Instead of just sticking to bowling games, I figured I'd also check out a different sports genre for the SNES that hasn't been getting much love this month. Yeah, I'm talking about:
Riddick Bowe Boxing
Before we go further, you may have an opinion on Riddick Bowe. While his boxing record is fantastic, his personal life is a mixed bag. Here is a guy who used his personal fortune to ship medicines to Somalia. Here is also a guy convicted of kidnapping and stabbing his estranged wife and then later assaulting a different wife. While these incidents occurred well after the release of this game, it may taint your opinion of wanting to try out a game with his name on it. That's ok, because this game was also released in Spanish as
Chavez, with Riddick Bowe replaced by Julio César Chávez. They're the same games, but in different languages and with a different starring athlete as the big champion to take on.
How does it work? Well, you start by either picking a fighter or creating one. Fighters have three key stats: power, speed, and stamina. This affects how hard they hit, how fast they hit, and how many hits they can take. You then must choose your opponent from the top 25 ranked fighters to go up against. Between matches, you exercise to build up your stats, and since you're gonna start off fairly weak, it may be better to pick weaker opponents to build yourself up until you take on either Bowe or Chavez for the championship title.
Fighting consists of you going head to head in the ring against your opponent. However, this is not a Super Punch-Out clone. Instead, you're presented a side view. The four face buttons of the SNES controller are mapped to left and right jabs and left and right hooks. L and R are used for maneuvering around the ring and blocking when pressed together. There is an element of auto blocking too, but it requires you to be on the right plane and is usually only reliable against one punch, not combinations. And yes, you'll want to figure out some combinations. Why? Because the fight takes place on two planes: the head and the body. Normally, you protect your head, but you're open to a shot to the gut. You can drop down to protect the body, but you expose your head. Adding to this, your target is also based on the plane you occupy, so you have to be lower to go for the gut and higher to go for the head.
I've gotten pretty fond of shooting in towards my opponent, right hooking the body, and then throwing a left jab to their face when they drop to protect their ribs. Get into a good rhythm, and you can do a lot of damage to an opponent and drive them back into the corner, though it's not totally reliable to have only one trick up your sleeve; jabs have a longer range than hooks, so it's not always a bad idea to step back and toss in a quick straight while avoiding your opponent's own hooking fists. Pummel the body, the head, or the opponent enough, and they can drop to the mat, though you'll have to wait and see if they get up. Three downs in a round, and it's a TKO. Also, the more punishment you take, the bigger a chunk of your life bar does not steadily regenerate, so you can simply wear down an opponent to the point they don't have the health to be effective.
While this is all hunky dory, there is also another interesting mechanic: aging and retirement. Your fighter will age as you fight more matches, meaning after a point your stats will start to decrease. After 30 matches, your hair will turn grey, showing you've been around the circuit a while. After 40 matches, you retire, regardless of your championship status. Lose 2 matches in a row and you also retire. This works for your opponents too though, so you can actually force Bowe or Chavez into retirement by beating them in the ring. When this happens, they are permanently gone from the game unless you reset the cartridge data from the options menu. It's a cool idea for a mechanic that surprised me to learn.
Look, if you want your boxing games to feel more like boxing and less like a rhythm game, check either Riddick Bowe Boxing or Chavez out. They're fun takes on the sport.
It also helped that they had that beast of a defense.
