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Being a huge fan of the Punchout!! series, I was excited when I found that Ready 2 Rumble Boxing would be released on the Nintendo 64. Once I started playing it however, I found that this game is no Punchout. Now I usually don’t like excessively comparing the game I’m reviewing to other games, but the slightly over-the-top Ready 2 Rumble just screams to be compared to the Punchout series. Allow me to cover some basics first, though.
Graphically speaking, the game is very visually appealing. The characters have smooth animations and realistic movements (except for the overly stiff Michael Buffer). The characters look really polygonal, but that didn't really bother me. That is the norm for N64 games. The character faces are made up of polygons (as opposed to a face-map), and that allows for some great facial expressions. The character’s faces also take damage after you beat on them for a while. However, there are several annoyances. The background characters look TOTALLY flat, which makes you feel as if you are fighting for a bunch of cardboard cutouts. In addition, the ropes look like ribbons. It would have nice to see some texture on the ropes instead of solid blue and red. Polygonal ropes would have set the atmosphere even better then textured ones. But overall, there is more good than bad (graphics wise) in Ready 2 Rumble
Sound is a mixed bag. The voice acting is great for most of the characters, and they all have some humorous lines. Michael Buffer’s famous line, “Let’s get ready to rumblllllee” makes up for his stiffness. I found the hip-hop music style to be annoying, though. There’s no music while you’re fighting. Well, almost none. Some very faint music comes and goes with the crowd noise. That didn’t bother me, but some people like to have a constant tune in the background.
The camera handles the 3-D game well, as it is never at a bad angle in normal mode. There are several different viewpoints to choose, but none are as good nor as functional as normal. The first person view is about as “Punchout-esqe” as it gets, but doesn’t have the same feel First person view does, however, provide a great view of the hapless look on your battered opponent’s face.
There is no story in Ready 2 Rumble. No dramatic tales of meat-punching palookas making a rise to the top. But hey, this is a boxing game. There’s no story needed. The closest things to a storyline are the character's backgrounds. They’re not much, but they do make some fights (i.e., Angel Rivera vs. Rocket Samchay) more interesting and meaningful.
There are two basic modes of play, arcade and championship. Arcade is the basic game mode, and you can play alone or against a friend. In one-player arcade mode, you just pick a difficulty level and fight through 10 boxers. Two-player is self-explanatory. As for championship mode (which is like season mode), you need a memory card.
Championship mode is initially fun. You pick one of three boxers, train him/her by playing minigames (such as speedbag, weightlifting, etc.), and earn money for your gym by fighting in prize fights. Once you have enough money to buy some serious training equipment and pump up your boxer, you can then enter a title fight for a rank. Win 10 title fights to move up a class, from Bronze (easy) to Silver (medium) to Gold (hard) class. When you move up in class, you unlock a new boxer. After unlocking all the base boxers, the 3 “boss” boxers are unlocked, then finally, Damien Black (the final ''boss'') is yours to use. Beat Gold class, and you become champ. Make all of your boxers champ to win the game.
When I started playing, I enjoyed trying the different characters, and seeing their introductions. But once the novelty of the characters wore off, the poor gameplay began to show through. The A and B buttons are used to block, and the C buttons are used to punch. There is a little lag in the punch buttons. You have to resort to the ''If I press the punch button now, my boxer will punch 50 milliseconds later'' routine of timing your punches. This made me want to resort to button mashing. The block buttons give the slowest reaction I have ever experienced in a game. The delay is very bad. You press block, and by the time your boxer puts up his gloves, he has been punched twice. Don't bother blocking. Just move. It’s more effective.
At least Midway gives you the option of using the D-pad to move your boxer. Some of the combos/special moves are really hard to pull off using the control stick. The D-pad works much better if you're a combo lover. Most of the combos are simple to execute--none of this ''ABBA^A^LRR'' stuff. Most combos involve just 2 or 3 moves. The downside to combos is that a simple uppercut will do just as much (if not more) damage than most of them. They look cool, though. When you land an effective punch, you will be awarded one or more letters of the word RUMBLE. The amount of letters you receive depends on how effective the punch was. When you spell out RUMBLE, your boxer becomes powered up, and can unleash a rumble flurry (a fast barrage of punches). Each boxer has his or her own flurry, but they all do about the same amount of damage. Don’t bother using them against the computer. It will block the entire flurry almost every time (unless you use a certain boxer).
The training minigames were fun at first, but after you play them for the 300th time (literally) to train your boxers, they get extremely repetitive. Luckily you can auto train to bypass the tedious minigames, but the training isn't as good. Such is life.
As Mick Jagger said, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” I really got into this game at first. It was cool building up my boxers, and the fights were fun, and it was somewhat enjoyable learning the moves for the different boxers. But by the time all my boxers were in silver class, the game became very repetitive and boring. The worst thing about the game is that the challenge doesn’t increase with each victory. Once you figure out how to beat one boxer, you can beat them all. I beat Damian Black the first time I faced him, and I’m sure you will, too. (He is no more difficult that the first boxer you face.)
This brings the inevitable Punchout comparison. In the Punchout games, you had a limited arsenal, but you had to make creative and skillful use of it to beat each boxer. With every boxer beaten, you faced a new, more difficult opponent who had a totally different fighting style. In Ready 2 Rumble, if you can beat one boxer, you can beat them all. Even worse, after your boxer is fully trained, he or she is practically invincible (heck, even BEFORE he or she is trained it’s really easy to win). There is absolutely NO challenge in this game at all. You have tons of moves at your disposal, but you really only need to learn one move to be effective, and it’s one all boxers share. (The uppercut.) Mastering the NES Punchout takes a lot of time, practice, and skill. When you finally beat Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream) for the first time, you feel a true sense of accomplishment. How fun would Punchout be if every opponent were as easy as Glass Joe? And even after mastering Punchout, you still have to be on your toes. If you get sloppy, you could be in trouble. With Ready 2 Rumble, it is literally possible to win every fight without looking at the screen (if your boxer is at least somewhat trained).
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Ready 2 Rumble is bad just because it isn’t as good as the Punchout games. What I am saying is that Ready 2 Rumble gets repetitive very quickly, and the challenge is nonexistent. While the characters are interesting and entertaining, they are not enough to keep this game afloat. In a boxing game, the gameplay needs to be stellar, and Ready 2 Rumble just doesn’t deliver.
The only reason I played Ready 2 Rumble all the way through was to see if there was a last boxer to unlock. I thought there would be, because there is still one blank space left after you unlock Damien Black. Sadly, there’s not. There's no real reason to finish this game. Playing with a friend is a bit more fun, since you can trade trained boxers and fight for each other's money, but even that gets old after a few sessions. Due to the easy and repetitive nature of the game, replay value is extremely low.
While I wouldn’t recommend buying the game, it would make a perfect rental. A five-day rental period is the perfect amount of time to have some fun with the game (either by yourself or with a few friends to play multiplayer) without letting it get repetitive. But five days of fun is about all this game is good for.