| Saturday Night Slam Masters | |
| Developer: | Capcom |
| Publisher: | Capcom |
| Artist: | Tetsuo Hara |
| Composer: | Masaki Izutani Setsuo Yamamoto |
| Release: | July 1993 (Saturday Night Slam Masters) December 1993 (Muscle Bomber Duo) September 1994 (Ring of Destruction) |
| Genre: | Fighting |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Arcade System: | CP System Dash |
Saturday Night Slam Masters, known in Japan as, is a 1993 pro wrestling arcade game released for the CP System by Capcom. The game features character designs by manga artist Tetsuo Hara, famous for Fist of the North Star.
The game was followed by an updated version titled Muscle Bomber Duo: Ultimate Team Battle in 1993, and a sequel called Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II in 1994.
The original Slam Masters plays like a traditional wrestling game, only the game used a view similar to that commonly used in the fighting game genre. The game uses a three button configuration (grab, attack, and jump).
Each character has two special attacks: a non-grappling technique and a finisher. When an opponent's life meter is depleted, he must either be pinned for a three-count or forced to submit. Defeating all of the other wrestlers results in winning the championship belt, which must then be defended against the entire roster.
There are two game modes: Single Match, where the player fights in a series one-on-one matches against the CPU; and Team Battle Royale, where the player and another partner (controlled by another player or by the CPU) competes in a series of two-on-two matches. The game can be played by up to four players.[1]
The game features a playable roster of ten wrestlers. Only eight of the wrestlers are selectable in the Single Match mode. The remaining two: Jumbo and Scorpion, are non-playable boss characters in Single Match and selectable only in Team Battle Royale. In the English localization, Capcom changed the names of all the characters and modified much of the backstory. The English names are used in this article, followed by the original Japanese names (when they differ) in parentheses.
The table below summarizes the appearances of every character in the Slam Masters series. A green cell means the character is present in that series. A red cell means the character is absent from that series. A yellow cell means the character is present in the series, but cannot be played as. (i.e.: NPC Bosses or ending cameos)
| Character | Saturday Night | Muscle Bomber Duo | Ring of Destruction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biff Slamkovich | |||
 Gunloc | |||
 The Great Oni | |||
 Alexander the Grater | |||
| Titanic Tim | |||
 El Stingray | |||
 King Rasta Mon | |||
| Mike Haggar | |||
 Jumbo Flapjack | [2] | ||
 Black Widow | |||
 The Wraith | |||
| Rip Saber | |||
| The Scorpion | [3] | ||
| Victor Ortega | [4] | ||
The original Slam Masters was ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis and FM Towns. The Super NES version retains the Team Battle Royale mode of Muscle Bomber Duo (which can be played with a Multi-Player Adapter for up to four players), while the Genesis version replaces it with an exclusive Death Match mode. The Genesis version is also the only version of the game that allows the player to select The Scorpion and Jumbo for the Single Battle mode. In contrast to the arcade version, which only used Tetsuo Hara's artwork for promotional illustrations, the console versions of Slam Masters for the Super NES and Genesis use Haras actual artwork in the game.
In Japan, Game Machine listed Saturday Night Slam Masters on their September 1, 1993 issue as being the sixth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.[5] In North America, Play Meter listed it to be the 22nd most-popular arcade game in October 1993.[6]
Reviewing the Super NES version, GamePro praised the four-player gameplay, the variety of moves, and the unique graphical touches to each of the characters. They concluded "If you want a breather from intense fighting games, this wrestling cart's a refreshing break."[7]
A reviewer for Next Generation panned the Genesis version, saying that the game is generic and unoriginal, and that only the barbed-wire ring in the Death Match "[saves] the game from being horrible." He urged wrestling fans to get WWF Raw instead.[8]
Video Games: The Ultimate Gaming Magazine gave the Super NES version an overall score of 8/10 praising the colors and sounds, the smooth character controls, and the gameplay as “slammingly brutal”. Stating the game as “A great home version of a great arcade game.”[9]
In 2018, Complex ranked the game 30th on their "The Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time."[10]
Muscle Bomber Duo: Ultimate Team Battle, released in Japan as Muscle Bomber Duo: Heat Up Warriors, is an updated version of the original Slam Masters which eliminates the Single Match mode from the original game, focusing solely on the two-on-two Team Battle mode. The same character can now be chosen by more than one player and each wrestler now has two additional special moves: a dual side attack and a vacuum move. Duo is the only game in the series to retain the Muscle Bomber title for its international releases.
Although the players can choose and pick their team as they please, there are five "official" combinations that the game will recognize and give a name to. The official tag teams are as follows:
Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II, released in Japan as Super Muscle Bomber: The International Blowout, is the proper sequel to Slam Masters, now a CP System II game. Unlike the original, this game was never ported.
The game's format was changed to play more like a traditional one-on-one 2D fighting game with the action restricted to one plane (similar to Street Fighter II), albeit with an emphasis on grappling. Controls were upgraded to five buttons: two punch buttons, two kick buttons, and a grapple button. The objective of each match is to deplete the opponent's life bar in two out of three rounds. It is no longer possible for the player to pin their opponent to win a match, though all other wrestling-style moves have been retained.
All ten characters from the original Slam Masters returned, along with four new selectable characters:
In Japan, Game Machine listed Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters II on their November 1, 1994 issue as being the ninth most-successful table arcade unit of the year.[11]
In the Street Fighter animated series episode "New Kind of Evil", Mike Haggar appears in a fight against Blanka, and the human forms of the three guys who become monsters resemble that of Gunloc, The Great Oni, and Titanic Tim. It is also mentioned in the 1994 arcade game Street Fighter: The Movie that the "Blade" character is actually a deep cover agent named Gunloc in disguise as one of Bison's Shock Troops, and is shown to be Guile's brother (playing into the well-known rumor that the two are related). This is not canon for either game series, as the Japanese version of Slam Masters does not have him related to Guile in any way, shape, or form, and this connection made between the two is probably nothing more than a reference to a popular video game rumor.