Interesting M.U.S.C.L.E. Video Game Facts. by Darrin M. Vindiola Jr.

I dug up this treasure from the M.P.S. Archives. It's an article written by my son Darrin Vindiola Jr. back in 2007 when he was 17 years old. It was actually the inaugural post of a newly re-launched M.P.S. web-site during that same year. Enjoy this little bit of retro goodness..

Interesting M.U.S.C.L.E. Video Game facts 

by Darrin M. Vindiola Jr.

originally posted on 11-17-2007

In honor of the grand reopening of The MPS, I thought I'd do a write up on MUSCLE/Kinnikuman/Ultimate Muscle video Games.

M.U.S.C.L.E. Tag Team match

This was a game for the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.  It was a wrestling game where you could fight as some of the MUSCLE characters. This game ended up showing us some of the wrestlers names. One for example is Terry man, who in the original Kinnikuman comic, was the best friend of Kinnikuman (Muscleman in English).

Because Nintendo used the name Terry man, Terri Bull's name had to be changed into his original Japanese name, Buffalo man. Did you know that in the original version of the MUSCLE game, there was a character that was replaced by Geronimo? Kinnikuman fans may know him as Blocken man, or Broken Jr.  Apparently, because of his relation to Nazis, he had to be taken out of the American version of the game. Geronimo and Blocken man both have the projectile special move, only Geronimo threw axes, and Blocken man threw strange blobs.

Ultimate MUSCLE Legends vs New Generation

M.U.S.C.L.E. (sort of) made a return in America as Ultimate Muscle. In this series, Muscle man (now known as King Muscle) has a son that takes his place in the wrestling ring. The Ultimate Muscle game, kind of plays like the original NES game, but better! It was released sometime during 2002.

I remember playing a demo of this game for the Game Cube when it first came out. The demo was taken from the popular Japanese version of the game, and instead of translating it, the original Japanese voices where kept in! They probably thought translation wasn't necessary since it was only a demo.

I actually played this game a few days ago.  As you rack up points, you get credits to buy toys in the game both new and old. If you're a fan of MUSCLE, then you may recognize a few of these little rubber guys.

For the heck of it, I bought my Dad's childhood favorite The Fox M.U.S.C.L.E. #124, and I noticed that he was named wrong. Rather than Fox man, his name was Forks man! Quite a funny mistranslation if  I say so myself! 

Also included in the game were recruit wrestlers. Many of these guys were created for the game and then appeared in the anime later on. In the game you use their body parts for the somewhat disappointing yet fun custom character mode. If you look in the audience in certain levels, you may spot some familiar faces from the past and present series. Some of the characters included are Cube man, a Rubik's cube like wrestler, Sgt. Kinnikuman, a brother to Kinnikuman/King Muscle, Tape Recorder Man, whose name speaks for itself, and Monsieur Cheeks, a disturbing wrestler with a butt for a face.

I know that there are several other Japanese releases that I've never played, but if I ever do, I will definitely cover them here!