There was a little surprise sitting on the back side of THQ’s booth. When you walked by, there was a long lineup of arcade style cabinets standing up for play. Inside these cabinets was a collection of machines running WWE: Superstars. THQ was trying to make a point. This isn’t your typical overly complex, inaccessible grapple fest. This is a freaking arcade game.

Say hello to the spiritual successor to WWF: The Arcade Game. In place of complex pins, slow plodding wrestlers, realistic depictions, and strategy are giant comically over powered character models, high flying super moves, two button combos, and lots of button mashing. Superstars is an arcade game at its core meant to appeal to that generation of WWF/E fans from the 90s that enjoyed the balls-to-the-wall bullshit style of face smashing insanity that wrestling games of the era touted. Its made to appeal not only to WWE fans, but also mainstream fighting fans with its more traditional six button style of fighting (strong/quick attacks and strong/quick grapples) and dual button press super combos. If Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 is like Street Fighter, think of this as Marvel Vs. Capcom. Its total random, crazy, bullshit fun.

The comparison to Marvel isn’t totally unwarranted. All the wrestlers have been jacked up to Incredible Hulk scale. All of their trademark attacks and finishers have been included in the game, but everything is done in an over-the-top style that is nothing short of laugh educing. Muscles are steroid levels, and characters get bruised and red after taking some abuse. Clearly the game wasn’t finished yet, but things looked plenty cool as is.

The L1 & R1 buttons serve as your two block/counter buttons. L counters grapples, and R counters blocks. Its a gambling game to guess which attack your opponent is going to throw and block it appropriately because the grapple block button isn’t going to block a punch or kick to the groin. If you can keep guessing each others moves, a grapple reversal fight can start. You can keep calling your opponents grapples and attempt to reverse them into an offensive attack. Reversals can get very tactical, but the combat system is so easy to wrap your head around that we were throwing reversals and super moves like pros within eight minutes. Each confrontation is a little different Combination button presses trigger super moves, which are really exaggerated versions of their real trademark moves. Its all incredibly easy to get into, yet with tons of depth. Air juggling is incredibly easy. Slam your opponent into the ring hard enough, and they bounce back up into the air ready for another hit/grab. In one particularly awesome fun beta bug while playing with Matt Green (him playing as John Cena and me as The Rock), I was slammed into the ground so hard that I went through the floor and completely vanished, only to reappear in the sky and crater back to the Earth with a comedic bounce. Awesome.

WWE All-Stars is the kind of wrestling game that they used to make, and its just goes to show that arcade wrestling is just as wild of a party game now as it ever was.