Humanity has some personality quirks we’ve spent the last several thousand years failing to breed out of existence. Chief among these is our desire to watch one person pulverize another in combat. No less a philosopher than the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 remarked of the human race, “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.” Once video games became a thing in the 20th century, developers started turning everything into electronic entertainment, and few things could make that transition as easily as competitive sports. Which brings us, of course, to boxing: a slightly more civilized form of gladiatorial combat than was actually practiced by real gladiators, and thus a perfect money-making crop for game companies to harvest, right? But if you’ve been reading my columns for any length of time, then you know somebody’s ending up with a black eye in this one. (A huge shout-out to my friend Tony for encouraging me to research this project).

Boxing

Early home boxing games were as basic as you can imagine. Take Activision’s Boxing on the Atari 2600 for instance: it featured a top-down view of two fighters, one white and one black, throwing haymakers at one another and inadvertently setting back race relations twenty years. Thanks, Activision!

Despite the simplicity of Atari’s controller and a two-minute time limit for scoring points, the game is fun and will give your hands a good workout. With just the joystick and a single button, you maneuver your fighter around the ring throwing long straight punches, close-quarter jabs, and (hopefully) delivering that 100-point KO that sends you over the top. The only real downside to Activision’s Boxing is a lack of options. Besides using the difficulty selector switch to determine how hard the computer hits you, there’s little else you can change about the game. It’s always the same generic dudes limited to a couple of moves fighting for a single round. It does offer two-person simultaneous play, but that should come standard for a game about two men beaning one another in the schnoz.

Boxing (original, I know…)

Not to be outdone in the low-bit era, Intellivision got its own boxing game (also called Boxing in a fit of incredible inspiration) a year later in 1981. Graphically speaking, this game is leaps and bounds better than Atari’s entry. Mattel used a side-view mode, allowing for a full-bodied boxer display instead of Activision’s goofy head-and-arms perspective. Intellivision’s pugilists are fully animated both top and bottom, capable of executing a variety of punches, dodges, and blocks. KO’d fighters actually collapse on the mat, and the winning boxer raises his gloves in a victory pose. While Atari’s nameless fighters were basically mirror images of one another in terms of strength and stamina, Intellivision’s had some built-in personality. Six different boxers were on offer, each a different color, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Blue was high defense, Red was high offense, Tan was high endurance, the Dark Green and Light Green guys were totally balanced. And the sixth guy, Mr. Yellow? He was the wild card–his stats were randomly generated before each match. Could be a contender, could be a bum. The only real down-sides to Intellivision’s game were the controllers, which guarantee early-onset arthritis no matter what game’s in the cartridge slot, and the lack of a single-player option. If you don’t have a partner, you can’t have a fight. True in real life, true in Intellivision’s Boxing.

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!

Nintendo entered the ring with Punch-Out!! in the arcades, and produced a home version for the Japanese Famicom. When it came to the North American localization, they had a grand idea: what if there was a big-name, real-life boxer, instead of some made up character, at the end to provide the ultimate challenge? Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa, himself a huge boxing fan, attended a match in 1986 featuring an up-and-coming twenty year old pugilist by the name of Mike Tyson. Tyson’s skills so awed Arakawa that he returned to the office determined to get him in the NES game. Shortly thereafter they acquired the rights to Tyson’s likeness and released Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!. As sometimes happens when dealing with people who cripple others for a living, this did not end well despite a promising start.

Before the game’s released, Tyson won the World Boxing Council heavyweight title, beating Trevor Berbick in two rounds to become the youngest heavyweight champion in the world. Nintendo suddenly had the face of boxing right there in their own game in 1987, secured for a full three years. It took exactly that long for everything to fall apart.

In 1990, after a string of victories which saw him holding three titles simultaneously, Tyson squared off against number three ranked James “Buster” Douglas. While Douglas outclassed Tyson in height, weight, and reach, Tyson was younger, ranked #1, and possessed an unbroken 37-0 winning streak. Tyson’s presumed destruction of Douglas was such a foregone conclusion, nobody was willing to take bets on the outcome. The one casino which did threw Douglas under the bus at 42:1 odds, enough to keep all but the most sociopathic gambler’s hands out of his own wallet. Tyson, in their minds, could have only lost this fight by not showing up.

“Mike who? Never heard of him.”

What happened that evening in November of 1990 went down in history as the most stunning upset ever witnessed in heavyweight boxing. Douglas drew Tyson, a guy who ended the vast majority of his fights within the first two rounds, into a forty-minute brawl. It culminated with Tyson hitting the canvas, unable to recover, struggling just to re-insert his mouth guard, and Douglas claiming the title. Nintendo opted not to renew Tyson’s license (a decision for which they were no doubt eternally grateful after Tyson’s subsequent rape conviction and three year prison term), and a new version of Punch-Out!! was released with the generic Mister Dream replacing Iron Mike as the final opponent. Nintendo as a developer has been leery of producing their own licensed games ever since.

Sega rushed to capitalize on this victory by signing Douglas to their camp as part of the “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” campaign. They used Douglas in their own commercials to signify their place as the scrappy up-and-comer determined to dethrone the reigning champ. And nothing said “In your face!” to Nintendo like releasing a boxing game with Buster Douglas headlining. Of course this came back to bite them in the ass–why else would I be writing about it?

James “Buster” Douglas Knocking Boxing

See, James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing on the Genesis wasn’t an original game. Instead of creating new software for their new licensee, Sega opted to shoehorn Douglas into a previously existing game called Final Bout, which, like Punch-Out!!, was the home port of an arcade original. But while Nintendo had the decency to create Mike Tyson for their 8-bit hit, Sega felt compelled to tempt fate. In the ultimate insult to Douglas (who cried all the way to the bank, we’re sure), Sega took the existing sprite of one boxer and performed the time-honored technique known as “the palette swap”. That’s right: the guy who dropped Mike Tyson after a forty-minute slobberknocker was immortalized on the Genesis with a recoloring of the generic Detroit Kid sprite. To add further insult, Sega did add a completely new boxer to the North American release of the game, and that character, Iron Head, wasn’t a palette swap of anybody. Holy crap on a cracker Sega, you didn’t just poke karma to see if it was awake, you grabbed it by the short hairs, gave a hearty tug and laughed.

Karma, as it turns out, has little respect for anyone playing train conductor with its sack, and responded in kind. Before James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing hit shelves, Douglas hit the canvas for the ten-count, dropping his world heavyweight title to Evander Holyfield in his first title defense. Rather than the victory purse, Sega found themselves holding a championship boxing game with a non-champion on the cover. Adding further to their woes, the game scored mediocre reviews in the press. In fact, Mega magazine proclaimed it one of the ten worst Genesis games of all time due in part to a choice of only five fighters. When an Intellivision game from ten years earlier offers more options than your modern-day release, perhaps you need to re-think your strategy.

The REAL Deal!

Most antagonists would assume Sega learned their lesson after that, but Karma was in full Samuel L. Jackson mode. In the aftermath of the Douglas/Holyfield fight, Sega ditched James Douglas and signed Holyfield as their next big fighter so they could publish Evander Holyfield’s “Real Deal” Boxing. The game, which featured ten times the number of potential pugilists as James “Buster” Douglas, debuted in late August of 1992. Best of all for Sega, Holyfield hadn’t dropped the heavyweight title to someone else in the meantime.

This gave Sega a little over two months to enjoy the ride before Riddick Bowe beat Holyfield by decision that November, ending the champion’s reign and leaving Sega struggling again to sell a boxing game based around a championship boxer no longer held the belt he was holding on the cover. As Karma glowered down at Sega and dared them to say “What?” again, Sega and passed on the opportunity to feature Riddick Bowe Boxing on their system in 1993. Because Karma still wasn’t done with the curb-stomping, that game not only became a runaway hit on the Super Nintendo, but also was recognized as one of, if not the, best boxing titles of the 16-bit era.

Nothing but the Greatest here.

By the time Sega published Greatest Heavyweights, their 1994 tribute to several decades’ worth of ring legends, Karma had wandered back to its lair to rise again should some unfortunate company choose to goad it with sticks. This is my personal pick for best boxing game on the Genesis, featuring eight top-tier contenders (and thirty fictional sluggers), an expansive create-a-fighter mode, a digitized rendition of Michael Buffer’s famous “Let’s get ready to rumble!” slogan, and plenty of fun.

But the damage had been done. Every game developer learned a valuable lesson about relying on name recognition to sell games based around people who make their living pummeling others into unconsciousness. Sega just happened to learn it harder than everybody else, which was rough back then, but comical in hindsight–just the sort of stuff you expect to see in a “Revenge of the License” column.

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)