0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - All Star Boxing

     

All Star Boxing also know as just Boxing in the United States and Simple 1500 Series Vol. 32: The Boxing in Japan is a sports game released on the Playstation 1 over the course of three years. First in Japan in August of 2000, the following year in the United States and in April of 2003 in Europe.

The games was developed by Nekogumi and published by D3 Publisher Inc for both the Japanese and US releases, while Midas Interactive handled the European release of the game.

For a budget boxing title this game has a decent amount of depth to be found, even with its more cartoony design that looks to be aimed for at the younger gamer and less than intricate controls, however once you get deeper into the game it has a fairly competent tournament system.

Each tournament has the choice of three weight classes lightweight, mediumweight and Heavyweight and four tournament modes that you can play in, Local, Nation, World and Beyond the games has a fairly pronounced difficulty spike from the lightweight division to the heavy weight division.

The games also has a decent number of characters as well, starting with just three unlocked to begin with you can unlock another 10 during the course of the game. With each character having their own special moves, with some being quite extravagant.

Sports game based around Baseball no story or story mode present

The few critic reviews for this game are generally an average bunch with one abysmal score thrown in as well, as usual though we will start with the best of the bunch which is PSX nation with a 66/100 rating for the game. They did say fans of Japanese SD games and media could well be interested in this game especially with the cheap asking price, but for everybody else this game is likely too surreal and cheesy to be worth it.

All Game Guide were not overly harsh in their conclusion to their 60/100 review while criticising the games dull appearances and lacklustre sounds they did conclude the games is a pretty solid sport title that offers plenty of replayability.

GameSpot with their 59/100 had the following to say in their review conclusion, In the end, Boxing for the PlayStation is a decent and surprisingly in-depth boxing-fighting game that's the perfect type of game for a less experienced gamer since it does have a fairly slight learning curve. Plus, the game does include a two-player versus mode, so you and a friend can play together. Most importantly, Boxing is just simply a fun game to play that is more than worth its $10 price tag.

The final review score comes from Official Playstation magazine sadly the review for this publication is lost they scored the game a 1/5 which converts to a 20/100. Moving on to GameFAQs user data where the game is sitting at an average user rating of 3.25/5 from a total of 10 users.

With a total of 6 of those users rating the game a solid 3.5/5, another 3 users rated the game a 3/5 while the lowest score for the game was the as average as you can get 2.5/5 overall a decently received game by users. Difficulty wise we have 8 users that rated this category with half rating the games difficulty as just right.

Another 2 users rated the games as on the easy side, while one user each rated the game as simple and tough. The lifespan of the games Is up next with a total of 5 users rating this category with an even split between 2 hours and 4 hours, with an additional user rating the games lifespan as 8 hours, with the game averaging out at 4 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where if you are looking to trade in your copy of Boxing, don’t expect anything much for it with a trade in price of 25 cents,. On the other hand if you are in the market for a copy of the game you can pick one up for $3

Moving on to Retrogames.co.uk who have a copy of the European release available this is a used copy in excellent condition, and can be picked up for £5. eStarland.com do usually stock used copies of the game however at the time of writing this they are currently out of stock.

The do however have a new copy of the game in stock, which is priced at $9.95 this is the North American release of the game, so none North American games beware you will need a North American console to play this copy.

Amazon.com has a plentiful supply of Boxing available with a very good quality used copy of the game available for $5.50, this price is with the shipping added into the price. A like new copy is also available and can be picked up for a few cents short of $8.

For a couple of dollars more however you can pick up a brand new copy of the game, for collectors there are also a couple of copies of the Japanese version of the game available. Both are in very good condition and priced at $6.99, they do however come with $9.99 shipping fees pushing the price up to $16.98.

Heading over to the co.uk version of Amazon for the European version of the game while not as abundant as the North American version there are a few copies available, similarly priced to the North American version of the game with a very good used copy available for about £3.70.

Ebay.com has a few of the European version available, a disc and manual copy of the game is available for just $2.55. If you are looking for a more complete copy one can be picked up for $8.97, both these copies come with free international shipping.

Switching over to a US location for Ebay now a handful of copies of the game are available with prices starting at $4.95, this copy comes with free shipping. A few other used copies are available for between $4.50 and $10.

Written by

P J Gibbon