Original Release: Gammick, 2008, Nintendo DS
A very weird person tries to impress a bunch of anthropomorphic animals by beating hell out of them in the boxing ring in this stylus-based fighter
Animal Boxing (DS, Gammick, 2008)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
The threadbare story that ties Animal Boxing together has you, as some random human, deciding to move to the land of the furries for some reason. However, your refusal to wear a fursuit gets you absolutely socially snubbed. When a boxing gym opens in town and becomes the pickleball-esque hot trend that everyone is jumping in on, you take the opportunity to beat some respect into the townsfurs.
The first thing you encounter is the unusual control style that has you hold the DS upside down and attack by using the stylus on the now-top screen, with defensive measures controlled either via the D-pad or face buttons (depending on your hand preference). The whole system would actually work out pretty decent if the punch collision detection wasn’t so iffy, particularly for the stronger hooks and uppercuts (which require swiping) that are absolutely vital for beating better foes. You can jab-peck your way through weaker opponents with much better precision, but foes quickly become too resilient for just that.
The game focuses mostly on having decent character models and a nice aesthetic style, with modes of play and in-between stuff kept to the absolute basics. It’s all centered on a “Championship Mode” that opens with a brief tutorial bout that covers all the controls, then you’re on to a sequence of matches that lead to various belts in Punch-Out style. The quest for each belt can get pretty grueling as you don’t get a break between matches, you have to do a few of them in one sitting. As you progress through Championship the foes you defeat become available for practice/casual bouts in the “My Animals” mode, there also appears to be a link cable mode for two player matches.
It’s a shame that the punch system is unacceptably iffy and the whole package is kinda spartan, as the game has a nice look (with weirdly menacing animals sometimes) and some pretty solid fundamentals.
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