September 1987
Sports (Namco/Data East)
This is easily the best fighting game we’ve seen so far. Granted, the competition is Karate Champ and Urban Champion that’s not hard to do. Even Trojan beat those games, and it was weighed down by that crappy side scrolling mode. It also easily beats M.U.S.C.L.E. and Tag Team Wrestling by miles each.
Which isn’t to say that this is a good game by any means. It’s more like saying it’s the best choice for a meal when your options are all things that make you wonder if anyone dropped a hot dog under the bleachers at last nights high school basketball game. Yeah, I went there. And it won’t be the worst place I go with this post either.
Let’s start with the graphics, because that is easily the best and worst part of this game. The good part first. Unlike M.U.S.C.L.E., you get to actually attack in a three dimensional world. This isometric 3D effect actually works pretty well here. Except for the crowd everything is pretty clear and colorful and actually a bit better than the arcade version in my opinion. Less realistic, more cartoonish, and I like that.
Really, would it have been so hard to give the characters more of a difference than skin and hair color?
My big problem with the graphics is that the boxers are essentially the same. They change shorts, dye their hair, and get a skin treatment so everything’s a different color. That’s about it. I actually think it’s hilarious that the dark skinned guy in the screen shot to the left has blond hair. That just usually doesn’t happen naturally.
More hilarious though is how the referee and boxers just disappear when they’re not needed. The referee is there for the start of the fight, and is invisible until a boxer is knocked down and he’s needed to do the count. While the referee is counting, the boxer who is still standing disappears.
I’m not exactly sure where they go. Maybe there’s a trap door and they go down to get something to eat.
But in the end, this is the NES. And an arcade port at that. NES games don’t have to have the best graphics anyway and there’s something to be said for staying true to the source material. Which is just a fancy way of saying that if the only problem with this game was the graphics then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Sadly, there are other problems.
To say that the controls seem off would be a major understatement. I was pressing left and the guy would move right, then left. I would press nothing and the guy would move. I’m fine with automatically facing the opponent. There’s almost no time in boxing where it’s a good idea to have your back to the other fighter1.
The B button does some sort of defensive move depending on the situation. A punches. Just A is a jab. You can only do a hook punch when you’re facing the opponent vertically, and an uppercut when facing horizontally. For a body blow you have to hit B and then A, because it makes total sense to defend and then punch. Sadly this is the control scheme that makes the most sense.
There’s also a smattering of RPG elements in giving you a number of stat points to distribute between punch, speed, and stamina. That in itself is fine, I like getting to make a boxer the way I want it instead of the way the developers say I should have it. But you press left to increase your speed, up for punch, and right for stamina. There’s no way to decrease the allotted points except for pressing down to reset everything.
The only thing I'm going to say is that this is a scene from the arcade original. Except there it was less creepy.
In the end, Ring King just really isn’t worth it. The controls suck so much that it even makes me think that Clu Clu Land had a good set up. Really, how does that happen? I was pretty sure that I would never find a worse control set up than that.
I just so no point in playing a fighting game where the moves I can use are partially depending on where I am in relation to the opponent. Distance is one thing, and I’m not saying that I should be able to stand in an opposite corner of the ring and still hit the other guy. But I should be able to throw a type of punch no matter where I am.
I know it gets better. It has to get better. Doesn’t it?
- I know almost nothing about boxing, so I’m leaving open the chance that there is actually a good time to turn your back. But if there is, I can’t think of it. [↩]
for what it’s worth, this actually isn’t a Data East game, merely a repub.
the Famicom release was part of Namco[t]‘s “Family Series,” as Family boxing. another such example is Rock ‘N Ball, which is a port of Namco’s Family Pinball; albeit with Namco characters from the original altered. the latter has a two-player pinball mode that’s pretty darn fun, for what it’s worth.
The thing is though, Data East as the publisher is still responsible in my eyes for letting it get out into the world. Namco gets some blame too since they were the ones that put this version together.
although i’m sure some would disagree, Data East’s tagline should have been “It’s Not Mediocre- It’s Data East.”
not to say they didn’t have some hits, and rare were their games objectively bad, and they were almost always mostly playable… and you could like them… but it’s hard to give them a lot more praise than that.
music was sometimes pretty rad, though.