Saturday Night Slammasters

Saturday Night Slam Masters, known in Japan as Muscle Bomber: The Body Explosion (Japanese: マッスルボマーザ・ボディー・エクスプロージョン), is a 1993 pro wrestling arcade game released for the CP System by Capcom. The game features character designs by manga artist Tetsuo Hara, famous for Fist of the North Star.

The game was followed by an updated version titled Muscle Bomber Duo: Ultimate Team Battle in 1993, and a sequel called Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II in 1994.

Gameplay – Saturday Night Slammasters

The original Slam Masters plays like a traditional wrestling game, only the game used a view similar to that commonly used in the fighting game genre. The game uses a three button configuration (grab, attack, and jump).

Each character has two special attacks: a non-grappling technique and a finisher. When an opponent’s life meter is depleted, he must either be pinned for a three-count or forced to submit. Defeating all of the other wrestlers results in winning the championship belt, which must then be defended against the entire roster.

There are two game modes: Single Match, where the player fights in a series one-on-one matches against the CPU; and Team Battle Royale, where the player and another partner (controlled by another player or by the CPU) competes in a series of two-on-two matches. The game can be played by up to four players.

Characters – Saturday Night Slammasters

The game features a playable roster of ten wrestlers. Only eight of the wrestlers are selectable in the Single Match mode. The remaining two: Jumbo and Scorpion, are non-playable boss characters in Single Match and selectable only in Team Battle Royale. In the English localization, Capcom changed the names of all the characters and modified much of the backstory. The English names are used in this article, followed by the original Japanese names (when they differ) in parentheses.

Ports – Saturday Night Slammasters

The original Slam Masters was ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis and FM Towns Marty. The Super NES version retains the Team Battle Royale mode of Muscle Bomber Duo (which can be played with a Multi-Player Adapter for up to four players), while the Genesis version replaces it with an exclusive Death Match mode.

The Genesis version is also the only version of the game that allows the player to select The Scorpion and Jumbo for the Single Battle mode. In contrast to the arcade version, which only used Tetsuo Hara’s artwork for promotional illustrations, the console versions of Slam Masters for the Super NES and Genesis use Hara’s actual artwork in the game.

Reception – Saturday Night Slammasters

In Japan, Game Machine listed Saturday Night Slam Masters on their September 1, 1993 issue as being the sixth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.^[6] In North America, Play Meter listed it to be the 22nd most-popular arcade game in October 1993.^[7]

Reviewing the Super NES version, GamePro praised the four-player gameplay, the variety of moves, and the unique graphical touches to each of the characters. They concluded “If you want a breather from intense fighting games, this wrestling cart’s a refreshing break.”^[8]

A reviewer for Next Generation panned the Genesis version, saying that the game is generic and unoriginal, and that only the barbed-wire ring in the Death Match “[saves] the game from being horrible.” He urged wrestling fans to get WWF Raw instead.^[2]

Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine gave the Super NES version an overall score of 8/10 praising the colors and sounds, the smooth character controls, and the gameplay as “slammingly brutal”. Stating the game as “A great home version of a great arcade game.”^[3]

In 2018, Complex ranked the game 30th on their “The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time.”^[9]