| I used to box with my dad. It was a great way for him to relieve his frustrations. Me? I was schooled in the Sugar Ray Leonard "don't touch my pretty face" school of boxing and would focus on keeping dad at arms length by dancing round the living room coffee table. Unfortunately, our ‘70s shag-pile carpet wasn't particularly conducive to slippered moonwalking so I'd invariably get cornered and cop a clobbering.
But I kept getting up. Admittedly, this may have had something to do with the frequency of me going down, clutching various parts of my body, but I kept getting up. I'll tell you why. Because I had an eye, it belonged to a tiger, and he wasn't asking for it back. Cue music...
PAR-PA-PA-PAR – PAR-PA-PA-PAR – PA-PA-PAR-PAR-PAR...
YOU SEE, THE THING... hang on, let me turn this down...
you see, the thing about Rocky the videogame is that it's a bit shit but fundamentally brilliant at the same time. The shit bit is that the premise is the same as any other boxing game: wade through loads of opponents, skip past the tedious training sessions, beat up the division champions and repeat ad infinitum. Along the way you'll discover some special moves that you'll only be able to pull off at inappropriate moments, watch some god-awful cut scenes that make you suspect the developers were considering a release on the CD32 and no doubt about it, wonder why you've been playing this game all pissing week.
Nonce… ponce… OOF!
But I'm not a great fan of fighting games, as a rule. Launch a half circle anti-clockwise, full circle clockwise A+B spinning Beyonce thigh-grab at me and I'll counter with my Start + Exit + Power Off combo. But with Rocky…
Oh, Rocky, how I love you. You're actually in a bit of scrap – proper fisticuffs, like. And what's more, it looks like it bloody hurts. In what was either a masterstroke of design or a piece of particularly poor play-testing, beating the likes of Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang and Drago isn't that difficult. The challenge is in getting to fight these characters in the first place, because there's a whole load of mean fuckers standing in your way.
Sometimes you just have to dance in your slippers for a few rounds, steering clear of the onslaught, flicking out the occasional jab, trying to sneak a round on points, waiting for the opponent to tire so you can pin him in the corner in later rounds. Other times, you've just got to wade in before the greasy bugger picks you off at ease from a distance. Tactics actually work.
”Kiss my fist!”
Failing that, you can pretend you're a woefully under-prepared Chris Eubank at the end of his career and just press random buttons.
Lift your opponent off the ground with sickening body blows, snap his head back with a well timed left right combo, have him at your mercy, dazed and concussed, and send him crashing to the canvas with a brain-haemmoraging right hook. When you hit, it hurts. When you lose, it really hurts.
And that fundamentally brilliant part?
You can get up.
You can fight back.
Just like in the movies.
Swing a haymaker and you're right back in it, hounding your opponent… you've got him on the ropes… you’re pinning that overweight, has-been bully in his corner for a change.
Go on, look into my eyes.
You feeling that tough love, now?
RUSS, May
2004.
RODENT CASH RATING -
£9.99 second hand
"HIT ‘IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!!!!!!!!"
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