Arm Champs (found Jaleco arm wrestling arcade game; 1988)

The logo for the Arm Champs 1988 arcade game.

Status: Found

Date found: 30 Sep 2022

Found by: Phil Bennett

Arm Champs was an arm wrestling arcade game released by Jaleco in 1988. The game was later followed by its more popular 1992 sequel Arm Champs II.

Gameplay

The objective of the game is to beat your opponent in an arm wrestling match with the arm strength of the player being measured during each round. The game has two modes. One mode allows the player to freely select an opponent to arm wrestle against. The second mode is a tournament mode where the player cannot select an opponent and instead must arm wrestle each opponent in order of difficulty. The game has five opponents each representing a country from around the world. There is Nessie Papillon (a female champ and a British professional wrestler), Mad Foreman (an unemployed man from Germany), Cho Yeongping (a Chinese fisherman), Mike Robinson (a South African miner), and Wolf Adams (an American convoy driver).

Availability

While there are ROM dumps of Arm Champs II available online, Arm Champs on the other hand was only be played in arcades that have the arcade machine. It wasnt until September 29th, 2022 when Twitter user Phil Bennett announced that he had acquired the Japanese version of Arm Champs and had dumped it onto MAME a day later.

Videos

Footage of an Arm Champs arcade machine in Wales.

Footage of an Arm Champs arcade machine being played at the 1988 Amusement Machine Show in Tokyo, Japan (Skip to 5:28).

External Links

• Wikiwand description of Arm Champs and Arm Champs II (Japanese Only)
• Arm Champs listed on a category of "unMAMEd Jaleco Games"
• The arcade flyer for the Arm Champs 1988 Jaleco arcade game.
• Another arcade flyer showing the five opponents and how to play the game.
• A page from The Armwrestling Archives that lists Arm Champs and Arm Champs II.