Saturday Night Slam Masters (Arcade) - All Grappling Moves & Special Finishers

Character select:

0:00 - Gunloc
0:23 - El Stingray
0:59 - Alexander The Grater
1:32 - The Great Oni
1:54 - Biff Slamkovich
2:16 - King Rasta Mon
2:49 - Titanic Tim
3:28 - Mike Haggar
4:01 - Jumbo Flapjack
4:31 - The Scorpion

Saturday Night Slam Masters (a.k.a. Muscle Bomber: The Body Explosion in Japan) is a 2.5D professional wrestling game by Capcom. The game came out in 1993 for the CP System arcade hardware, and was later ported to SEGA Genesis, SNES, and FM Towns Marty.

Saturday Night Slam Masters is set in the Street Fighter and Final Fight universe. Most noticeably, Haggar from the Final Fight series is part of the roster. Another character, Gunloc, is the brother of Guile from Street Fighter. Ryu, Chun-Li and E. Honda can be seen in the audience. It would have made sense to include Zangief in the game. However, Capcom may have wanted to focus on lesser-known characters. One of the wrestlers, King Rasta Mon, looks like a cross between Zangief and Blanka (the Brazilian monster) from Street Fighter, and even uses Blanka's biting grab move.

Saturday Night Slam Masters has 8 standard characters, plus 2 bosses, who are only playable in the Team Battle Royale (a 2 vs. 2 mode). This mode allows up to 4 players simultaneously. It's not possible to play mirror matches (against the same character), but each wrestler still has an alternate palette.

Similar to other sprite-based wrestling games, Saturday Night Slam Masters allows 2.5D movement, and uses a grappling system to initiate throws and submission holds. Other grabbing interactions are possible, including an Irish Whip (sending the opponent running), standing the opponent up, or rolling them over for a pin attempt. The player can jump out and walk around the ring, except for the far side where the camera angle would obscure the action (there is a 20 second count-out). It's also possible climb the turnbuckle, to perform a taunt or high-flying maneuver. The player can find melee weapons under the apron of the ring. To win a match, the player must deplete their opponent's energy bar and then pin them for a 3 count.

As you'd expect from a wrestling game, there are many throws, slams, suplexes, and submission holds to perform. The input commands are simple and easy to do in most cases, with the exception of the finishing moves (such as Haggar's spinning piledriver). Each character has 7 to 9 grappling moves at their disposal.

Despite the decent variety of wrestling techniques on offer, some moves look quite similar. For example, El Stingray has two variations of a vertical suplex. There could have been a greater selection of moves in the game, especially for the Lucha Libre characters. I would have liked to see some more acrobatic moves like a hurricanrana.

There are various improvements Capcom could have made to enrich the gameplay. I would have given all characters the option to perform a back body drop after an Irish Whip, since some characters don't have any grab moves to take down running opponents. Similarly, I think all characters should have a running throw, rather than just King Rasta Mon. It's possible to throw the opponent into the turnbuckle, but there are no special grab moves to perform in this situation. I would have liked the ability to do a superplex or Frankensteiner off the top rope. Some of the high-flying maneuvers could have been throws, like a hurricanrana. It would also be fun to suplex opponents over the ropes, if one contender is standing on the apron (as seen in the series of N64 wrestling games developed by AKI). Since a table is one of the melee items, it would have been cool if this could be set up to put opponents through.

A few major issues make the game less fun. A slam which ends in a failed pin attempt causes your player to fall over, despite not being attacked. They then take a long time to stand up, and are susceptible to strikes whilst on the floor. Unlike many other wrestling games, pin attempts never succeed unless the opponent's life gauge is totally empty. This makes the game function more like a standard fighting game rather than a wrestling one, detracting from the strategic element of the gameplay. After a few levels, the AI becomes highly resistant to grappling moves, leaving the player no choice but to use striking attacks. This defeats the point of it being a wrestling game. In order to complete the game, the player must first defeat all other characters to win the championship belt. They then have to defend their title against all of the same characters again. This is repetitive and therefore boring. The boss characters aren't particularly special relative to the standard characters. The stage locations don't correspond exactly to the characters, and are merely palette swaps.

Overall, Saturday Night Slam Masters is one of the better arcade wrestling games available, but still leaves room for improvement.

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