Barry Mcguigans Boxing was probably the best boxing game for the zx spectrum, released early in 1986 at the height of the little mans popularity you started off either as a new comer or a contender to try and claim Barry’s Featherweight World Title.
It was different in many ways to other beat em ups of the time due to the fact that your character was built up of individual skills, training, temperament, best punch, stamina, strength etc , making you develop a very personal fighter.
You also trained your character before every fight with items such as the speedball, heavy bag, sparring and road training, which you could use to beef up any needy points your character lacked.
As soon as the bell sounds the action began with both boxers menacingly approaching the centre of the ring ready to trade blows, you couldn’t actually move your boxer left or right, but this left you to control all the jabs, uppercuts, hooks, swipes and also enabled you to block your opponents punches, it was a truly innovative system , it worked well as your fighter piled on the pressure he forced the other guy further and further back , but it did take a few fights to get used to but once mastered it enabled you to concentrate on the fighting much better than other games of this ilk.
Climbing the ranks from number 20 up to fight Barry himself as World Champion was some feat and with no save option it can take hours of your time to actually win the belt.
Obviously the first few bouts were quite easy and I used to fight the first two or three fighters at least twice each to build up my stamina , but as soon as you reached around rank 15 the fights took a serious turn and became a lot harder, reaching into the 5th or 6th round until you felt you had the fight in the bag.
Quite often the fights became Rocky style affairs with each fighter going down a couple of times in a round and you really had to work at blocking the blows to keep yourself in the fight as your endurance was sapped , you felt great satisfaction when you finally defeated a dogged opponent.
The graphics were excellent for the time and loading it up last night they still look good today , good animation of the boxers , flashing lights from the crowd when there’s a knockdown and good detail in the ring. It also had one of catchiest tunes on the spectrum , sort of a Rocky style theme which did add to the atmosphere.
I lost many many hours playing Barry McGuigans Boxing and it was and still is one of the very best sports games to appear on any 8 bit home computer.
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