Zen-Nippon Joshi Pro Wrestling Kounin: Fire Pro Joshi All-Star Dream Slam

Also known as:  N/A

Developer: Human Entertainment

In 1994, Human Entertainment decided to do a twist with their Fire Pro Wrestling franchise…well, two twists, I guess. The first twist was that this game was the first game in the Fire Pro series to actually license the wrestlers rather than create likenesses of wrestlers to avoid copyrights, licensing the stars of the All-Japan Women professional wrestling group. The second twist was that since that license was done with AJW, this was also the first all-female game in the Fire Pro Wrestling series. Unfortunately, while those two twists are a nice change, there's not really much here that innovates on the Fire Pro formula in the gameplay department. On the plus side, this is still a very good wrestling game for its time, and I've got a soft spot for the fact that my personal favorite joshi wrestler, KAORU, is one of the 25 licensed wrestlers in the game. With other favorites like Akira Hokuto, Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, Kyoko Inoue, Takako Inoue, Bull Nakano, and plenty of others, All-Star Dream Slam has much of the popular roster of lady grapplers that sold out arenas in Japan in the early and mid-90's. If you like the Fire Pro Wrestling games, but also enjoy women's wrestling, you'll get the best of both worlds here.

Review added: 01/28/2024

Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Also known as:  Zombies (Europe)

Developer: LucasArts

Until a few weeks ago, I never really played much of Zombies Ate My Neighbors. I was always intrigued...always interested...but, some reason or another, I always wound up playing something else instead. Well, now that I've played it, I have sort of a mixed reaction - I definitely see why some people love this game so much...but despite that, I also don't really think that it's as good as some folks make it out to be. Known as simply "Zombies" in Europe, most of the fun seems to come from the game's personality rather than the gameplay, which is fine mind you, but the levels and enemies do get a bit repetitious by the end, even with multiple weapon types to use at your disposal. That’s not to say that I dislike Zombies Ate My Neighbors or anything, I just think that it’s a solid top-down shooter, with oodles of personality, that gets bogged down a bit by repetitive gameplay. Overall, though, Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a very solid game, but comes up a little short of being a game that is truly great.

Review added: 12/01/2018