The first boxing game I ever played was Activision’s Boxing on the Atari 2600, which is notable only because it looked like two mutated swans flailing at each other for two minutes, but it was actually kind of fun for the time and for what it was. I mention that childhood memory only because of the latest mobile game I’ve been playing, Super Boxing Championship! from developer StickRunningSupreme. This mobile game reminds me of the old-school Atari 2600 Boxing a bit, in that it looks and moves in a wonky manner but is pretty fun to play in short bursts.
Super Boxing Championship! sets you out on a quest to become the next Super Boxing Champion in Career (i.e., story) mode. As you progress, you can train your fully customizable pugilist to earn experience and upgrade skills. This mode reminded me of another classic boxing title, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out from the NES days. In Super Boxing Championship!, a feisty coach named Coach (go figure) takes you under his well-experience wing while borrowing some of the same motivational lines that Doc utters to Little Mac in Punch-Out. With Coach’s amusing training, you set out to beat the snot out of those set before you on this journey to become the champ. You can also jump in on one of several quick-play modes: Exhibition, Tournament, and Gauntlet, where you brawl against an infinite number of random opponents of all skill levels and backgrounds. Each fight earns you cash, so you can customize your boxer with an array of cosmetic items, including outfits, hairstyles, beards, tattoos, headgear, shoes, and emotes. You also have the opportunity to create your very own gym that you can call home. There you can purchase furniture, decor, music, and wall paint/colorings to give your gym a personal flair. All of this is presented in a hip and quirky art style that at first blush you wouldn’t think would work in a boxing game; it looks better suited to a kid’s picture book, but somehow it does the job.
Another cool little wrinkle to Super Boxing Championship! that deserves a mention is that after a match, your best KO highlights are replayed. You can generate a shareable link of these highlights to send to your friends, social media, or anywhere else in the online world, but you must have the game installed on your device to watch it. This is a nice little feature that turns a solitary experience into more of a social one, and almost everyone likes to show off a bit from time to time. I’m less hyped about how Super Boxing Championship! controls, moves, and feels. This game uses what I call “noodle” physics to drive its gameplay, and I call it that because everyone lurches about as if they were made of noodles, or like they are a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man, and that really doesn’t work for me in a sports title. You have eleven physics-based moves at your disposal: Left Hook, Right Hook, Uppercut, Left Jab, Right Jab, Low Jab, Lean Left, Lean Right, Block, Step Right, and Step Left. Unfortunately, none of these moves truly look and feel quite right when performed with the touch controls, and the game oddly lacks any special or power moves.
Punches in Super Boxing Championship! never feel like they land solidly, and the boxers just shuffle back and forth on a 2D plane with no real alacrity or urgency. In my mind, for a game to capture the true boxing experience, the boxers should “float like butterflies and sting like bees,” to tweak a quote from the late, great Muhammad Ali. That just doesn’t happen in Super Boxing Championship! the majority of the time. To be fair, the game does offer an option to use a real controller, but I don’t have a mobile compatible one at the moment, so I don’t know if playing with a controller really mitigates these issues to any degree.
Super Boxing Championship! is a game with a slick aesthetic and some interesting ideas and collectable tchotchkes. I recommend it, but only for short, manageable play sessions. Whatever its charms, the game’s peculiar physics and controls undoubtedly wore on me about fifteen to twenty minutes after each time I picked it up.
SCORE: 3 STARS OUT OF 5
PLAY IF YOU LIKE:
• The Punch-Out Series. Run Super Boxing Championship! up the flagpole if Nintendo’s rowdy, engaging series of boxing titles knocks you out.
• Boxing Star. Super Boxing Championship! may not be as graphically impressive or arcade-y as Boxing Star, but it is also a boxing game you can play on the go. So there’s that.
Have you played Super Boxing Championship? Let us know what you think of it in the comments! Even if you haven't played it, leave a comment sharing your favorite boxer or boxing game of all time!
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Nice! Boxing on the 2600. I love how back then they would just name the game titles directly after the sport. “Basketball” “Football” none of the fancy schmancy titles they put out today! Just good old fashioned “Boxing” 😂
2022-07-15
Author likedYup...but Atari did have the first "licensed" sports game. The Brazilian soccer star Pele' lent his name and likeness to the 2600 soccer game, Championship Soccer.
2022-07-15
Haha, noodle physics, very accurate!
2022-07-15
Author likedI thought so! 😁
2022-07-15
i playde this game before but i deleted it
2022-08-02
Author liked