A little bit too close are we?
Wood People Want To Play Saturday Night Slam Masters Again?
People who spent a lot of time playing fighting games in the 1990s might remember a title called Saturday Night Slam Masters. For those who are unfamiliar, the title was one of Capcom’s more experimental releases from the period, combining a pro wrestling setup with some fighting game fundamentals. As such, Saturday Night Slam Masters managed to stand out from its competitors, thus enabling it to find a measure of success in its time.
Wood People Want to Play Saturday Night Slam Masters in the Present Time?
Due to this, interested individuals might wonder whether there are still people willing to play Saturday Night Slam Masters in the present time. If so, chances are good that the answer is “Yes” but with some caveats.
For starters, Saturday Night Slam Masters possesses a number of virtues that should still be appealing for people in the present time. First, it is relatively simple and straightforward, so much so that if someone has ever played a pro wrestling title, chances are good that they will be able to pick it up within a matter of moments.
After all, the classic elements of pro wrestling titles can all be found in Saturday Night Slam Masters, with examples ranging from the four turnbuckles to the need to pin opponents for the win. However, while Saturday Night Slam Masters is easy to pick up, its pro wrestling setup combined with its fighting game-style move set makes for enough depth to support a few hours of fun.
On top of this, it is worth mentioning that Saturday Night Slam Masters supported a maximum of four players, which was one of the best characteristics that it adopted from the pro wrestling rather than the fighting game side of its heritage. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to make use of said feature in the present time, which leads to the next point.
In short, while there are people who might still be interested in something like Saturday Night Slam Masters, there are a lot of hurdles that will make it difficult for them to indulge that particular interest. This is because Saturday Night Slam Masters managed to make it on to arcade game machines, the Super Nintendo, the Sega Genesis, and one other home console that was never released outside of the Japanese market.
As such, if people want to play it in a legal manner, they need to jump through a lot of hoops. Suffice to say that tends to cool a lot of enthusiasm, particularly since while Saturday Night Slam Masters was enjoyable, it wasn’t really what most people would consider to be a must-play title even for its particular generation of video games.
Should Capcom Revive Saturday Night Slam Masters?
Instead, it might be more interesting to see Capcom revive Saturday Night Slam Masters. In short, there was a time when Capcom was much more willing to experiment with new creations, with Saturday Night Slam Masters‘s peculiar combination of elements being an excellent example. Nowadays, it is much cautious, which to be fair, is understandable to some extent. After all, making big-name video games has become much more expensive than ever before, meaning that such titles have the potential to turn into much bigger financial problems than ever before. As such, if Capcom was to make a major mistake while being experimental, that could very well turn out to be a huge disaster.
With that said, the prospects of Capcom being more innovative with its projects aren’t exactly zero. After all, one of its most notable successes in recent times was Monster Hunter World, which was very much the product of a gamble on its part. Traditionally speaking, Monster Hunter titles were very popular in the Japanese market but not so much so elsewhere, as shown by the fact that a fair amount of Monster Hunter content has never been released outside of Japan.
When Capcom was making Monster Hunter World, the people who were involved made a decision that they would design the game for the tastes of the global market in general rather than the tastes of the Japanese market in particular, meaning that they were essentially sacrificing what were more or less guaranteed to be millions of sales in the Japanese market in exchange for a shot at even more benefit from consumes worldwide. As it turned out, the gamble paid off, with the result that Monster Hunter World is now Capcom’s best-selling game ever released.
Due to this, it seems safe to say that Capcom understands that taking the right risks under the right circumstances can prove to be very beneficial for its bottom line. As such, it is possible that it will be emboldened to move further out of its comfort zone, enough so for it to take a chance at reviving some of its more experimental properties for new players in a new time. The chances of this happening anytime soon are not particularly high, but the prospect is nonetheless fun to think about.
As for what a revived Saturday Night Slam Masters series would look like, well, that is a much tougher question to mull over. Both pro wrestling games and other fighting games have seen a lot of changes since the 1990s, meaning that there are now even more possibilities that can be borrowed for use in such a hypothetical title. Something that could make for even more exciting combinations should it ever be made.
