Topic: Masato Masuda Passes Away at 48

[Br26]

The Fire Pro Wrestling creator has passed away.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/37053/masato-masuda-passes-away-at-48

Masato Masuda, best known as the developer of the Fire Pro Wrestling series, has passed away at the age of 48, Suda_51 revealed via Twitter.

Originally developed for the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) in 1989, the Fire Pro Wrestling series spanned across a number of systems, including titles for the Super Famicom as well as the Game Boy Advance.  The latest release in 2012 was for the Xbox 360.

No cause of death has been revealed.

[Ian Sane]

Not even 50?  That sucks.

I love Fire Pro.  I remember when I first read about it when it was import only and I wanted it badly.  I pretty much bought both a GBA and a PS2 for their respective Fire Pro games.  The funny thing is that the controls are incredibly confusing and unintuitive so I pretty much never play the games.  The really impressive part is the create-a-wrestler mode and AI so I typically spent most of my time creating wrestlers and putting them in CPU vs CPU matches.  It's more like a match maker simulator to me than a wrestling game.

I don't know how involved Masuda was in the titles I've played since we were quite far removed from the original titles by the time the series made it to North America but he created one of my desert island series.  Rest in peace, Masato Masuda.

[Pixelated Pixies]

I'm very much aware of Masuda's influence, but I'm not sure I've played one of his games.

Was he involved in the N64 wrestling games at all?

[Shaymin]

During the N64 era, he would've been working on the Saturn/PSX/Dreamcast Fire Pro games.

Masuda did almost everything on the NES Pro Wrestling - only the art was someone else. He was 20 years old at the time. And Pro Wrestling does play like a proto-Fire Pro.