This time like the last time....You better get ready to reach to the top!
" It’s wrestling with no subtlety, no sense, and an endless supply of joyous absurdity, and despite its blazingly obvious problems, it’s still about as infectiously fun as videogames get."
—Paste Magazine
Wrestling MPire is a game made by Mat Dickie
(otherwise known as MDickie, the creator of the infamous Author Tract game The You Testament and "prison simulator" Hard Time). The game is, well, a Wrestling Game; in the career mode (the main mode of the game), you create your own wrestler and attempt to raise them from wrestling school to the heights of a big promotion, racking up as much money and as many titles as possible.
Like most MDickie games, Wrestling MPire is infamous for its glitchiness and quirks; notably, however, it's the game that the engine used for Hard Time and The You Testament was initially made for, so it tends to be a little more sane and user-friendly than those games are (if not by much).
Wrestling MPire REMIX, an updated version of the 2008 iteration, can be downloaded for free on MDickie's website, though it requires the use of DGVoodoo2 or a similar program to work properly on Windows 10 computers.
A new updated version, with the less amusing title of Wrestling Empire, can be purchased on Steam or Nintendo Switch for twenty dollars. This version includes a "Booking mode" where you get to run the show, and "Roaming Mode", which turns the game into a Wide-Open Sandbox.
The game provides examples of:
- 10-Minute Retirement: Averted. When someone retires, be it you or another wrestler, they're gone for good; in the former case, retirement opens up your Career save slot to be reused, either with the same universe or a newly-generated one.
- A LOSER LEAVES match can be made in Booking Career, but it plays the trope a little straighter as the loser just becomes unavailable to play for a month, or four weeks.
- An Arm and a Leg: Infamously, the game allows you to dismember people by beating them badly enough. While this is reasonable enough if you're using a meat cleaver or explosives, it starts to get a little absurd when you're bashing people's arms off with blunt force weapons like chairs and lead pipes. This feature was later removed in Wrestling Empire.
- Anyone Can Die: Random events and the player's actions can both lead to wrestlers being killed in (or out of) the ring.
- Artificial Stupidity: Just like MDickie's other games, the AI is... unpredictable. Sometimes wrestlers will attempt to run like hell to the backstage area for no reason, the referees will sometimes refuse to get in the ring to start the match at first, and the referees will sometimes attempt to beat you senseless at random (especially if you're outside the ring).
- Artistic License – Sports: The Booker Mode has the incredibly remote Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard islands as wrestling territories.note
- Bizarrchitecture: Quite a few minor but nonetheless noticeable examples in Wrestling Empire:
- The hotel only seems to have one tiny room, with the toilet in the same room as the bed. It also connects directly to the bar.
- The arena, backstage, gym, and hospital also all occupy the same building, and the subway can be accessed directly from the backstage.
- The stairs of the subway from the outside go up, which implies the subway is more of a monorail, but within the subway, they also go up in a similar manner as a traditional underground subway, either implying Alien Geometries or it just being a redundant staircase.
- Bland-Name Product: The Royal Rumble match is retitled the "Countdown Battle Royal".
- Boring, but Practical: For all the absurd weapons in the game, the most effective ones that don't explode are a steel chair and a metal pipe.
- Bring My Brown Pants: It is possible for a wrestler to void their bowels in Free Roaming mode.
- Career-Ending Injury: Zig Zagged.
- Dismemberment does not end a career; it is entirely possible for a wrestler to keep going with one arm, one leg, no arms, or no limbs at all.
- However, it is possible to injure someone badly enough that they're "nearly paralyzed," in which case they're removed from the game (but without the usual fanfare and memorial show).
- In extreme cases, it is possible to outright kill someone, in which case they're essentially gone for good, unless you turn on random generation that essentially brings back completely random wrestlers based on the dead ones.
- Captain Ersatz: While the expies in MPire are all effectively the same wrestlers just with different names, Empire has them become just a bit more distinct and different from the original wrestlers. Examples include the Kane expy losing his iconic mask and red suit (now replaced by a purple suit) and Mick Foley's expy being redesigned to look more like Cactus Jack instead of his far more popular "Mankind" persona.
- Chairman of the Brawl: Steel chairs are a very effective weapon, and you can throw wrestlers into breakable chairs for extra damage.
- Christmas Episode: "Christmas Chaos" occurs during December in the Wrestling Career mode. The ring will be littered with presents which contain weapons, and it will be snowy in the arena.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Heel bookers will screw with a player's career by not booking them in shows, offering steroids or even demanding to be bribed.
- Deconstructive Parody: Mainstream wrestling games tells of a Rags to Riches story. Wrestling Empire shows the unfortunate side of pro wrestling: Players can take steroids to increase performance but lower your life span or recover from injury slowly but lose their popularity. One minute they are holding championship gold, the next they will be asked to job out or take a pay cut. Players can get signed to lucrative contracts but then have their personas changed. And no matter how great a career goes, it will end either in retirement or death.
- Driven to Suicide: Happens to wrestlers in Wrestling Career mode.
- Drugs Are Bad: While steroids can increase all of your stats, they have a very high chance of getting your wrestler addicted, horribly draining their stats and health.
- Due to the Dead: In Roaming mode, prior to the public memorial show for a dead character a private funeral will be held at the cemetery. Should you attend the funeral to pay your respects, you'll get some positive "Attitude" points. Unless if you're the murderer; In which case, you lose "Attitude" points and make enemies out of your murder victim's loved ones.
- Evil Counterpart: Some of the clauses of a wrestler's contract are these. The "good" clauses are in green while the "bad" clauses are in red.
- CREATIVE CONTROL allows for the wrestler to refuse a booker's task at the cost of Attitude points. NO CREATIVE CONTROL is the opposite.
- IRON CLAD means the wrestler cannot be fired even if they fail a booker's task. NO COMPETE means a wrestler cannot quit, even if offered a contract by a different promotion.
- PART TIME means a wrestler will not be booked frequently but will lose popularity due to lack of screen time. OVERTIME means a wrestler can be booked multiple times in a single event (more noticeable in Booking Career).
- Expy:
- The game's rosters are filled with expies of various real-life professional wrestlers, including Jimi Sierra, Redneck Rosteen, Cabal, and Terry Duggan.
- Some of the game's promotions also correspond to Real Life promotions, with All American Wrestling corresponding to Pre-Attitude Era WWE, Federation Online corresponding to Attitude Era, Ruthless Aggression Era and PG Era WWE and Weekend Warriors corresponding to the UFC. The rest are combinations (like Strong Style Wrestling being a mish-mash of ECW, TNA and AEW with a Paul Heyman Expy as its booker) or entirely fictional (like Wrestling Revolution, a promotion made up of MDickie's previous characters with the man himself as its booker.)
- Fast Tunneling: Like in MDickie's other games (particularly the mobile ones), you can use the shovel to dig a hole to another random area of the map in a couple seconds.
- Friendly Enemy: Enemies will help the player get hired into promotions so they can continue feuding.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: A weird subversion. Kurt Angle 's kid-friendly substitute for beer, milk jugs, are in the game but actual beer is also present and boosts your energy at the cost of your health.
- Guns Are Worthless: While there is a handgun in the game, you cannot fire it at other wrestlers. Said handgun is Made of Explodium, so it's not totally worthless.
- Hoax Hogan: Wrestling Empire has Hal Coogan, who has the same build and facial features as the Hulkster.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Downplayed. Eating food, drinking a water bottle or milk jug will heal you a fairly miniscule amount of health.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Players can go an entire session without getting their wrestler signed to a promotion, but it will result in a game over..
- Invincible Hero: A wrestler who puts on a dominating performance will sometimes lose popularity because the crowd hates that the wrestler is being "smashed over". If this keeps up for long enough (at least for more than a few matches), then the booker will demand that the wrestler breaks the streak in order to make the rest look good.
- Jobber: Invoked by the "Enhancement Talent" clause which ensures that your wrestler will only be paid if they lose matches.
- In Wrestling Career Mode, the player's opponent might cut a promo where the opponent addresses a different wrestler. The opponent will then end by saying "I'm going to make an example of this poor son of a bitch". If the player loses once this promo has been cut, the player will automatically become Enhancement Talent.
- Karma Houdini: Murders can occur in Wrestling Career mode but nothing much is ever done to the alleged suspects other than getting questioned and getting lower attitude and popularity as a result. Although, if you've murdered someone, their friends would personally see to it that you get your slice of justice pie and actively attempt to defy this trope.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: So you've gotten away with a murder, and you expect to become the above, right? Not if any of your murder victim's loved ones have anything to say about it: And they do.
- Logic Bomb:
- Wrestlers who lose too often will be told increase their win rate. This can become weird if the wrestler is Enhancement Talent.
- Some wrestlers will run a protection racket where they will offer to beat up someone for a fee. Sometimes, they offer themselves up.
- Made of Explodium: Certain objects like microphones, cellphones and cameras will explode if set on fire.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Interpromotional events can happen during play sessions.
- Naked People Are Funny: Wrestlers will be sometimes be robbed of their clothes. If this happens to the player, they can choose to not take a new costume (as well as new taunts and move sets that go with it) and just wrestle in their skivvies.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Matches between a wrestler with high stats and a wrestler with low stats tend to devolve into this.
- Noodle Incident: Wrestlers in Wrestling Career mode will die in unexplained "horrifying accidents".
- Older Than They Look: It's possible to make a character who looks like a young adult with healthier hair and skin, and set their age up to 99 without any visible aging going into effect.
- Overreacting Airport Security: Inverted in the 2021 version. It is possible to bring items like sledgehammers, barbell weights and even dynamite bundles onto the plane without bystanders batting an eye.
- Point Build System: You can trade points between Strength, Agility, Skill, Stamina and Toughness at character creation as you see fit; these are percentage values from 1% to 99%. You can then increase these values further through training that saps your energy, and they can also be affected at random by matches and events.
- Pro Wrestling Is Real: The game is half-and-half on the matter. Pro wrestling is treated as just a business where guys jump among promotions. Wrestlers who are rivals onstage are friends offstage. Yet, the matches are treated as real and unscripted. Wrestlers could be fined for trashing the arena or injuring other wrestlers during matches. Conclusions in matches are also not planned; The entire match is made up on the fly. Wrestlers will be even told to win championships, or be fired.
- Reality Has No Soundtrack: Roaming Mode has no background music at all except when entering the Bar, which has a jukebox.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: AI wrestlers and even referees will leave a match if they get hurt too much or if they just get bored. This can also happen in Booking Career when wrestlers go home early or storm out of the arena because they didn't like the finish.
- Shame If Something Happened: A much more direct variation; Your character may get bribed to not get hurt. Refuse, and you end up in a match. In previous iterations, refusing would unfairly cripple your character, which is also an example of Fight Unscene.
- Throwing the Fight:
- Wrestlers may sometimes offer to pay you or be paid to invoke this trope.
- The booker can force you to do this in order to make the rest look good and to defy Invincible Hero.
- Under the Sea: The Shark Tank match in Wrestling Empire submerges the arena in water. This also affects cutscenes.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can fairly easily injure, dismember, or paralyze/kill any wrestler you end up in a match with by simply beating the absolute tar out of them with a weapon. Or push them into a subway train.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: You can be found negligent for injuring or killing other wrestlers, resulting in your popularity and "attitude" (or, in other words, reputation) going down. The friends of your victim will also personally see to it that you're going to get your well deserved justice.
- Video Game Time: The open-world version of the 2021 game moves at roughly a minute per real-life second. Likewise, each day starts at about 5:00PM, and each week only contains one day. If a player is in a match, then time stops outside of the match, though.
- Wrestling Managers Are Heels: Averted. Certain wrestling companies have Face managers along with the usual Heel ones.
