ABCs Wide World of Sports Boxing

On this boxing game you can choose from dozens of boxers and you can play a single match or an entire championship. Each match is presented by an announcer and a good looking girl like in real matches. The boxers are represented with realistic graphics for the epoch as large on-screen characters. There is only one type of punch that the player executes by pressing enter.

4-D Boxing left behind any pretenses of being a pure arcade game based on boxing, and aimed to recreate the sport in full detail. The graphics engine allowed for multiple camera angles and viewpoints, and considerably detailed visuals. These required more advanced hardware than was common at the time, but a stick-figure mode was included as a compromise. The moves on offer included all the uppercuts and hooks of a real fight, and the players were designed to move realistically to implement them. You progress through the game by taking on a succession of increasingly difficult fighters, and get to train your boxer in between. Advanced action replays were included as well, so you could review all that happened.

Design, train, manage, and fight as your own personalized boxer in this comprehensive simulation from ABC Sports. Players start by building a pugilist from the ground up including measurements, vital statistics, and fighting style. Next they take him into the ring on a quest for the title belt. What makes Wide World of Sports Boxing more than just an arcade fighting game is that it encompasses every aspect of the fighter's career beyond the actual bouts (which the player can control directly or leave to the computer). Between fights, players must hire managers and trainers, purchase equipment, scout opponents, and even learn the scoring preferences of individual judges. Being fast on the uppercut does no good if your manager blows all your money or can’t get you a fight that will raise your ranking. No actual boxing personalities lent their likeness to this game so the opponents and staff encountered on the rise to the top are fictitious. Some do bear a more than passing resemblance to real people though (such as super manager Don McQueen).