A playthrough of Activision’s 1990 boxing game for the Nintendo Game Boy, Heavyweight Championship Boxing.

Played through as Mike Mauler.

Heavyweight Championship Boxing on the Game Boy was one of those titles that was fairly quietly released and seemingly immediately forgotten. It’s not going to replace Fight Night anytime soon, but it does put up a nifty, quick-paced arcade-style boxing game.

It plays like a mixture of Punch Out!! and Ring King. When you close in on your opponent, the game will play from a first-person perspective. The main idea is to line up the outline of your head with the enemy and let punches fly using a combinations of Up, Down, A, and B, until one of you goes down for the count. Remember to use the block – it’s quite useful. The running meter on the bottom of the screen tells you your punch strength, so when you swing, you want to have it as close to max power as possible. You also get a special punch – when you’re gloves start flashing (I have no idea how this is triggered – is it random?), let your gauge fill and send him flying.

If you move away from your opponent, the view zooms out to a third-person view of the ring where you circle one another if you need a breather.

The game is overall a fun, short affair that is well suited to the Game Boy – games are short, not too terribly difficult, and the sprites are large and clear, so the screen blur never obscures the action too badly. The sound is alright, but it gets repetitive pretty quickly. It’s not Punch Out!!, but it is a good early example of the genre on the Game Boy, and it’s enjoyable for the short time it lasts.

I’d like to mention, to anyone that might be interested in trying this out, that having fun with this one really relies on which character you choose. Mike (the guy I’m playing as here) and the champion guy are the only fighters that really have any chance at winning on the later bouts. Most of them are weak and will have you getting owned before very long at all – so, unless you’re looking for a superhuman challenge, keep in mind that your choice of character effectively acts as a difficulty setting.

*Recorded with the DMG shader in Retroarch*
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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