Anime lizard man with boxing gloves. - Let's Play The Boxing [VLP]

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Rad Games > Let's Play! > Anime lizard man with boxing gloves. - Let's Play The Boxing [VLP]

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Let's Play The Boxing

The Boxing (or just "Boxing" in America) is a PSone title in the Simple Series of Japanese budget games published by D3. The idea behind the series was to release games with simple (sometimes bizarre) concepts that consumers ordinarily wouldn't want to spend a lot of money on, made by any number of developers. This particular title is a middle ground for the series, in that it isn't nearly as weird as something like "Hell of Bunch", but it does feature an anime lizard man and some other strange fighters.

What kind of LP is this?

Video, post-commentary. I'll be showing off all the fighters and their moves, as well as showing the "secret" cup and character. This will be a short but hopefully sweet LP.

Why should I care?

The Boxing is in a weird place. It came out on a system with a lot of other boxing games, and there was nothing particularly remarkable about it at first glance. I mean, it was just called "Boxing" here in the US. It does have some pretty good mechanics to it, however, once you dig in, and it forges a neat middle ground between a normal 3d-fighting game and an actual boxing title.

So how about it? Let's punch some anime lizard men.

Episodes

Round 1. Lightweight

Round 2. Middleweight

Round 3. Heavyweight

Round 4. Secrets

Thanks for watching!

Extras

The game's glorious end sequence by itself.

Fan Art

by Daigerus

GamesAreSupernice fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Sep 13, 2015

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 08:35

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Sep 26, 2023 03:03

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

oldskool posted:

...is that supposed to be a literal baby

I appreciate the attention to detail, giving the baby Tyson poor reach with a devastating power punch & a peekaboo defensive style. Cool LP.

He's a baby with the proportional strength and power of a Mike Tyson.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 03:31

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Training montage sold separately.

Round 2. Middleweight

# ¿ Aug 19, 2015 18:18

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Victory tastes like exploits.

Round 3. Heavyweight

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 20:37

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Hoss Corncave posted:

I get the feeling there's some Engrish in there and Mr. Crown should actually be Mr. Clown.

I have absolutely no idea where you'd get that idea from.

Guardians of the Hood

# ¿ Sep 3, 2015 21:03

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Let's round this up.

Round 4. Secrets

Daigerus posted:

I'm surprised I didn't find this LP earlier, since I've actually played this game and found it to be surprisingly charming despite the fighting system being a bit too fast to fully appreciate the nuances it does have and the all-too-prevalent strategy of "spam specials till they can't get up" that shows how overpowering some characters are. In addition, all the punches sound the same, whether it's a jab or a mindblowing haymaker and the main battle music feels a bit too much like going to a carnival (though given the secret character, I'm not sure if it's intentional or coincidental). By the by, Gio is my favorite, despite his wonky fighting style, because hey, no other boxing game has ever had an anime lizard man and I love his victory animation.

Ending credit music and montage was pretty sweet though. And that shot of Ryoko and Tanaka standing side by side like that: I don't think that's possible to see something like that in-game, with the way they're positioned, unless I'm missing something.

Looking forward to whatever future rounds you plan to show off. Will you be showing off the sequel as well?

shhhhh

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 22:13

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Daigerus posted:

That was a really good surprise. Are you going to try to show off the other characters in future rounds or is this the end of the LP? I'm pretty sure there's a cheat code of sorts that lets you unlock everyone.

If it is the end, I'd like to share my thoughts on the latest video, and if not, I'd like to save them so as to not accidentally spoil stuff that you plan on revealing anyway.

Either way, you did a great job with the LP and I'm glad this game got its time in the LP spotlight, even though there haven't been a lot of comments here. What led you to discovering this game in the first place?

This is the end, feel free to talk about anything you'd like.

I've had the game ever since I was little, we found it in a Target for ten dollars, I think, and it looked generic enough to be a harmless purchase. I unlocked Mr. Crown way back then, too, and pissed off my family by spamming his special at them all the time. (None of us understood the meaning of the word "block".)

It led me to discover the entire Simple Series later.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 01:18

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Daigerus posted:

I had a similar experience too when it came to finding the game. I was kind of surprised by the misleading cover art, though the back of the CD was a bit more honest when it had screenshots of the chibi-sized boxers.

But yeah, my thoughts on both games:

There is actually a story in the first game, but you'd have to read the character notes to get a sense of the character's relationships with one another and it's very bare-bones as far as fighting game stories go. Then again, the second game's story mode kind of repeats some things from the first game, such as Prince and Gio being friends and Red and Puma/Jackal being rivals.

Also, apparently only a year has passed between the two games, if what Red said in the second story mode is true, so I'm inclined to think that Mr. Crown was similar to Solid Snake, where he too was an experiment and because of his artificial nature, ended up aging a bit too rapidly. So Mr. Crown's story is even more depressing when taking both games into consideration. Also, I don't think Gio has shackles and a torn prison suit because of his laboratory origin, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense when he didn't wear them in the first game, so I feel like he was just put into prison because of some unspoken, offscreen rampage he committed, if his growls at Mr. Crown was meant to imply that he has anger issues ala Hulk.

I'm also inclined to think that story-wise, the characters were originally meant to be boxers instead of everyone abruptly switching to kickboxing, given how some characters are still referring to punching when threatening violence, and there's no references to kickboxing other than kickboxing itself.

While I do like the innovative way of unlocking characters in Kickboxing (it almost feels like a precursor to the first Mortal Kombat reboot's story mode, where you switched characters around to progress with the story), it's really restricting for several reasons:
- The stamina system. Even though you're given some freedom to choose which fight you wanna to do, some fights cost more stamina than others. And since Story Mode ends when you run out of stamina, there's clearly an optimal route to take. I believe you're meant to start out with Red, since he seems to be the de facto protagonist of both games.
- After every fight, the stamina gauge goes down even further, depending on how much damage you took in said fight. So not only do you have to figure out the optimal route, but you have to be skilled enough as well to get through the fights with as little damage taken as possible.
- When Story Mode ends, you're allowed to save data so you can play as the characters you unlocked in other modes. But when you start a new Story Mode and you got characters unlocked that are different from the ones you unlocked previously (like say you unlocked Patty the first time, but on the second time, you didn't get her but you got Gio instead), the game overwrites the old one. So if you want to unlock everyone, you have to get them all in one go.
- There's a secret character you can only fight when you've already fought as everyone else in Story mode. And he's extremely hard as balls, even more broken than Boxing-mode Mr. Crown. Up to this day, I've never been able to beat him. I ended up resorting to a cheat code to unlock him.

Furthermore, everyone has alternate skins, or at least a counterpart fighter that vaguely resembles them, and I don't know how to unlock them outside of the cheat code. I suspect you're meant to unlock them by fully completing Story Mode, but I think I've made it clear how impossible that was for the average player.

I think that's all I have to say, though I also want to contribute to the LP by providing some fanart before this gets archived, but it would take me a few days to do so. If you don't mind waiting for me, I'd appreciate it.

I'd love that! Please go for it!

And thank you for the insight on The Kickboxing, as well.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 04:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Sep 26, 2023 03:03

GamesAreSupernice: Jan 3, 2014; Oh, whoa! Check out the Viewing Globe, shorty!

Daigerus posted:

When I said a few days, apparently I meant it like a week or so. Sorry for the wait, but here you go!

Thanks again for the LP and good luck with your future Let's Plays.

It's fantastic, thank you!

# ¿ Sep 13, 2015 19:20

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Rad Games > Let's Play! > Anime lizard man with boxing gloves. - Let's Play The Boxing [VLP]