Patreon button  Steam curated reviews  Discord button  Facebook button  Twitter button 
3DS | PC | PS4 | PS5 | SWITCH | VITA | XB1 | XSX | All

Heavyweight Championship Boxing (Game Boy) artwork

Heavyweight Championship Boxing (Game Boy) review


"Heavyweight Championship Boxing was the first boxing game on a Nintendo handheld. With no real predecessor to look at, developers TOSE were required to design the game interface and hope their vision did not flop on arrival. Heavyweight Championship Boxing turned out surprisingly decent."

Heavyweight Championship Boxing, simply called Boxing in Japan, was the first boxing game for the Nintendo Game Boy, and therefore by default the first boxing game on a Nintendo handheld. With no real predecessor to look at, developers TOSE were required to design the game interface and hope their vision did not flop on arrival.

In some respects, HCB turned out surprisingly decent. The bulk of the game, where you do your actual boxing, takes place from a first-person perspective while facing your opponent, much like the Boxing section of Wii Sports. Here, you use the A and B button to jab at your rival boxer with your right and left hands respectively, while you can press the Down and Up button to deliver and guard against hooks and upper-cuts. The controls are fairly intuitive, and the only real frustration is that sometimes your hits are stopped from being delivered if your foe strikes first.

A clean view also helps when fighting. Given the small size of the Game Boy's screen, there is little clutter. Aside from a couple of gauges that you can use to time hits for more damage and Special Attacks and some more on the bottom you use to check your health metre, most of the screen is focused on the boxer you are facing off against. When you send out a hit, you can clearly see if you landed it by the smack of his head or if it was blocked when he has his arms up. An outline of your own head is used both as a crosshairs and to avoid punches. You need to roughly line up the other boxer in your head outline to ensure you hit his head or arm-block, but similarly, if he is not in the crosshairs, any punch he sends at you will not fly true.

Where the game breaks down is mostly in its technical limitations. To perform a Special Attack, which removes a significant amount of your enemy's health and knocks him down with a chance of a technical knockout, you must strike him when your Punch gauge is full for either gauge. Although the gauges are easy to see, a Special also requires the condition of your boxing gloves flashing, a seemingly random event. The flickering of the boxing gloves is difficult to detect, and because it ends after a single fill-up of your gauge, or if you send out a punch prior to your Punch gauge being full, you may not even have realised your gloves were flashing.

Also, you are presented with six different unique characters you can choose to play as at the start of the game, with all the boxers you do not choose given their own unique appearances when engaged in a bout with them in the ring. However, there is a definite tier here - two or three of the characters do barely any damage against higher-level opponents, and their Specials do not always register as Knockouts. Conversely, picking The Champ allows you to steamroll the competition. A difficulty option would have been better.

Additionally, there is only one single track that plays throughout the majority of the game, intermittently broken up by a short tune that follows a knockout or during a break. An annoying high-pitched chime counts out the Knockout count up to 10. I found myself turning the sound off right away. Eye of the Tiger, this is not.

Overall, Heavyweight Championship Boxing turned out about as well as could be hoped for an early release on a primitive hardware. You certainly are not going to play this today for fun, but as perhaps the very earliest handheld boxing game (definitely the earliest on a Nintendo handheld), it shows how playable a handheld boxing game can be with a small screen and limited buttons.



darkstarripclaw's avatar
Community review by darkstarripclaw (July 05, 2013)

A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.

More Reviews by darkstarripclaw [+]
Papers, Please (PC) artwork
Papers, Please (PC)

Papers, Please is mercilessly satirical with its subject matter, taking place in a fictional backdrop of Second-world countries. Some of it is blatant, with the various propagandising, to the more insidious. As a Customs Inspector, you are responsible for processing several applicants a day, whether foreigners or Arsto...
Rhythm Thief & The Emperor's Treasure (3DS) artwork
Rhythm Thief & The Emperor's Treasure (3DS)

While Rhythm Thief is an obvious collection of musical mini-games, the game is also part point-and-click. While going around Paris, you get treated to a decent bit of recent French history, some of it coming into play as the game's story runs itself out. Phantom R's nightly occupations, stealing unique items from museu...
Altered Space: A 3-D Alien Adventure (Game Boy) artwork
Altered Space: A 3-D Alien Adventure (Game Boy)

The game dumps you off in a small room, expecting you to travel through several rooms in many different possible paths until you find an elevator or teleporter that takes you to the next level. The game takes an isometric perspective, with developers Software Creations having also created the isometric Solstice ...

Feedback

If you enjoyed this Heavyweight Championship Boxing review, you're encouraged to discuss it with the author and with other members of the site's community. If you don't already have an HonestGamers account, you can sign up for one in a snap. Thank you for reading!

You must be signed into an HonestGamers user account to leave feedback on this review.

User Help | Contact | Ethics | Sponsor Guide | Links

eXTReMe Tracker
© 1998 - 2024 HonestGamers
None of the material contained within this site may be reproduced in any conceivable fashion without permission from the author(s) of said material. This site is not sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, or any other such party. Heavyweight Championship Boxing is a registered trademark of its copyright holder. This site makes no claim to Heavyweight Championship Boxing, its characters, screenshots, artwork, music, or any intellectual property contained within. Opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily represent the opinion of site staff or sponsors. Staff and freelance reviews are typically written based on time spent with a retail review copy or review key for the game that is provided by its publisher.