Barry McGuigan's Boxing

"I've wrestled with an alligator, I've tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I'm so mean I make medicine sick." -Muhammad Ali

Since the very first animated athletes answered the bell and came out of their corners slinging their blocky, pixelated fists, boxing games have been roughly sub-divisable into two main categories. In the RED corner, represented by Greatest Heavyweights and Punch-Out, we have the tactical boxers, the games which attempted to recreate the strategy and technique of real boxing but generally boiled down to tedious observation of and reaction to prevailing attack patterns, and mindlessly ritualistic regurgitation of multi-button combinations at opportune moments. In the BLUE corner, represented by Ready 2 Rumble, we have the beat-'em up variants, the games which sacrificed the structural realities of boxing to high-tempo, high-octane button-thrashing bouts of special moves and secret power-ups. And, in the middle, officiating the match, the potent mix of licensed brutality and gentlemanly tradition that is real boxing. LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTT'S GET READY TO RUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMBLLLLE!

A quick glance at the instruction manual for Barry McGuigan's Boxing was enough to ascertain its allegiance in the two great traditions of pugilistic simulation: attacks such as "right jab", "left cross" and "body blow" rather than "SupahHelicopterPunchREDUX!" pencilled it rather more in column one than column two, and the ability to generate one's own unique boxer -complete with a distinctive style and image- sealed the deal. Quite how much difference it made whether Thomas "The Tank Engine" Clark was a 'bruiser' or a 'dancer', whether he was perceived as a 'nice guy' or a 'hot temper', was never really clear, and the distinctions were probably no less cosmetic than the choice of trunk colour and hair length: but it was nice to be asked. So it was with the whole gamut of options and tweaks the game offered- world rankings and earnings and individual training schedules (Oh my!), round by round updates on fighter status and crowd enthusiasm (Ranging from 'ecstatic' in the event of a real punchfest to 'leaving' when the fighters put their differences aside and stood unobtrusively in their own corners for the entire round), rigid distinctions between being 'inside' and 'outside', 'crossing' and 'jabbing'... The complexities were, for the time, quite unheard of. When one overcame -rather, took full advantage of- them to dispatch the hapless Cannonball Corby inside two rounds, a glittering career culminating in a successful title shot at the eponymous hero, Barry McGuigan himself, looked inevitable. Bring it on, Bazza; Marquis de Queensberry rules! But WAIT! McGuigan with the sucker punch! Clark's going down! HE'S GOING DOWN!

The myriad options completely failed to disguise that the matches themselves were crucially illogical. The difference between 'hooking' someone and dishing them out a 'body blow' was fairly minimal, the system of moving inside and outside too simplistic yet finical to be turned to one's advantage. The physical attributes of new fighters were so monstrously poor and the game mechanics so counterintuitive that canny opponents could pull a Homer Simpson and get you to knock yourself out by letting you swing at them until you collapsed from sheer fatigue; clever ring-positioning and footwork was ruled out by the restriction of your control to only your boxer's upper body. The ease with which minute advantages extrapolated into absolutely unassailable superiorities brought a premature end to countless childhood friendships, ruined by the evil grin which split the winning party's face as he proceeded to tell his helpless opponent what he was going to do to him before he even did it...

No, and that never happened to me either, before you ask.