Ring King (NES) review "The only entertaining boxing you'll get from this game is when you repackage it..."

Ring King was way ahead of its time upon release. Hell, it was too far ahead; let's face it. Here you have a boxing piece that features custom stats that grow as you train, strikes apparently based on RNG, critical blows, and an incentive to continuously redo the same fights repeatedly. Yes, Ring King is the closest thing you'll ever see to a boxing RPG. It's just a damn shame it's also a wonky, repetitive, tedious crawl of a sports offering...

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of a boxing roleplaying experience piques my interest. You can imagine the kind of journey upon which you would embark: training, beefing up your combatant, playing with different builds, engaging in tournaments, taking on all kinds of opponents, and winning and defending titles after sessions of grinding. You could just dream pitting your little boxer against friends, and coaching them on their trips through the circuit.

Unfortunately, Ring King doesn't offer quite that much depth, and with as ancient as it is, it would be foolish to expect it. Sure, some of those features pop up, but not to the extent that most players would desire. The best we can hope for is humble content that lays the groundwork for more evolved boxing entries, and it at least provides that much. All the same, it's hard not to feel a tug of disappointment when you take in all the finished product has to offer...

You start this title by naming your contestant and distributing some attribute points to speed, stamina, and punch. These numbers basically determine how hard you hit or how many times you can miss a punch before you lose hit points. From there, you have a handful of options to select, including training, ranking, and tournament. The first one sends you through a series of simple exhibition matches. Repeated victories there means more points to allocate, so it's a good place to start.



Ranking and tournament modes aren't all that different. You box until you win a title or a trophy, with the former allowing you to defend your title after you've won it. The thing is victory doesn't typically come to fledglings. You have to build yourself up in training mode before you can hope to stand a chance at holding a major belt, and that means lots of boxing.

Lots and lots and lots of boxing the same opponents repeatedly...

That might not sound like a bad deal until you consider how the game plays out. You see, you don't get free reign over the ring. Using the D-pad, you position yourself on different sides of your opponent, taking choice shots and occasionally blocking when you can anticipate a blow coming. In effect, what you see on the screen tends to resemble dancing, and comes across as mighty underwhelming as a result.

During training, you don't always get a fair fight. The game occasionally sticks you with a dude whose character sheet easily outweighs yours. If you're good and patient enough, you can whittle his energy down and eventually squeak out a W. Mostly, though, the only thing you get is wrecked hard. Your rookie jabs might shave off a bar or two of your foe's health, while your opponent's seasoned gloves pulverize several of your strips of life and leave you dazed. Honestly, success boils down to luck more often than a sports game ought to. Maybe splicing this genre with RPG wasn't as great of a move as it sounded...

And you do this constantly, hardly ever needing to change up your strategy except to account for opposition with slightly different builds. Honestly, I would be surprised if most players make it past training, especially when you consider one annoying little detail: there is no save function, and you can only continue your career by writing down a password and re-entering it every time you restart.

The only solace you find in this exhausting professional brawler is a light chuckle between rounds, where you mash the A button to restore your health. Your boxer relaxes in the corner while someone performs an act that appears to be sexual on them. Look, I don't know what they're doing, and I don't care. I find it strange that no one at any point in developed said, "Oi, you know, it looks like he's gettin' a BJ from that ring attendant." Like seriously, nobody spoke up?



I can't fault anyone for getting burnt out on Ring King. You basically run through the same tiresome battles in a seemingly endless loop, all so you can buff up your guy and stand a chance at surviving one of the two major modes. If you haven't grown tired of the familiar rigmarole by that point, then a holiday should be dedicated to you and your undying patience.

I can't shake the impression that this affair was better suited for today's crowd. Think about it: advanced AI, more in-depth stats, a combat system still based on RNG, an actual story mode, online play, trading boxers with friends, not having to rely on lengthy passwords... This could've been an indie boxing RPG that everyone would've ignored save for the few people who chanced upon it in a bundle--and it likely would've been loved by that small group!

Instead, Ring King remains a dry, unimpressive boxer with a neat setup that wasn't well utilized. It sports too much of a grind with too little payoff and bouts that prove more boring than a Jimmy Young match. Maybe one day an indie dev will channel this title out of nostalgia and do its concept some justice. Until then, its core idea remains down for the count...

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (March 09, 2022) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.