Taito's MANIA CHALLENGE Wrestling Arcade Game.... Remastered

Ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's Classic Video Games back with another really cool arcade game video for you this evening. This is Taito's Mania Challenge. Not to be confused with Map Mania or Tag Team Wrestling, which were basically the same games, but here you go. Mania Challenge. In America this was put out by Mimitron, which made the kit and I guess the hardware for it. It never gets old, people. We've had this on for days, days now, listening to it. This game, they never made a dedicated version of any of these. These little cheapo wrestling games from the 80s. So all of them you get will be in a kit. So they're in the wrong cabinet or, you know, they just put the kit in another cabinet. And I have got to say they did a damn fine job on this kit. Whoever put this in, they did a really good job. This is an old Sega style cabinet. It's not a Frogger, but it's something similar. So it would have been like a head-on or something like that. It was one of Sega's, you know, less known cabinets. We thought for a while it was a Carnival, but it's not. So I don't know what it was, but it's not a Frogger and it wasn't a Carnival. But all of the stuff that made it whatever it was in its previous life are long gone and now it is this wonderful Mania Challenge. They did a really good job. They put red laminate on the sides to make it, you know, match the artwork of the Mania Challenge stuff. And it's all in really good shape. Just a really clean kit. They put nice black T-molding on it. They did a pretty good job on the control panel. The only thing on it that they couldn't do a great job with was they had to cut the bezel. So where it said Mania Challenge on the bezel has been cut off. But, you know, really they didn't have a choice. They had to put the screen where it was. So this is what they came up with. Of course, this side is the same. They did a really good job attaching the laminate so it's not flaking, you know, tearing off or anything. They put the real plain textured control panel overlay on it. But that worked pretty good since they had all of the little artwork overlays and stuff. Basic technique. Object to pin opponent or throw out of ring for 20 seconds. Join in after any match. So first of all they made Tag Team Wrestling, which isn't exactly the same game. It's not quite as advanced as this one. It doesn't quite look as good. So that was their first one. And then they made Mat Mania. And Mat Mania, I believe, was just a one player game. You couldn't play two player. And then they made Mania Challenge. Now we're filming this in April. It's shortly after Wrestlemania. So they were ripping off the Mania from Wrestlemania, I'm sure, and Hulkamania. But this was their third one. Now if you get a Mat Mania board or you get a Tag Team Wrestling board, you can just plug it right into this cabinet. They have their own unique pinout for these games. And they're interchangeable. So I have heard that on this game you can do a drop kick. Yes folks, a drop kick. And that is the main difference. And you can also play two players at one time. It never gets old. This has a Nanyo monitor in it. Old school Japanese monitor from like 1980. That was in the Sega game. Alright, so let's look over the artwork a little bit. Mania Challenge. You can see all these people at ringside. That guy's been a drinkin'. This guy's the scurred of the blood. She's not. This guy, that might be illegal what he's doing. I believe that might be Scary Sherry. There's Grandma. Have you ever seen the clip of Grandma fighting Hollywood Hulk Hogan with her crutch? It's pretty good. You gotta look that up. I think that's my favorite right there. Alright, so you've got two buttons. And by the way, you can join in after any match. They want you to know that. You've got two buttons. An action punch button and an action kick button. So here are the basic moves, people. Basically, this is how you move. I can't get my camera back here. Let me zoom you to it. Look at that. Basic moves. So if you just hit the punch button, you punch. If you just hit the kick button, you kick. Now it looks like they may have installed the buttons backwards on the control panel. We'll just ignore that. Okay, if you hit punch, you do a headlock if you do it when the opponent is groggy. If you hit kick and punch, you dash at the opponent. But there are other moves available, people. After you dash at the opponent by hitting both buttons, if you hit back and punch, you do a drop kick. Now you would think that you would hit back and kick to do a drop kick, but you would be wrong about that. You hit back and punch, right? Okay, and they would do a flying body press or a plunger, which I've never heard of. You hit kick while you're hitting back after dashing at the opponent. Or you hit back and punch and you do a shoulder attack. Or if you hit forward and kick, you do a lariat. Kind of weird. Okay, and then to do a knee drop, see this line over here, is things that you can do after going up to the corner post. So you get up on top of the corner post, and you hit punch, you'll do a knee drop, and if you hit kick, you'll do a sunset flip. There he is. Do the sunset flip. Nope, he tried to do the knee drop. So this is what a champion looks like, people. Kind of has a has a Von Erich look to him, doesn't he? So anyway, I think this is a really nice kit. Somebody's gonna love this. These old school wrestling games are awesome. So what I'll do is I'll set up the tripod and we'll play through it a little bit. You can see what 19, I believe this came out in 1987. You can see what 1987 looked like. The TWF, people. He dropped, he jump kicked him and fell out of the ring. All right, we're gonna play it a little bit. If I can get a credit on it. You versus computer. Push one P. Let's do that. I'm Dynamite Tommy versus the Insane Warrior. Oh, he does, he kind of looks like, uh, come on now, Insane Warrior. He knew that wasn't gonna work. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, not out of the ring. Oh, that was lucky. Oh, pile driver. Now what? He got me, folks. Let me put another credit on. This can't stand. Let's try that again, Insane Warrior. Adam, he's too close to the ropes. Doesn't that suck when you jump out of the ring accidentally? Man, he's good with that, that back slap. Get off me, bro. I tried to do the backdrop there. There we go. A little suplex. There's no real health meter. I should have probably already pinned him. All right, we're gonna try it again. Come on, man. I don't know if you can get in from the side. Man, he's like taking me to the cleaners. Damn. Well, he's putting on a clinic showing me how to get beat, but I'm not showing who the second guy is yet. Let's try one more time. I gotta at least win one match. Come on. Come on now. He got out of the way. That was smart. He knew I was going, coming with that drop kick. Very smart. He gets out of the way every time. Oh no, he threw me out of the ring. Yeah, I don't know if you can get in from the side. What if the guy don't play around, man? He threw me out of the ring again. Oh, he ducked. That's very, very creative. Good work, mast, uh, whatever your name is. Mast warrior. Man. Well, there you go, folks. That's how to lose your quarter in Mania Challenge. Very tough game, at least for me. I even tried to do the special moves. There's a little, uh, sticker right here that tells them to you, but oh well, it was not to be. Now, by the time you see this video of Mania Challenge, Mania Challenge may have lariated over to someone else's game room. We may not even have it available for sale anymore, but that's all right. You can see all the games that we do have available for sale on our website. Go to lionsarcade.com to check out a current list. Now, you can also come by and see us. We're in downtown Rock Hill, South Carolina. We've got a building here full of arcade games. You can come check them out. Now, if you're not local, so you can't come by and you don't want to buy one off of checking out what's on the website, that's fine. Just subscribe to us here on YouTube, and every time we get in something a little different like this, we'll film a video of it for you, so you can remember the glory days. Give us a thumbs up for taking the time to shoot the video for you, even though I didn't beat the first freaking guy. And leave your comments below about how incredibly hard this game is to make me feel better. So, if you used to play it back in the day, let us know where you used to play it in the comments below, and we will see you on the next video. Mania Challenge.