Final Knockout
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Player's Review
Boxing Legends of the Ring is a boxing video game developed by Sculptured Software in 1993. It was published for SNES and Mega Drive in North American and European region by Electro Brain. In Japan, it was published as Final Knockout for the Super Famicom by Pack-in-Video. An altered version titled Chavez II was published in Mexico by American Softworks for the Mega Drive in 1993 and for the SNES in 1994.
The title of the game refers to the famous boxing magazine, The Ring. The following famous middleweight boxers are present in the game: Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns, James Toney, Marvin Hagler, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Rocky Graziano.
The gameplay focuses on recognizing patterns in enemy attacks and exploiting openings. Each CPU-controlled character has his own two sets of attack patterns, one when they are healthy, and one when they are battered. Landing four consecutive hits results in a longer hurt animation playing, which prevents further attacks, but does not signify increased damage. It can, however, be used to set up special moves. Losing more than once ends the game. Unfortunately, the way health and accumulated damage is displayed in the game is mostly symbolic and makes it hard to tell how close you are to victory or to develop a strategy. Health of boxers also recovers extremely fast, which, combined with the above issue, makes you feel like you are boxing against T1000.
There are numerous differences between various versions of the game. Only the North American Mega Drive version has voice acting in the options screen. It is also the only one that allows up to 8 players to participate in the Battle of the Legends mode. All Sega versions allow entering the options screen from the ranking screen during Career mode, but all Nintendo versions instead allow entering the options screen during matches after pressing the Pause button. Only the North American versions show textual description of boxers on the ranking list, while the Japanese and Mexican versions replace the text with an image of boxing gloves. In North American versions, all of the fights in the game take place in the Las Vegas Hilton casino. There are also advertising banners for HBO visible during fights that are not available in other versions. In the Japanese version, the game takes place in a generic boxing ring using the publisher's name in place of the HBO advertisements, while in the Mexican versions, there are banners for Pepsi and Pizza Hut. In Boxing Legends of the Ring and Final Knockout, the order of the fights in career mode differs between the Mega Drive and SNES versions of the game. The North American and Japanese versions also use the name and likeness of real life boxers for their roster, but the Mexican versions only uses Chavez, while all other boxers are fictional. In Boxing Legends of the Ring, the Sega version allows a slight customization your boxer's skin color and face, while the Nintendo versions for North America and Japan only allow changing the skin color. However, Chavez II for SNES allows customizing the face, hair and facial hair, skin color and the color of trunks, while the Mega Drive version of Chavez II has the same level of customization as Boxing Legends of the Ring. Both versions for the Mega Drive have a dedicated dodge button which can be used to avoid enemy attacks and special moves instead of blocking, whereas the Nintendo versions instead allow countering certain moves with certain other moves, such as beating an overhead with an uppercut. In all Nintendo versions, enemies who lost half their health start playing a long hurt animation after each blow to the head, which prevents combinations and forces the player to use blows to the body instead, whereas the Sega versions do not force this mechanic. The Nintendo versions give characters more stamina, so they rarely get tired from punching, but the Sega versions make muscle fatigue a major factor during matches. The Nintendo versions make the player's vision dim when they are close to being knocked down, but the Sega versions lack this feature. The Sega version of Boxing Legends of the Ring has ring girls with curly hair and mostly dark-skinned, while in Nintendo versions they have straight hair and mostly light skin colors, and in Mega Drive Chavez II version, there are no ring girls at all. In Sega versions, enemies are very prone to clinching when hurt, while in the Nintendo versions, they tend to start blocking too much, which provokes you into clinching instead. Final Knockout does not show blood when boxers receive punches to the head, and instead shows a pale substance which is supposedly sweat ( even though blue sweat is already used for body blows ) . The referee has voice line and an animation with a microphone that raises to the roof in the SNES version but not in the Mega Drive version. Battle of the Legends mode is absent in both versions of Chavez II, and entering the final password of career mode just plays the ending instead of allowing to use your boxer in the tournament. The career mode ending is also completely different between Chavez II and other versions of the game. The Mega Drive version of Chavez II was released much earlier than the SNES version and therefore seems less polished, lacking deeper customization in career mode and generally having an uncomfortably high gameplay speed, which becomes cartoonishly fast in case of combinations involving left jabs, and there are also no ring girl animations. The referee and the audience still use English voice lines in Japanese version, while the Mexican version replaces referee lines with Spanish ones and removes random shouts from the audience to replace them with compressed cheers and a chant when fighting against Chavez. However, both Chavez II versions do not show referee at the start of the match, and in case of the SNES version, he is not even shown during a knockout countdown, and in both cases the countdown is not voiced. Clinching will cause the referee to show up in the Mega Drive version, but not in the SNES version of Chavez II. Chavez II also can play a seemingly random scene that shows referee giving a battered boxer a new mouth guard, which I only saw in the Mega Drive version of Chavez II and not in any other version. Both version of Chavez II display accumulated damage directly on characters' faces instead of their portraits like in other versions, and also give the player a slightly better idea of their opponent's condition by displaying an actual health bar inside the portrait. In the Mega Drive version of Chavez II, there seems to be a bug that makes it impossible to knock out your opponent, leaving a TKO as your only option to end the fight early.
The title of the game refers to the famous boxing magazine, The Ring. The following famous middleweight boxers are present in the game: Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns, James Toney, Marvin Hagler, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Rocky Graziano.
The gameplay focuses on recognizing patterns in enemy attacks and exploiting openings. Each CPU-controlled character has his own two sets of attack patterns, one when they are healthy, and one when they are battered. Landing four consecutive hits results in a longer hurt animation playing, which prevents further attacks, but does not signify increased damage. It can, however, be used to set up special moves. Losing more than once ends the game. Unfortunately, the way health and accumulated damage is displayed in the game is mostly symbolic and makes it hard to tell how close you are to victory or to develop a strategy. Health of boxers also recovers extremely fast, which, combined with the above issue, makes you feel like you are boxing against T1000.
There are numerous differences between various versions of the game. Only the North American Mega Drive version has voice acting in the options screen. It is also the only one that allows up to 8 players to participate in the Battle of the Legends mode. All Sega versions allow entering the options screen from the ranking screen during Career mode, but all Nintendo versions instead allow entering the options screen during matches after pressing the Pause button. Only the North American versions show textual description of boxers on the ranking list, while the Japanese and Mexican versions replace the text with an image of boxing gloves. In North American versions, all of the fights in the game take place in the Las Vegas Hilton casino. There are also advertising banners for HBO visible during fights that are not available in other versions. In the Japanese version, the game takes place in a generic boxing ring using the publisher's name in place of the HBO advertisements, while in the Mexican versions, there are banners for Pepsi and Pizza Hut. In Boxing Legends of the Ring and Final Knockout, the order of the fights in career mode differs between the Mega Drive and SNES versions of the game. The North American and Japanese versions also use the name and likeness of real life boxers for their roster, but the Mexican versions only uses Chavez, while all other boxers are fictional. In Boxing Legends of the Ring, the Sega version allows a slight customization your boxer's skin color and face, while the Nintendo versions for North America and Japan only allow changing the skin color. However, Chavez II for SNES allows customizing the face, hair and facial hair, skin color and the color of trunks, while the Mega Drive version of Chavez II has the same level of customization as Boxing Legends of the Ring. Both versions for the Mega Drive have a dedicated dodge button which can be used to avoid enemy attacks and special moves instead of blocking, whereas the Nintendo versions instead allow countering certain moves with certain other moves, such as beating an overhead with an uppercut. In all Nintendo versions, enemies who lost half their health start playing a long hurt animation after each blow to the head, which prevents combinations and forces the player to use blows to the body instead, whereas the Sega versions do not force this mechanic. The Nintendo versions give characters more stamina, so they rarely get tired from punching, but the Sega versions make muscle fatigue a major factor during matches. The Nintendo versions make the player's vision dim when they are close to being knocked down, but the Sega versions lack this feature. The Sega version of Boxing Legends of the Ring has ring girls with curly hair and mostly dark-skinned, while in Nintendo versions they have straight hair and mostly light skin colors, and in Mega Drive Chavez II version, there are no ring girls at all. In Sega versions, enemies are very prone to clinching when hurt, while in the Nintendo versions, they tend to start blocking too much, which provokes you into clinching instead. Final Knockout does not show blood when boxers receive punches to the head, and instead shows a pale substance which is supposedly sweat ( even though blue sweat is already used for body blows ) . The referee has voice line and an animation with a microphone that raises to the roof in the SNES version but not in the Mega Drive version. Battle of the Legends mode is absent in both versions of Chavez II, and entering the final password of career mode just plays the ending instead of allowing to use your boxer in the tournament. The career mode ending is also completely different between Chavez II and other versions of the game. The Mega Drive version of Chavez II was released much earlier than the SNES version and therefore seems less polished, lacking deeper customization in career mode and generally having an uncomfortably high gameplay speed, which becomes cartoonishly fast in case of combinations involving left jabs, and there are also no ring girl animations. The referee and the audience still use English voice lines in Japanese version, while the Mexican version replaces referee lines with Spanish ones and removes random shouts from the audience to replace them with compressed cheers and a chant when fighting against Chavez. However, both Chavez II versions do not show referee at the start of the match, and in case of the SNES version, he is not even shown during a knockout countdown, and in both cases the countdown is not voiced. Clinching will cause the referee to show up in the Mega Drive version, but not in the SNES version of Chavez II. Chavez II also can play a seemingly random scene that shows referee giving a battered boxer a new mouth guard, which I only saw in the Mega Drive version of Chavez II and not in any other version. Both version of Chavez II display accumulated damage directly on characters' faces instead of their portraits like in other versions, and also give the player a slightly better idea of their opponent's condition by displaying an actual health bar inside the portrait. In the Mega Drive version of Chavez II, there seems to be a bug that makes it impossible to knock out your opponent, leaving a TKO as your only option to end the fight early.
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