Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing vs. George Foreman KO Boxing

By David Rasmussen
9th Mar 08

Well, after much time and reviewing it’s time to open up the newest in retro reviewing.
Our first batch of SEGA Game Gear reviews. Let’s get into it.

First off a shoutout to Doug from GameTZ (the site where I do all my game swapping), who traded me a SEGA Game Gear and 19 GAMES!! Thanks to you, Doug, we’ll have quite abit to review for sometime to come! Thanks!!

Ah, I bet you’ve become quite spoiled by video game boxing once you became a fan of the Fight Night series, haven’t you. As the game stands now it is one of the best boxing sims out there now (though just recycling the last gen Fight Night for next gen isn’t going to cut it with me, guys, hurry up and make a next gen original Fight Night Round 4 already)!

So then if you go back to the SEGA Game Gear you’ll be surprised to see these two contendors for the Heavyweight Handheld Video Game Boxing Championships.
In this corner, weighing in at a few ounces, from the people at SEGA we have the heavy hitting fighting game Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal Boxing!

And in the other corner, weighing in at the weight of a SEGA Game Gear cart and a large grill… mmm… burgers… from the people at Flying Edge we have the heavy hitting (and mucho grillin’ post heavy hitting) fighting game of George Foreman’s KO Boxing!

OK. Let’s get the combatants into the center of the ring and give them the rules.
Now then, there’ll be no punching in the game connectors (those are hard to clean on this version making it easy for the games to malfunction, unlike the GameBoy which cleaned easy), you’ll each come out swinging and go back to your corner (or collapse on the mat) when the review is overviewed), and despite the fact I love burgers and hot dogs I won ‘t give George Foreman a better score because of his world renowned grill… really.

So that’s it. Get out there and start punching!
(ding ding)

And the two games come out into the center of the ring…

It’s not enough to just make a game, slap a famous boxer on the game cart cover, and proclaim it the winner because your fighter is famous (or won a championship belt) or whatnot… speaking of which…

Note that Evander Holyfield is showing off his belt on the cover of this game, while Foreman is not (if he has one to show off that is, I’m not up on my boxing lore and legends). I don’t know if this is a hint of what is to come, but it seems like Holyfield has the advantage out of the start of the round.

Which he carries into the fight itself.
The first thing you notice about this game is the ability to create your own fighter, and set him on a path to boxing greatness. Easy enough to make a fighter visually, but the real vexing skill is weighting the abilities of the fighter to create a truly great one. And, mind you, as you raise one stat the others go down so you’re really thinking about just how much of a certain something you need in order to make a really great fighter.

Foreman stumbles as there is no fighter creation mode in his game, you’ll see why shortly.

Once you start fighting you’ll take your newly created boxer and start to take on other boxers. The game offers up abit of opponents to go against, including (yes) Holyfield himself. Once you go in the game becomes a first person boxing perspective where you have to work your opponent over to beat him. However, as if this game might have been a preview of the greatness to come in Fight Night, simply button mashing isn’t going to win the day. You can do that, and have mixed results (which will mostly not be good for you as you’ll wear yourself out eventually and lose), or you can use your brain and try to really outthink and outfight your opponent. It’s not like Fight Night, but it is the first steps towards that kind of gaming, and offers abit of intelligent boxing for it’s early age so it really does try to get you a good fight experience in this game.

Foreman’s game is a third person button masher. You can time the button mashing for best results, but it still rates down to a button taper in the end with little or no actual experience needed to find your timing and get it down pat. And why no fighter creation mode? Because apparently Mr. Foreman thought you’d want to fight as Mr. Foreman in this game (which you do). No mode select, no fighter creation, just plunks you down as Foreman, gives you a fight card of opponents and throws you at it with little or no content past you boxing whoever George wants you to fight.

Don’t think I need to go on any further as the fight seems settled, but let’s recap.
What would you rather play?
A game with a fair fighter creator, good content in terms of what you can do, and abit of strategy needed to do the actual fighting (with Mr. Holyfield as one of your opponents)?
Or a game with no bells and whistles of any kind, where you MUST fight as George Foreman… and like it?

As Mr. Foreman is picked off the mat we give you the score of the cards.

George Foreman’s KO Boxing gets 2 barely interactive punches to the head out of 5.
While Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal Boxing gets 4 champinonship poses out of 5.

Sorry, Mr. Foreman, love your grill… hate your game.

-- David Rasmussen 9th Mar 08