of would be the commentary team, composed of one fellow who sounds exactly like James from the original Pokèmon anime and his partner who constantly cracks jokes about that time his ex-wife took him through divorce court. That last bit evokes memories of the legendary WWE commentary team of Jim Ross and Jerry “The King” Lawler for me, though I’ll let you guess why that is.

I know that Galactic Wrestling is, at its heart, a wrestling title based on a silly manga series and its, shall we say, “colorful” cast of characters. It has no right to be as enjoyable to me as it is, at least in brief spurts. I wouldn’t want to invest the time necessary to 100% complete this game, especially because of its sheer volume of unlockable content. However, I certainly don’t regret covering it under the Retro Rewind banner. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare for my match against the man with the most ridiculous ring name I’ve ever heard: Dik Dik Van Dik.