64. World Boxing (Natsume, Famicom, 1990)

Continuing my Famicom boxing game journey, we come to World Boxing, a game released 3 years after yesterday's dud #62 Family Boxing. As one may expect, World Boxing looks and plays much better than Family Boxing. It uses a similar view to the arcade version of Punch-Out, where the your boxer is represented by a pair of floating gloves, though here the action is shown split screen style with your opponent's view of you shown on the bottom screen.

Controls-wise, the game is similar to Punch-Out, though far form identical. The d-pad allows you to select between 4 different high punches, and if you are holding the B button while punching, they will be the low version of that punch. Meanwhile holding the A button and using the d-pad wither blocks high or low, or dodges to the left or right.

Where the game doesn't learn as much from Punch-Out are the characters, or rather lack thereof. While Punch-Out had interesting characters with wildly different fighting styles, World Boxing just has a bunch of normal looking dudes, who each fight slightly differently. I suppose it's going for realism, but on an 8-bit system that can be hard to pull off. The AI opponents in the single player mode are a bit too difficult and the gameplay isn't quite as snappy as I would like. That said the mechanics make for a fun enough versus mode, though I also believe that just about any versus game is fun if you have 2 people playing at the same level of skill.

2/5, Decent mechanics, but next to no personality.