World Champ
System: NES
Release Date: April 1991
Developer: Pixel
Publisher: Romstar
Genre: Fighting
Climb the rankings all the way to the top in World Champ! It’s been a minute since we’ve last seen a boxing game. Romstar saw the opening and pounced. You create a boxer and start from the very bottom. Can you climb the ranks from the dregs of the welterweight division to the top of the heavyweights?
Georg Mack just fit in the name field, which was cool. Then I got the choice of training my skills or going right into the fights. Training puts you in a three round fight against the lowest ranked opponent in the division. Beating them gives you two points added to the stat you chose. You can train as much as you’d like and you’ll need to. The four stats are speed, stamina, defense, and punch. Speed reflects your movement around the ring. Stamina is your health bar, which sticks around longer at higher powers. Defense keeps you from losing much stamina when you get caught in a barrage. Punch is allocated among straight, body blow, uppercut, and hook. I loaded the straight as that tended to be the punch that landed the most.
At the beginning of each round, you can power up your four punch types using your punch stat. The fights don’t require a lot of strategy. You jockey for position by moving around the ring. You just mash away at the A Button to keep your opponent stunlocked long enough to drop. Different direction presses change the punch you throw, or you press no direction and the punches are thrown at random. Rounds only last a minute, but that’s more than enough time to get in a TKO. In fact, I only got a legit knockout once. The B Button is your defense, but I didn’t really understand the system. Defense wasn’t really necessary with an offensive strategy, anyway.
As you rank up, opposing fighters get higher stats. Each fight you win gives you a +2 to all stats, but this won’t be enough to get through the game. Beating the champ of one division moves you up to the next weight class and you continue your career. You can skip the lower ranked fighters, but then you won’t have the stats to beat the higher ones. You need to have patience to sit through this one and train yourself up. I jumped right to the champ in the Cruiserweight class and got massacred. That was all I needed to hang up my gloves and give up my quest to be World Champ.
Graphics: 2.0
Sprites and animations are alright, but don’t do anything special.
Sound: 1.0
The only takeaway is the awful digitized referee count that makes everything worse.
Gameplay: 1.5
Defense is useless, and offense is just get in range and mash.
Difficulty: 2.5
Train all you want to become overpowered, otherwise, good luck.
Fun Factor: 1.0
There’s not much fun to be had in this ring.
Overall Rating: 1.6
World Champ earns a C-. There’s no reason to play this when you have Ring King. World Champ is similar, but worse in every way.