The History of The Main Event - arcade wrestling documentary 

This video gets a thumbs up just based on the game being reviewed. I got all types of nostalgia feels from this one. I really miss being a kid in the 80s😢

I remember seeing this for the first time when it was brand new in the arcade. I just can't believe how much time has passed since then.I really wish I could go back. Long live the 80's.

P-Q.C. - your opening "happy little games" lines are classic, 47 year old laughter every time! Dude, thanks for bringing back childhood for a little bit with every one of your uploads! I owe ya, brotha!

I always picked Bigfoot Joe even though I had no idea how to play the game. "ALAN THE EMPIRE!!!!" This game was replaced by WWF Wrestlefest and in the same exact spot. Talk about an upgrade.

*PatmanQC* Thank you so much for reviewing The Main Event, one of my all-time favorite wrestling games from the arcades back in the day. You have no idea how much joy this brings to both me and my inner child 😁

If nothing else, I absolutely loved the cabinet "artwork". That sold it magnificently.

I like the personal touches of this channel. I've been coming here for 2 years and and seeing you cover the subjects that you love really does make this a great channel.

Visiting your channel is always a walk back into my childhood. I look forward recovery post! Keep up all the great work!

I had completely forgotten about this game. Thank you Pat. Something about classic Konami arcade games that brings a tear to me eye.

Awesome video Patman. I remember suggesting this video game for you to review about 2 months ago. It's a shame this game was never really converted for home use. I really enjoyed it and hope to add it to my game room sometime in the future. Thanks for reviewing this gaming icon back in my teenage years at the old bowling alley I use to frequent often.

I missed this arcade game. Brings back so many memories. Thank you for making this video.

"Stomps him-stomps him." "Figure four leglock", "El Condor is down...". Those sound bytes have occasionally played in my head ever since this game was released eons ago. I'm so glad a video was finally made about it. I'm surprised a sequel (or at least an upgraded version) was never released. I always thought the fan was yelling "hey pig face", lol.

Yes!!! I set my watch to PatMan and his dependability for great content!!! Thank you so much for your commitment to excellence💯

Awww man, the Final Round is a major throwback. The Main Event is a blast from the past! I was terrible at playing it. I couldn't figure out the different moves. Sweet video Pat💪🏆 Xenophobia is another crazy game from this time.

MAAAAAAD LOVE to you for having Firepro in your 1:03 mark, Pat!!!

Great video as usual. Excellent use of the legend Dennis stamp. I hope he got booked when he got upstairs

Every time you review a wrestling game, it's an instant "like" from me! I would love for you to do a video of one my personal favorites: "Tecmo World Wrestling." Although, it's not an arcade game, just a mere NES and/or Famicom game... so here's to hoping!

The Saturday Night Main Event was my Saturday night get together with friends back in the days to watch WWF action and the arcade was also part of my childhood which they had it at the main lobby of Bradlee's, it's like the Walmart of the 80's in the northeast retail stores as I was growing up in Connecticut. Excellent video Patman and I have to see you one day and perhaps we can play some OG wrestling games to relive the glory days.... That would kickass...lol.... Later!!

Yet another charming winner of a video. Thank you!

Thank you for the review. I always used the same tag team > Saturn six and Bigfoot joe. And thank you for pointing out that winning gave additional energy. I would play this in arcades. My favorite memories were at Penn station arcade, where one quarter gave me an entire weekend of play. That meaning I started playing on Saturday morning, went home at night, then came back Sunday morning and the game was still going on, so I continued playing all day Sunday. Loved this game!

Main Event was my second favourite wrestling game back in the day. WWF Superstars was my favourite and in my opinion it even still holds up well today.

I love your videos patman Qc

Let me tell you something brother! Patmania is runnin’wild dude! Whatcha gonna doooo? When Patmania runs wild on yooooouuuu!

I was hoping you’d get around to covering this. Good memories, even though it was mostly just a button masher/quarter eater

My favorite game playing with strangers in the arcade. It was so heartpumping

Awesome video as always! With this one, I think it's safe to say that you are the authority on wrestling video games! I played this in my local arcade and I loved it. But yes, it wasn't very popular for some reason. This game works well on the NES Classic Edition. Best team = El Condor and the Maui Mauler!

A blast from the past. Loved this game since i was and still am a lifelong pro wrestling fan. Also i was reminiscing about this game to a old friend recently. Good stuff 👍🏼

It's interesting to look at this and remember that by this point (1988), WWF had yet to release a single live-action video game (worded that way to work around "Microleague Wrestling", a turn-based CPU wrestling game). So if you wanted to control Hogan or Steamboat (and actually see them and move around), this was your only option. I love the way this looks; it must have been a thrill in 1988.

I loved this game back in the day. They had one in my local IGA, and my friend and I used to ride our bikes up there to play it. I would live to find one these days.

This game is in Degrassi high. Wheels stole money from his grandparents so he could play this. That’s how good the game is.

Can't wait when I saw the new upload

My favorite arcade game. Used to play for hours on one quarter. Would use the San Antonio Smasher and El Condor. At the beginning of the match, wait for the opponent to come close to the ropes, then hit the ropes with Smasher and hit a back drop which would always throw the opponent over the ropes. Then, beat them outside the ring until and barely beat the 20 count in the ring. Do that over and over until you have a ton of health. And then play as intended for a while. If you get low on health, repeat the ring out method to build back up health.

A few of those crowd insults are also heard in Blades of Steel when you engage in a fight. The 2 guys fighting shout them before the first starts.

King of the Ring wasn't created to boost House Show attendances, in the 80's there was no need to boost them, as Hogan shattered all records anyway and averaged 10,000+. Even the B- and C-Squads drew in bigger crowds than ever seen before in wrestling. The KotR was simply created to give wrestlers a push or reward them for their work, since there were only 2 Championships and Hogan had the World Championship for 4 years. It pretty much was created for Harley Race, since he had worked for the WWF on and off since the 60's but also was deemed to old for any of the Championships by then. So they just made him King of the Ring. Later it was used to push other upcoming wrestlers like Savage and Meng/Haku and it was a good storyline device as well.

Loved this one in the arcades. Our town was lucky to have three arcades,all with owners that appreciated these games. Pac-land,Peter Pack rat,sf2,gauntlet n many more in the others. Such a great time,so many 10ps spent.

Thanks for the great vid. I love me some Konami!! LOL I forgot about this game though.

This was one of those games from my childhood. There was another wrestling game which was pretty simplistic i played a lot back then. The big boss in that one was Golden Hawk or something.

Love to see your review of Heavyweight Champ.the cabinet swivels and the controls are rotating slide to control punches and dodging

I used to double karate chop that big button at Track & Field speeds and win titles via figure-4 leg lock 😁

I remember playing this game at my old arcade in my hometown when I was a kid. I miss those days.

People can't understand how huge it was to hear those voice samples if you weren't there at the time. It sounds all weird and grainy now, but hearing a voice on a machine back in those days was a thing!

🤣🤣This was a damn good video bro 💯💪🏽

Thanks for the vid! This being one of the lesser-known (for obvious reasons) wrestling games from the arcade era, I'm always interested in hearing someone break it down. Also, for some reason, I just felt the "..things were a bit more loosey-goosey" coming; no better way to describe the mid-80s Japanese game development scene getting "inspiration" for pop culture not widely known or popular in Japan.

Waooo amazing video 🤩, Thanks for the details. I loved that arcade game❤️

I saw this game around a few places back in the day. It felt so good the day I finally won a match in the game. By the way, this game did get a home release on the PC and Xbox 360 in the Game Room app.

Oh man I forgot about this game. I was obsessed with it for a few weeks when I was a kid, all the money I could find i used to play it in the arcades, most of the time on my own, but still I enjoyed it a lot.

One of my top 5 of all time. You can invent a ton of combos in this. While outside you throw the opponent across the bottom into your partners steel chair for example. or throw your opponent to the far side, quickly tag to a lighter guy, go to top rope and splash your opponent while he is running back.

I was just playing "The Main Event" and I remember seeing it in a flea market as a young boy. I actually took time out to try to find out each wrestler's weight based on their combined weights.

Great Main Event history, Patman! Thanks. WWE some recent years back, used to have a Saturday show called WWE Main Event on in the mornings. Interesting to learn Main Event WWF used to replace SNL once in awhile. Yes, many classic likenesses in this game. Thanks for the ports details too; 360 in 2013. For me, the funny dialog/drama and stunts are the draw to watch WWE, along with the over-the-top or unique characters.

Interesting SNL timeslot history, don't think I saw the SN:ME program here but I did watch GLOW at a very late time on a Sunday despite having school the next day lol. A pretty good idea to utilize that TV space instead of reruns.🙂 Thinking about it The Main Event is likely the first arcade wrestling game I remember playing. Also likely when I noticed Konami was a company that made some pretty good games.😁

I'm currently on vacation in the ball sack of Virginia and this made my trip worth it . Thank you

This game is probably the only one so far who totally captured how a wrestling game should be. Even more modern games like WWE2k fail miserably were you expend half of the time faint on the floor than fighting. This one was as you said a button masher, exactly what a wrestling game should be, when you had an opponent trapped on a lock it was a competition of who was able to press the button faster, the pins were also decided by button smashing, when you finished your match you felt like if you have had a real wrestling match of how tired you ended but it was amazing. I wish more modern games copied the system that this arcade had, this was a fantastic game that really got what a wrestling game should be.

Awesome review. I love the knock off characters lol

I remember this when I was in high-school. I was never a big wrestling fan, so I didn't know how obvious the wrestling character ripoffs were.

I love how the knock off of King Kong Bundy has long red hair. It makes him look like a second rate circus clown.

2:20 Frank Pellegrini (1956-2021). We'll see his name again when he and his brother Ed start P&P Marketing, through which they released "Police Trainer."

Early 80's wrestling was awesome, i remember my parents allowed me to watch Wrestlemania live in the middle of the night here in The Netherlands on Skychannel. Wrestling was here in the weekend on friday or saturday nights around 23;00 and that was late for my 10/12 year old kid. But it was so great. Played a lot of Wrestling games till early 2ks :)

Wellllll Pat Meeeeean... I-uh, think that was the greatest AND MOST MACHO INTRO IN THE WORLD... DIGGIT!!!

Another banger!! I too am a huge Rasslin fan!

I heard of these cabinet's being popular with the mod community back in the day and getting a treatment similar to Street Fighter Rainbow. Only instead of speed and crazy specials, the mod would expand the roster to 20 or more custom sprites and change the names to reflect popular NWA wrestlers of the 80's and add a 1-on-1 option. Somewhere some superfan got their dream match of Johnny B Badd vs. Jerry Lawler or maybe The Steiner Bros. vs The Rock n' Roll Express,

I remember playing Main Event at a pizzeria in the Pittsburgh area as a 9 or 10 year old. I had forgotten about the left-handed control scheme on the right side of the machine, which is a bit of an oddity now, but I didn't forget that big action button. I remember Main Event having wonky controls and it didn't feel like any skill was really involved...it just had a life-timer that ticked down until it was time for more money. Probably another borderline game that barely met the legal requirement of NOT just being some gaming machine that you put money into and had zero chance of ever winning. You put money in it and got 'some' chance to win for a short time!

One of my favorites of all time!!!

I picked up a PCB in the 90s and had it wired to an RGB monitor and a genesis gamepad. Using a rapid-fire gamepad makes the game a lot easier. I don't remember how far I got, but once I knocked the computer down, the rapid fire meant he NEVER kicked out. Unfortunately, eventually the computer just refused to go down and so I couldn't get any further. ;)

How I remember this game well. I never was good at it, but I always had fun.

This is my favorite arcade game 😎 I was once challenged to see how far I could go on 1 quarter, I used Saturn 6 and El condor, my strategy was simple, bell rings, I stay near ropes, when opponent gets close hit rope, shoulder block, when he falls put on the figure 4, and press the big button with my super fast reflexes, and 4 hours later i was still playing. I only gave up because I was to tired and sweaty to continue. Long live The Main Event 😎👍

Love that its a tag team game with only half of The Road Warriors 😂

Best intro ever

Great nostalgia and history for. One of my favorite game companies.

I love how you used the Konami music.. it brings back memories of playing zombies at my neighbors with my lil sis Ngl I was a hulkamaniac, until the undertaker.. when he locked warrior in the casket, I cried, then realized the deadman was the future Wow such a ripoff, coco looks like jyd in the ring and just wow never played this game that I remember.. I was perfecting Zelda, hogans alley and castlevania when this came out which is probably why I don’t remember it

I just saw Championship Wrestling Commodore 64 at the beginning there. Did you do a video on that?

Not sure if you ever saw the tv show Degrassi Junior High back in the 80's, but there was a guy on the show that use to play this game at the arcade.

Very interesting video.

This was such a step up from Mat mania which I also loved.

I remember playing this in the UK back in the day and pouring a stupid amount of money into it. The cabinet had 3 buttons and I seem to remember they were labelled as “Big Action “ , “Small Action” and “Tag” but there were no real instructions telling you what the difference between Big action and Small Action were. Devious 😏

Thanks Patman

i never played this game and skipped it thinking it was no good :( always loved wrestle fest! ps was that donald trump with kinky pants at the start 😂😂 pps the macho man intro was so funny!

Please do a video on the TIme Crisis series

At this time in my life I would have been 9 or 10 years old, I was lucky enough to have been bought a Commodore Amiga 500 for Christmas 1987. Every year we took a week long holiday to the seaside here in England, there were always lots of arcades, I blew all my money in the arcades every single time. The Main Event was one of the games I enjoyed the most in those days. Back then, I would have done near enough ANYTHING for a wrestling game on the Amiga, but none ever came out, not until much later in the system's life. By then I had migrated to the Super Nintendo and kind of had my pick of wrestling games anyway. The Amiga did ultimately get what I think I would have seen as a very satisfactory conversion of WWF Superstars, a game I would have maimed my granny for back when I first saw it in the arcade. These days I cannot play any of them. They're just too button mashy for me.

Great video! Though I do have to disagree with one thing. Within collecting and playing nearly every wrestling game ever made, I wouldn't say there are more misses than hits. There are a number of bad ones, but most are at least decent. It's more a question of which are top tier and what ones just fall in the middle.

The easiest way of beating opponents was to keep them outside the ring and throw them across the outside towards end of 20 count. Then jump back so you beat the count. While they smashed against the side.

I don't know how this flew under the radar for me. Now I need to find on MAME

Loved this game. Despite being a masher, Main Event was evolutionary in that, as a dedicated tag team game, you could have all 4 men fighting at once in the ring and outside. No other game offered the ability for your partne to intervene in the way Main Event did. The bedlam is what made it all fun.

Hey Kayfabe! That kills me every time I play this game

Cheers pmqc used to play this game in the UK never won a match 😢😢😢😢

When I was little I thought the masked wrestler was the Blue Blazer.

1. I love that we have AEW as an alternative! It’s nice to see a different approach to pro wrestling. 2. I was obsessed with this game growing up. Please keep the wrestling game reviews coming!

"You can win the next round, go for it!!!"

Love this game. Used to play it on MAME a lot as a kid

I've never seen this game before. You'd think they would have advertised it, but on the other hand they might not have wanted it to get too much attention due to a likely copyright suit.

Going on ten days I feel a new video coming

enjoyed this one in the arcade but by the time i got to play it on mame many years later it did seem a little shallow. curiously every machine i've ever seen in the UK has been the 3 button version.

I woulda loved to have played this, wish Konomi would put this on the home console.

Used to love this game. Here comes Alan.... He picked him up like he was a pencil. Biting.....

I’m just curious if anyone else played this in arcades where the owners of the arcade put up a sign that said “No karate chopping the buttons”…-as this was the preferred technique to break out of pinning predicaments.

I work for a network affiliate and was hearing that SNL is only continues as of now until 2025, talk of making a certain late night show a Saturday night once a week thing, or maybe even having an SNL every other week. Either way that's the office rumors, I do now the Simpsons look like the first chop at the next renewal in a few years.....no complaints on that though I'm still a trying to catch up on em

Love ya man, just can't do it. Never played a single wrasslin' game except Saturday Night Slammasters. It was okay before WWF came around. Superfly Snuka was cool. Iron Sheik was cool. Heard he died last week. RIP. After Atlanta TBS wrasslin' was gone, I lost interest. I did get to to meet Andre TG. That was kinda cool. Wish I would have got his autograph.

This was back when Konami could do no wrong. It was very popular at my arcade.

This game had terrible game play (suprising for konami) but the most addictive sounds ever... Would draw players in in the arcade. I still love hearing the sounds till today

That's a Back Suplex! Back breaker, come on son. Also the Brain buster looks just like a standard Suplex.

I always thought Alan the Empire could also be Bruiser Brody. But seeing the Japanese art, it's clear it was Andre.