An 82 MEG early beta of SNK's 3 Count Bout!

(CHECK OUT THE HIDDEN SECRET MYSTERY WRESTLER!)

The ORIGINAL Roy Wilson! Amazingly, the 106 Mega Shock SNK wrestling game 3 Count Bout, which features 10 player selectable characters, was originally an 82 Meg game with only 8 selectable characters. However, all is not what it seems. Although the final version had 2 more characters to choose from, 2 of them were simply "pallette swaps" of other characters with alternate names.

Fire Suplex Title Screen

Although often overlooked, the first "wrestling" game for the NEOGEO was actually King of the Monsters released in 1991. It was at its' core a wrestling match and it contained all of the key elements of the sport, but because it used a larger monster sized scale for its' implementation, it was heavily promoted by magazine reviews as an action title and it fared quite popular both at the arcades and on the home system.

Initially announced in 1992, SNK was reported to be working on another NEOGEO wrestling game. It was untitled at the time, but it was reported to be 140 megs in size! However, very little information has ever been found on this earlier build of the game and so we may never really know what it may have looked like.

3 Count Bout Title Screen

At some point along development, SNK made the decision to change the character roster of the game.

Roy Wilson vs Bomberder

At first, we assumed this "9th" character was originally intended to be a final boss character. (very similar to the Great Puma of Nintendo's NES Pro Wrestling) However upon closer inspection, it was discovered that he was actually the original concept for Roy Wilson. Roy Wilson began as a "standard" wrestler (similar to Terry Rogers) but was eventually redrawn and recreated with a more diverse personality as a German rastafarian character.

It is completely unknown as to why SNK made these changes. If they had enough time to redo one character, as well as double up two others, why not simply leave the roster at 8 with the 9th character as a final elusive boss? A boss that could also be hidden and playable. Surely this would have been a far better addition then simply repeating 2 characters. With some more time, SNK might have been able to have incorporated a real final boss into this game, but instead the character Master Barnes was given the status of "current SWF champion" and as such is the last wrestler you must defeat to see the ending.
Roy Wilson vs Blubber Man