Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release: Jun 27, 2019
No. of Players: up to 6 players
Category: Wrestling, Multiplayer, Sports
Publisher: The Pocket Company
Price: $14.99
Boxy Pro Wrestling (also known as Chiki-Chiki Boxy Pro Wrestling) is an arcade wrestling game that dropped on the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is a weird console when it comes to wrestling titles. WWE released their 2K wrestling game on the machine, only to quickly discount it and then outright ignore it because of how utterly terrible it was. It was such a disaster that they stopped releasing WWE wrestling games on the console. Now Boxy Pro Wrestling looks to fill the void with its voxel visuals.
The game is built from voxels to capitalize on the Minecraft love that never seems to die. It also gives the game a very silly look that lines up with it arcade-like gameplay. Boxy Pro Wrestling isn’t connected to and wrestling federation so the characters are original –mostly. To fill the gap the team has included a number of characters that are clearly inspired by popular video game characters. You have a Wolf Hawkfield clone from Virtua Fighter, Rugal from King of Fighters, and some classic Japanese wrestlers from history. It’s a lot of fun for someone like myself who loves fighting games and old-school wrestling.
So many times with these voxel vexations I find games that are cheaply thrown together. It often feels like taking the Minecraft look is only down to play off of fans love of that game and the easy nature to create models and a very basic game. Boxy Pro Wrestling avoids this by being a solid game with more depth than I expected. That’s not to say that the title is as deep as a wrestling simulation like WWE 2K or Fire Pro Wrestling, but it holds up when looked at like something along the lines of Saturday Night Slam Masters.
The cast of characters isn’t deep but there is a creation system in place so that you can build your own top gaijin. As you play through the games Grand Slam mode you earn tokens for wins alongside unlocking wrestlers that you defeat. Once you unlock a wrestler you earn his loadout to use at your will. You can then spend the money you earned in the creation mode to purchase gear to deck out your wrestler. I created a wrestler called POOPER and gave him a deep backstory about always being sick and constantly pooping his pants. Pretty deep stuff coming from a guy that writes movies for a living!
Boxy Pro Wrestling gives back what you put in, so if you come in expecting stupid fun you’ll get more from the game. There are seven modes in Grand Slam, each with four matches in each. Matches themselves last only a few minutes as there are no pins, calling back to Saturday Night Slam Masters. You each get a life-bar and each attack or move depletes it. Once it’s gone the match is over. It’s a simple system that keeps matches moving at a brisk pace. The entire experience should only take you around an hour.
Match modes are also pretty simple. You get the standard one-on-one, standard tag-team matches, and fatal 3 or 4-way matches. This is straight arcade modes so you won’t be having TLC, Japanese deathmatches or anything in-between. You do get a Training Mode that lets you test out each character but the gameplay is simple enough that you’ll probably never use it outside of seeing what a move looks like.
Gameplay in Boxy Pro Wrestling is simple and requires only a single Joy-Con, which is nice as you can have a friend to play with. You also can link Nintendo Switch consoles so 4-players can get in on the fun too. You get two regular attacks that you can swap from the move pool mapped to the A button. Tap it for a light attack and move and tap for a strong style attack. You also get a button that lets you jump and can be paired with the A button to unleash some flying attacks.
But this is wrestling and most of the action takes place on the mat. You get three mat wrestling moves that work like they would in the old N64 wrestling games. When a wrestler is down you can attack the head, the torso, or the legs, each of which will initiate the move you assigned to each location. You can pull a Boston Crab or maybe a Figure-Four Leglock on the legs, an STF or Camel Clutch on the head, or an elbow or leg drop on the body. It’s super simple making it really easy to pick up and play with friends that aren’t wrestling fans.
You also get two moves you can pull when you use the grapple button depending on what you do after the lockup. When you grapple you simply mash buttons and whoever presses quicker gets the option to pull off a move. Boxy Pro Wrestling plays far more like a party game which works in its favor. Lastly, each wrestler has two special moves because what is wrestling if not for a flashy finisher. Specials can be pulled off at will as long as you quickly charge up DBZ-style by holding the charge button. Tap it again after charged and you to a special attack, use the grapple button and do a special grapple.
It’s all a good bit of fun and that’s not even getting into the stages. Instead of just wrestling in an arena, you fight in all sorts of location. Out on the African plains, on an active volcano, out in the snow, and so on. Therese stages are more than just a change in view as you can leave the ring for (you can get counted out) and take advantage of the environment. Maybe a rampaging lion pops up to take a bite out of you, maybe some lave scorches all those outside, or a tornado drops down and scoops wrestlers up. You can even jump across platforms on moving stages for a little extra fun.
Pulling from Power Stone, the game also features a powerup that appears outside the ring at random that you can collect to go super. If you snag it all your attacks become stronger and do more damage for a limited time. But fret not as you can also collect health power-ups that can really change the course of a match when you are on the verge of defeat. It’s a simple game that does everything it says it does really well and without any issues, glitches, or problems. But the problem is that is doesn’t do all that much for the fairly high price it’s asking for on the eShop.
Boxy Pro Wrestling features an online mode which could have really helped the game and justified the price, but it’s a barren wasteland. I’m late to the party as the game launched back in June, but I couldn’t find a single lobby to have a match and starting a game left me waiting for an opponent without any luck. When half of your game is dead on arrival it becomes harder to justify the $15 asking price (although it’s on sale for $9.89 at the time of this writing).
What’s worse is that you can unlock stuff by playing and winning online matches. This means that if you like completing games it might be impossible unless you get a friend to buy a copy of the game too. You may be able to earn the same stuff in sharing and local play against friends, but I don’t have any of those so I’m out of luck. Boxy Pro Wrestling is a lot of fun, I just wish there was more of it. For all the fun I had I just keep asking “is that it” when I finished something. Not enough characters, not enough moves, not enough modes, and so on.
If the game gets a permanent price drop to under $10 then I say take the plunge with a couple of friends as there is a lot of quick fun to be had, especially in the creation mode. Still, Boxy Pro Wrestling is the best wrestling game you can currently get on the console.
Boxy Pro Wrestling runs and plays better than WWE 2K18 making it the best wrestling game on the console
Final Score: 3/5
*A review code was provided by the publisher*
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