Galactic Wrestling is a wrestling game for people who find the WWE too firmly rooted in real life. It is also for people who find the WWE too soft.

That is probably a poor choice of words. Consider the suspiciously large pectorals of most WWE wrestlers, and also consider the notorious side effects of anabolic steroids on the health and size of their users' dangly man-bits, and you cannot help but conclude that the WWE is too soft.

Haw!

Okay, enough smutty asides. Whether you consider the WWE or not, you must admit that Galactic Wrestling is just about the toughest and quickest thing its genre has ever produced. It is a wrestling game from Space, full of Space Wrestlers and Space Fights and Space Conspiracies to take over the world. It is totally off its head, albeit in a way that will appeal to you.

The game is set in the near future, at a time when humanity has developed the advanced technology required for interstellar flight, but not the advanced culture required for not being interested in wrestling anymore. An evil race of Space Wrestlers use this to their advantage and invade, only to be repelled by a cadre of Saviour Wrestlers from the tellingly-named Muscle Planet.

If you have ever read a video game back story, you know what comes next. Yes, the evil Space Wrestlers come back stronger than ever, and ever-more-determined to take over the world. That is how things work in video games. (Also, that is how things work on TV. Apparently the whole saga of Muscle Planet and Space Wrestlers with the power of "Ultimate Muscle" is based on a cartoon, which airs periodically in the U.S. but not here. At least not on analog TV. Saints be praised.)

Like most other video game back stories, this one is disposable and irrelevant to the central object of play, which is to beat the stuffing out of a human or alien wrestler until he falls down and cannot get up. You begin by choosing a wrestler from a large list, which includes such notable brawlers as "RamenMan," "SpecialMan," "Manitoban," "Comrade Turbinski," "Kevin Mask," and "Dik Dik Van Dik."

There is a knack to coming up with names like that, which teeter halfway between quietly absurd and plain old dumb, and which make high people fall out of their chairs and writhe around on the floor holding their sides, and which cause those same high people to observe, when they have recovered, that holy cow that was totally funny as balls. So the writing team deserves congratulations.

Now, the wrestling. It is not very subtle. The basic idea is to hammer on the "attack" button, which causes your wrestler to kick or punch the other wrestler. This can be combined with other buttons and tilts of the joystick to yield special, more powerful attacks. Generally it is punching and kicking, and if you push the button hard enough or often enough, it also involves some leaping into the air and spinning around before the punch or kick actually lands.

All of which is to say that, yes, there is an elaborate system of "combos" here, which longtime fans of fighting and wrestling games will master and polish and use to become unstoppable masters of Ultimate Muscle. But it is also to say that you can totally kick LoMeinMan's ass simply by hitting "attack" over and over and over. It is a control scheme well suited for people who find the character names funny as balls.

Most wrestling games are unsubtle. Most wrestling games favour the presentation over the play. So WWE-themed wrestling video games, complete with their authentically loud music and booming flame cannons, tend to throw WWE fans into glorious delerium, even while they bore the dickens out of everyone else. Galactic Wrestling may not light your night on fire, but it will not bore you. And if you count yourself among the Harolds and Kumars of the world, it will be an utter delight.

There is a wrestler named "BlackHole," who has a big empty space between his chin and his forehead. And there is one called "StarFace." He has a star on his face, see.