Ultimate Muscle is a popular manga and anime series, called Kinnikuman in Japan. However, people that grew up in the 80s or 90s in the US and UK (and likely some other places) have probably played with Ultimate Muscle toys, usually called Muscle Men or just MUSCLE (a backronym for Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere). They’re the little rubbery wrestling figures that came in loads of strange designs.
With this being a wrestling game from Aki, who made great N64 wrestling games like No Mercy, you might expect something surprisingly deep using their previous knowledge. Unfortunately, this is just a very basic fighting game with a wrestling theme, with no pins involved. I quickly found that if you use your grab attacks until your special move is fully charged and repeat will make you trounce most fights.
In the main arcade mode, each fight is introduced by some simple cutscenes, which are voice acted by the cast of the show. Although the main vibe of most of the characters seem to be “purposefully annoying”. As you earn money, you can also use capsule machines to unlock pictures of the rubbery toys.