Manufacturer: Data East
Released: 1984
Designer: ?
Added to my collection: April 5, 2003
Cost to date : $128
Current Condition : Working 90% (monitor doesn't display red)

Description:

Wrestling is a silly sport. I'm not just talking about The Rock and Hulk Hogan...I mean the real sport, too. Never really did anything for me to be honest.

Tag Team Wrestling is different, though. I first encountered this game at college, and it's a lot of fun to play. You control a tag team of identical twin wrestlers who fight a variety of opposing teams in a never-ending battle for ring supremacy. Never-ending, that is, as long as you don't get pinned.

The controls are simple--move your guy with the joystick until he's adjacent to your opponent, and move the joystick to get a hold. When you do, select a move using the move button and then hit the other button to execute the move. You have a variety of pro-wrestling moves from simple headlocks to flying drop-kicks off the ropes to the infamous pile-driver The more power you have, the better chance you have of executing the move. And watch out for your opponents when they get angry--when they turn red and come at you, you're in for some pain, brother! Oooo yay-uh! Such an attack is usually followed by the game's infamous ref chanting "one, two, THREEEEEEE!" as you're pinned in helpless humiliation.

Any way you look at it, Tag Team Wrestling is a lot of simpleminded fun. It was followed in the arcades by the sequels Mat Mania and Mania Challenge, but I never latched onto either of those like I did the original classic.

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My Machine

This is a tough game to find in it's original cabinet. In 1984, arcade owners were more interested in converting existing cabinets into new games than purchasing new cabinets outright. Whenever possible, I try to get my hands on only original (dedicated) games. Tag Team Wrestling was a challenge because it was: (a) not terribly popular and (b) produced in dedicated form in small numbers.

I happened across my machine on eBay. A semi-local seller had a nice looking original Tag Team cabinet that was in nice shape--other than the fact that the boards were bad. At the same time, a working set of Tag Team Wrestling boards was up for grabs on eBay as well. Long story short, I got the cabinet for $75 and the boards for $5.99 plus shipping. After one aborted attempt to pick it up last month, the seller of the cabinet was nice enough to meet me at the April 5th auction in Winston-Salem. I hauled it back with my Joust machine. It only took about ten minutes to swap out the boards and, voila! Working game! Almost.

The game plays, but there's a problem with the monitor--no red. It makes for a dull picture, and it also makes it impossible to see the power indicator, which is kind of critical for executing moves. I'll have to futz around with the connections to see if I can fix the problem. Other than that, the only defect is the joystick, which is very loose and desperately needs replacing. That's easy, especially when compared to fixing the monitor.

Other than those problems, the game looks good, it is super-clean, and it was quite a bargain.

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Tag Team Wrestling Technical Info:

DIP switch settings:

Tag Team Wrestling has two banks of DIP switches. The asterisks (*) indicate the factory default settings.

More Tag Team Wrestling Info:

• The Killer List of Video Games has information on Tag Team Wrestling and pretty much every other game ever made.

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