With things being what they are with the Coronavirus and pro wrestling taking a major step back or going on hold completely, one of the things I have been doing while stuck in the house is going through a bunch of my old video games on various systems and remembering back when they were new and fresh.
One of the games I came across was Lucha Libre AAA: Heros Del Ring for the XBOX 360 back in 2010. Seeing this game sitting amongst my collection made me crack up laughing because I remember buying the game when it first came out.
Back in 2010, I was working in the electronic section at K-mart and I was waiting with bated breath for when this game would be available to buy. I watched AAA wrestling at the time so all the concepts this game was supposed to introduce to American wrestling video game players were not new to me. I knew the names like La Parka, Dr. Wagner Jr., Silver King and all the other names you could play as. I remember picking it up the day it was released before I started work that day and after doing my job I played the crap out of it when I got home.
It certainly wasn’t like the WWE games I was used to. Nor was it like the Lucha Libre I had been watching.
It didn’t have a trios match playable option that was a big part of Lucha Libre and when you are starting out, most of the characters were locked away and the only way to unlock them was to go through unbelievable matches set on the hardest difficulties. And the difference in play between the skill levels was ungodly. There was a password type set up to cheat a little bit, but the passwords were so random that the only way to know anything like that was to look them up online. There was no way you could guess at them or do anything like that. There was a code you could put in to get “mini” versions of the characters, but this worked on all the luchadores in a match and you couldn’t do a mixed match or something like that, you know, something you would see all the time of AAA wrestling on TV. That wasn’t part of the game. I’d have loved to play as Octagoncito taking out a bunch of the full-sized wrestlers
The create-a-wrestler feature that was in the game wasn’t very good either. I remember creating some wrestlers and knew they weren’t as good as wrestlers I created in other games, let alone create something that fits in with the style of AAA.
Eventually, I put the game back in the case and put it with the other games I had acquired. I didn’t play it much after that. I found it to be really hard at times and confusing at others. It was not as good as AAA I was watching on TV at the time and quickly lost my interest.
The funny thing was when I was at work it became obvious I was the only one that actually bought that game. Out of all the copies of the game we had at the time in that display case, That space where my game had sat was the only one there. Try as I might but I couldn’t sell another game, let alone my coworkers. I think the other ones in the display case we had were boxed up and sent back eventually. Those were always a fun part of the job.
Unlike that game, I look back to my time working at the store with more fondness than what that game provided.
