Dumb & Dumber...

For sure, wrestling is an activity which doesn't have the reputation of being particularly cerebral. Many braves among us might have one day felt a bit stupid when finding themselves - by chance or voluntarily - watching a wrestling match on TV, with their mouths wide open and staring eyes. So imagine how you might feel when playing 3 Count Bout on the Neo Geo: a 'simulation' of this 'sport' which has nonetheless the merit to be fully in the spirit of its model, since it's all about - in short - violently smashing buttons on the stick without using a single parcel of your brain at any time. This may sound a bit moking to introduce a game like that, so let's be fair with this title by taking a closer look at this SNK realization, also known as Fire Suplex in other latitudes. 

The action takes place in three-dimensional arenas, meaning that we can move in the depth of the stage, which involves a pretty different gameplay than in a conventional versus fighting game. So here, the jump is assigned to a button (C), while A triggers a punch, B a kick, and D can perform a 'down' when you're close to the grounded opponent, provoke or make a change when playing a tag battle. Fighters can dash, get out of the ring, get on the third string to perform attacks, execute special moves and jumped moves, pick up weapons, break parts of the stage too... Of course, each character has also a good range of wrestling moves, which can be triggered during melee: there, you only have to hit buttons as soon as possible to get advantage, then execute the combination of your choice. Now, be aware that against the CPU, you won't be able to do it often... and it have me coming to the main flaw of the game: its difficulty. You know, grappling moves are the nerve center of any game of wrestling... so it's essential for our 3 Count Bout to offer a good close-range attacks system, isn't it?

When you try the single player championship, the feelings are not without reminding King of the Monsters 2: a clever mix of frustration, annoyance and suicidal tendencies. With ten characters playing virtually all the same way and four stages consisting of two rings and two street scenes, one hour is fairly enough to see almost everything about the game. Finally, note that the realization of 3 Count Bout is remarkable: graphics are beautiful, with backgrounds and characters skillfully drawn; the soundtrack is worthy of a television broadcast, with clear and powerful voices, accompanied by hard rock musics and punchy sound effects. The animation is provides a decent number of animation steps for the characters, no more, no less. All this is unfortunately not enough to forget the intrinsic defects of the game: fighters that are not very varied or interesting to play, approximate accuracy, atrocious difficulty. Once again, a beautiful game is not necessarily a good game.