How to record a WAS video (Part 1)

Okay, let's try to get back on schedule. Today let's see what goes into making a Wrestle Angel video. Let's say a request comes in for, I dunno, Beauty Ichigaya vs Mighty Yukiko. Step one is to go to this page here. It has a listing of all the girls in the game. Except, of course, that the names are all in Japanese - you need to click on the name of a wrestler to see it in english. Like so.
Now, if I'm lucky, the request will be for two wrestlers I've already identified and saved in my big database. If that's the case, we're off to the races and I plug in the gamebridge and start the game up.

If not, it's time for a detour. I have three options. One is to harass the person via private message and go "where r they on this page lol!!!!". The second option is to try Google Translate - amazingly enough, it works pretty well. Maybe 70% of the girls have the correct names; The ones who don't either still have the japanese charecters, or silly names like "Cannabis Power of God" or "Mackie Drunk", both of which you have to admit are pretty good names.
If all else fales, I just click on each girl's face and... that takes a while. I've been through the list so many times I can kinda remember who's where. You'll notice they have different art styles (compare this to this to this) which does help. In any case, once I've gotten them picked out, it's time to turn the game on and pick exehibition. Here's the charecter select screen:



Looks simple enough, right? Except that the select screen doesn't match up with the fricking list on the website. While the website lists the first wrestler as Mighty Yukiko and Beauty Ichigaya, but on this select screen, the first two are Suzumi Ishikawa and Chizuru Nagahara. Thanks, guys. It could be worst, at least: The Legend charecters appear first in the page and in the game, so you can kind of guess what area in the list each girl will appear in.

Anyways, if you put your cursor over a name and hit square, a picture of the wrestler comes up. Most of them have a new picture here, of them in thier street clothes, and some of them are really cute. Check out Succubus Manabe's awesome jacket:




After they've both been found, they're assigned a power level, 1, 2, or 3 - I usually do the CPU at level 2 and myself at level 3 to start, because it's much easier to make an exciting match if I don't have to worry so much about just winning. If one girl is squashing the other, I'll go back and re-record the match on a different power level. Usually, if the wrestler I'm using is too strong for her opponent, I can mask it by intentionally using weaker cards, but if she's taking off a third of the lifebar with slams, I'll usually have to go for a re-record on a different power level.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? After selecting the power levels, you pick wether the CPU or a human player controls each wrestler, and set if they get thier finisher automatically - I always choose this, for extra drama.

And now we're ready to start the match! In part 2.