I’m like 99% sure this is from 2009 or 2010, during a break from Hawk & Croc. Brandon and I talked about possibly doing a fan comic using the characters from Capcom’s wrestling video game, Saturday Night Slam Masters (SNSM is known as Muscle Bomber: The Body Explosion in Japan). We never ended up doing it, but if we were gonna do it, I’d have to at least practice drawing the characters.
I like that I combined the end of his first name with the beginning of his last name in this, so it reads “VictOrtega.” I’m not sure it actually works, but the idea is pretty clever.
In the intro to SNSM, you see Ortega rip off his shirt in a method very reminiscent of Hulk Hogan, while he wears the World Championship belt… but he’s not even in the game!
Thankfully, Victor Ortega DOES appear as a playable character in the game’s sequel, Super Muscle Bomber: the International Blowout, or, as it’s known in the USA, Ring of Destruction, which is SUCH a 90s-cool title, I don’t know that I can even possibly not like it.
I guess I only remembered Ortega’s gear being orange stripes on the side, but now that I look at his character design more closely, I see that it’s a complicated cod piece and some kind of thigh padding?
I mean, the character designs for SNSM/Muscle Bomber were done by Tetsuo Hara, the creator of Fist of the North Star, so who am I to argue?
