When Vincent Kennedy McMahon bought the Capitol Wrestling Corporation from his father, Vincent J. McMahon, in 1982, he effectively carved the ancient sport of wrestling into two distinct categories: the real thing, and the really fun thing. Greco-Roman combat became a never-ending struggle between larger-than-life Faces and Heels, battling in a rigorously maintained kayfabe continuity of feuds and fragile alliances. Pro wrestling cut a fine distinction between sports and entertainment, athletes and superheroes. As concepts go, McMahon's World Wrestling Federation arrived on the scene ready-made for video game adaptation.

It didn't take long for gaming to jump into the squared circle with both feet... and a steel chair.Gaming's 8-bit era coincided with the rise of the WWF's Mania Era, but the first wrestling game completely ignored Mr. McMahon's fast-growing promotion. Instead, future Double Dragon developer Technos Japan pitted the Strong Bads (the inspiration behind the Homestar Runner character) against the Ricky Fighters for arcade rasslin' actioner The Big Pro Wrestling ! in 1983. Grapples, throws, slams, and out-of-ring brawling were all represented. Three years later, it was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System as Tag Team Pro Wrestling . And it was awful.The next year, Sega improved slightly on Tag Team's two-frame animations with Appoooh , a Japan-only release featuring wrestlers H.Hogen, A.Giants, and other thinly-veiled WWF superstars, minus any licensing fees. Technos followed suit - and vastly improved on their previous game - with coin-op gem Mat Mania, then added two-player versus mode in its Mania Challenge sequel. An officially licensed wrestling game wouldn't release until 1986, pulling its weirdly alien cast not from the flashy muscle men working for McMahon, but from M.U.S.C.L.E ., a localized version of Dragonball-ish manga/anime Kinnijuman. Neither the gameplay nor the characters translated well.In fact, early wrestling games did a lot better when they did their own thing. Two more titles hit in 1986, both brought something new and exciting to the genre, and both were called Pro Wrestling On the Sega Master System, Pro Wrestling was a super-deformed tag team mashup, mixing up grapples with knee drops, suplexes and aerial moves. More importantly, it introduced a rudimentary heal/face system to determine which teams could and couldn't fight each other, determined by another early innovation: optional in-ring weapons. Heel teams could pick up steel chairs - long regarded as basic wrestling equipment - and smack the opposition around with them. Faces merely banked points for grabbing the furniture first.Sega's version would probably be more appreciated and better remembered if its namesake hadn't become one of the most beloved games on the NES.Nintendo's Pro Wrestling didn't bring the thunder like other NES carts did, but it gave a memorable set of wrestlers, each with their own techniques, special moves, and button-combo strikes. Players not only won their title belt, but defended it as (or from) King Slender , Starman, Fighter Hayabusa , fish-man The Amazon, and finally the ultimate fighter, Great Puma, for the ultimate Video Wrestling Association championship. Players spent hours piledriving, plancha diving, and pinning each other in tournaments, and then went back for seconds. And thirds.It was far from flawless. Cheap power-slamming moves abounded, the standard roundhouse kick was nearly undefeatable, a few wrestlers fought like coma victims and one loss could set a player's progress back hours. But pinning Great Puma became a feat worthy of the gods, and the goony translations led to the greatest affirmation in gaming history: "A Winner is You!"Finally, gamers had a wrestling game they could take seriously. But after years of pseudo-names littering the sport, the heavy-hitting A-team was about to go on the card.