Mentioned in a US sales catalogue, Main Event was to be a wrestling title released by Activision and was a conversion of the Konami arcade game The Main Event.
It is a game that was never really heard about in the UK, so we are wondering if perhaps it was a mis-print in the catalogue?
Well, interestingly after contributor Hank informed us that the game was the Konami conversion, we found a bit more info on a Chronology page on the C64. Here the following snippet was mentioned:
“At the Summer CES, Mediagenic releases the Main Event boxing game for the Commodore 64. Price is US$29.95. The program was written by Gamestar. [2002.14] [1148.27]”
The reference came from Info Issue 22 magazine from September/October 1988. But it was referred to as a Boxing game. Of course Gamestar had a boxing game released the year before, so there must have been some confusion.
Currently in Gamebase though, Gamestar has a title called “Take Down” listed – which has a 1988 release date and is a wrestling game which feels very similar to Main Event. Right down to the fact that it has 4 simultaneous wrestlers.
Is it possible that Activision lost the licence and then Gamestar reworked the game into “Take Down”? It is very much possible, but we’d need to find Take Down’s developers to confirm.
Do we have a mystery about to be solved?
Contributions: Hank
Don’t know if this confuses it more but:
Star Rank Boxing has a big Main Event logo;
http://www.stadium64.com/gameinfos/starrankboxing/starrankboxing1.gif
Take Down was reviewed in Commodore Magazine May 1989.
I thought the same – and it could well be, but if not for the 1988 reference we had. Take Down seems to be a potential link still, could be interesting! :)
Hey Frank,
There was this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Main_Event_(video_game) – by Konami. Around the same time, could have been a port, although I thought at this time Ocean/Imagine still had full Konami porting rights.
Brilliant spot Hank! Completely missed this! … Done a bit more digging as a result, and found some more info. Thanks! :)