Appoooh (Arcade) Review

APPOOOH / Sega / Arcade

Saying that something "looks like a six-year-old drew it" is common hyperbole. But in the case of Appoooh, it's a completely accurate description -- it looks like the devs got their kindergarten-aged kids to both draw and animate the thing. Probably let them come up with the name to boot.

This was Sega's 1984 entry into the nascent wrestling game field, and I'll give them at least this much credit -- the gameplay is slightly better than 1983's Tag Team Wrestling/The Big Pro Wrestling! in that you can actually understand how to play the game, and there's also a choice of playable characters. The roster is a bunch of ripoffs of popular Japanese and American wrestlers of the time, which was common practice back when these companies were too small to notice or have a significant amount of money to take away in court. You can also brawl outside the ring now as well.

The game has a certain crude, "how did this even get made" sort of charm to it, but that evaporates as soon as you start winning and the computer starts cheating its ass off to snatch victory out of nowhere. Wrestler health is indicated by colored pain waves emanating from them when they're down, starting with white and going to yellow then red. When you hit red you're usually done if you're pinned, but when the computer is in the red they still huck off your pin attempt instantly, then do a bulldog across the ring at next opportunity followed by a couple elbows you can't avoid to take you into the red instantly from good health. Then they pin you, and again there seems to be nothing you can do about it. This pattern repeated through multiple matches so apparently it's an intentional technique to rip your quarters. Apppoooooooooooh!!!

Bah gawd he's broken in half

Videos :

* Gameplay Video