Fire Pro Wrestling creator Masato Masuda dies at 48

Prominent video game designer and Fire Pro Wrestling series creator, Masato Masuda, passed away at the age of 48, Grasshopper Manufacture CEO Goichi "Suda51" Suda revealed today.

"He was 48 years old, still young. I genuinely pray for his happiness in the next world," Suda wrote. "He was one of the greatest creators of video games and he was my direct teacher. Thank you for giving us our favorite Fire Pro-wrestling. You are the god of it."

While at studio TRY, Masuda programmed and designed Pro Wrestling by himself with another developer creating the game's graphics. The wrestling game was originally released in Japan for the Family Computer Disk System in 1986, and launched a year later in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Masuda went on to develop the Fire Pro Wrestling series across numerous platforms for Human Entertainment, formally TRY. Masuda designed, programmed, wrote and oversaw the development of numerous other titles and series, such as formula One racing game F1 Triple Battle and hex-based strategy game Vasteel.

Suda met Masuda when he joined Human Entertainment in the early ‘90s where he first worked as a scenario writer on Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout. Suda later established game development studio Grasshopper Manufacture in 1998 before Human folded in 2000.