Fancy a spot of boxing, but without all that brain-damaged, punched-drunk, Queensbury-ruled nonsense? Then lace up your gloves, my fine brawl-obsessed friend, for I think I've found just the game for you.
Dean Mortlock

The humble boxing game has tried, since the dawn of microchip time, to find a soft lump in our hearts, but with the odd exception they've been little more than second-rate beat 'em ups. Who in their right mind wants to play a game where you're limited to a handful of moves when you can play Namco or Capcom's latest, with a move for each atom in your body, or so it seems? Not I, that's for sure, and that seemed to be the echo of every self-respecting games player.

Ah, but time's have changed. In this 128bit world, everyone loves one another, the sun always shines and when boxing games look as spunky as this, the noble sport can finally hold its head up in the beat 'em up locker-room.

This is the perfect game style for Dreamcast. Large, brash, cartoon-style characters (all complete with Spitting Image-like overly-exaggerated features), 60 frames per second of beautiful, almost graceful movement and some of the most comely attention-to-detail seen for quite some time. Take, for example, the marks and bruises that appear on a fighter's face as the game progresses. The bigger the pounding received, the more the bruises appear. On top of an expected intro sequence for each character, they also possess a taunt and a series of characteristic moves.

16 fighters are given the opportunity to bash seven shades of a certain substance out of each other over a predetermined number of rounds. For instant thrills there's the Arcade mode (pick a character and work your way through the progressively tougher list) or the much more appealing Championship mode. This offers you the chance to pick a fighter from scratch and train them up. Training costs money and by betting on prize fights you can raise the coffers enough to indulge in the more elaborate forms of training available.