Boxing Day Special: Really Old Boxing Games For (Mostly) Obscure Old Systems

Boxing Day, December 26th, is the day when servants in the British Commonwealth would traditionally be given boxes of presents by their employers, as they were expected to work on Christmas Day itself. Forget about crimes of the upper crust though, because today we're going to be talking about boxing video games. You know, about people punching each other while wearing shorts. After writing a bunch of Christmas articles this month I've begun to worry what interesting holiday topics I've left for me to write about in subsequent years, should this blog actually last that long, but at least I'm unlikely to run out of boxing games to talk about in the near future. More specifically, this time we'll be talking about really old boxing games from the '70s and early '80s, for systems that our primitive forefathers turned to when they wanted to play what passed for video games back then. Here we go!

Heavyweight Champ (Arcade, 1976)

 

This early Sega arcade game about boxing has the honor of being the first video game about hand-to-hand combat—the first fighting game, in other words. Sadly, especially for such a milestone, the game is apparently lost: no cabinets or ROMs are known to exist. The controls look interesting—I'm guessing you moved the boxing glove controller up and down to aim/move your guard and moved it "in" to punch—and it's good to see that even in the first fighting game it included the two-player mode that is ultimately the real draw of the genre. Sega actually remade Heavyweight Champ in 1987 for the Sega System 16 arcade hardware, although from looking at it it doesn't seem to actually have much in common with the original aside from being named "Heavyweight Champ" and being about boxing, and at that point you might as well say Virtua Fighter was a remake of it too.

Boxing (Atari 2600, 1980)

 

You probably already know this, but Activision was the first "third party" video game developer, not legally affiliated with the creator of the console (in this case the Atari 2600) that they were making games, like Boxing, for. (Atari didn't take too kindly to this, unsuccessfully suing Activision to get them to stop.) This cover art is actually a fairly accurate depiction of the in-game graphics, especially when you consider many Atari 2600 games (and games for other systems of the day) featured elaborate artwork depicting spaceships or dragons or whatever only to have graphics that were simple to the point of abstraction, and you really had to use your imagination to see it as anything more than blocks running into other blocks. Still, these two pugilists seem oddly lumpy, with the attempt to depict the curves of human musculature resulting in their outlines wobbling around like they were drawn while in the backseat of a station wagon going over a cattle grid. 

It's interesting to note that while Heavyweight Champ had you view the action from the side (the correct perspective, as far as the subsequent history of the fighting game genre is concerned), Boxing positions the camera above the ring. Of course, in these early days developers had much less guidance and precedent regarding the "correct" way to do things, but it's still somewhat odd—it's not like people were paying big bucks to watch the pay-per-views of Muhammad Ali's fights from a ceiling-mounted camera. Also puzzling are the rainbows each boxer is leaving in their wake. My guess is that when the artist saw two monochromatic figures moving around on the screen, they felt the need to jazz things up with these colorful afterimages, with the end result resembling to the modern viewer a fight between two boxers powered by gay pride, a sad reminder that even stigmatized minority groups are subject to infighting.

Boxing (APF MP1000/Imagination Machine, 1978)

 

The APF MP1000 was an early video game console released in 1978 that that was later included as part of the APF Imagination Machine, a hybrid personal computer/game console released the following year. Whereas Heavyweight Champ was the first fighting game, Boxing for the APF appears to be a candidate for the first fighting game for a home console, although given the obscurity of the system (especially in its first iteration) it's hard to find any confirmation of that. After looking at a video of it in action, I'd say it's much more visually interesting than Activision's effort despite being released earlier, with multicolored boxers, speech bubbles where the competitors say things like "ow!" and "yay!", and a round system in which the fighters have to return to their corners every so often. Most importantly, whereas the Atari game featured "KOs" that were just the score being replaced with the letters "KO", this one lets you see your beaten opponent slump to the canvas, which is assuredly one of the most satisfying parts of boxing, whether real or digital. I mean, sure, there's more to boxing than big slugfests, but does any boxer really fantasize about winning on points? No, in their heart of hearts they know that the true purpose of the sweet science is to give a fellow human being a traumatic brain injury.

Boxing (Intellivison, 1981)

 

Boy, a lot of these games are just called "Boxing", huh? I guess that's what happens when it's such early days for the medium, marketing hasn't advanced to the level that you feel the need to title your games creatively and instead whoever programmed it just goes "well, it's a boxing game, so, uh... Boxing?" Anyway, did you know the Intellivision has a 16-bit CPU? It's true! Of course, the games still look like they're made out of Duplo, but they looked better than what the 2600 could manage and it's a neat bit of trivia anyway. This game actually depicts a ring complete with ropes and, like the APF Boxing, you get to see the KOs, so at least the extra power went to good use. You can even pick different fighters with different characteristics, a feature the back of the box advertises with the dubious sentence "Slip into the powerfully muscled body of the fighter of your choice."

As for the cover itself, it's not really all that interesting—it's just a few pictures of people boxing, and I question the decision to put an inset image over the main action, namely a fist impacting one of the boxers in the gut, possibly causing internal organ damage and giving the crowd the thrill they came to see. However, I will admit that I am intrigued by the fact that the boxer on the right appears to be wearing Sonic the Hedgehog's shoes. I'm also impressed by Mattel's bold decision to refer to the Intellivision console itself as the "Master Component", which makes it sound like the MacGuffin in dystopian sci-fi movie.

Boxing (Emerson Arcadia 2001, 1982)

 

I know what you're thinking, but no, I believe this artwork was this blurry on the box, the expressionist style possibly intended as an homage to the noted sports painter LeRoy Neiman. Anyway, here's another goddamn game just called Boxing, this time for the Emerson Arcadia 2001. The Arcadia, like the APF MP1000, was one of the second-generation also-rans that briefly existed in the shadow of the Atari 2600 before suffering a quick death, until the 2600 itself was mostly relegated to being a budget option by the arrival of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Despite this, the Arcadia inspired a number of clones and variants, including a licensed Japanese version distributed by Bandai that received a few anime games, including ones based on Doraemon, Mobile Suit Gundam, Macross, and Dr. Slump. As far as I can tell there's no regional lockout between the US and Japanese versions, so if the preceding sentence sent a thrill through your soul feel free to get an Arcadia and use it to play the Japan-only games, in the process earning the title of "World's Biggest Weeb". As for the actual game, this Boxing isn't as graphically advanced as the APF or Intellivision games, with the fighters duking it out not in a ring but in a white void, possibly representing the existential cruelty and isolation of having to get punched in the head for a living.

Boxing Match (Interton VC 4000, 1980)

 

Boxing Match isn't the most creative title out there, but at least it isn't another Boxing. Anyway, finally for today we have a boxing game for the Interton VC 4000, a console released only in Europe in 1978 by Interton, a West German hearing aid manufacturer. No, really! That's one of the charming things about early video game consoles, everyone seemed to think they could create a successful system. At least Interton had a background in electronics, although that doesn't seem to have helped them against mere toy companies like Coleco, Mattel, and, um, Nintendo.

This cover shows off the most important aspects of the sport—getting punched in the face, lying semiconscious on the canvas—but the real star is the mysterious figure silhouetted by the flashes of the cameras of those who came to see the fight. I'm trying to figure out what the gold thing on his back is supposed to be. It makes him look like a pangolin, or possibly one of a variety of large extinct armadillos known as a Glyptodont. His armor is what makes him such a fearsome boxer, whenever he's on the ropes he can roll up into his shell for a breather.