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What fond memories I have of the first time I played NEC's TurboGrafx 16 that wonderful Christmas day. Keith Courage man... that felt like magic. And there was also the Sega Genesis and its wonderful conversion of the arcade Altered Beast. Whoooooooooo!!! Man, I was flying high! After all those years of excellent 8-bit gaming with the NES/SMS we were (finally!) living with hardware capable of more than just a shell of an arcade conversion (TMNT II: The Arcade Game on NES; no pun intended). Yes, it was time to play with the 'big boys'. Gaming was fast becoming more than just kid's entertainment - it has been elevated to an art form where dreams can come alive and take your breath away. Indeed, games are the embodiment of not just one but several art mediums - artwork and music not the least of these. The right game can become more than just flashing lights on a TV screen, more akin to a Renoir masterpiece, a Fugue by Bach, the movie Citizen Kane, etc. The amazing thing about games is their potential; any and all of those works of art I mentioned can, in fact, become a very real part of an actual game, if such is the desired effect. In a word, potential.

I first saw this Punch-Out!! inspired game back on my TurboGrafx 16 promotional VHS cassette which showcased many titles from both the TG16 and the Japanese PC Engine, games which for the most part never made it outside of the land of the rising sun. One snippet which stood out in my mind was a game which resembled Punch-Out!! except that it was done from a first-person perspective (remember, this is before Super Punch-Out!!) and it looked like you were fighting none other than "ADRIAAAAAAN!!" Rocky Balboa A.K.A. Sylvester Stallone. So you can bet that when I had the opportunity to play the actual game recently I was elated.

The game, released in 1989, is called Digital Champ and it's made by Naxat Soft which was among the more prolific developers for the PC Engine alongside Hudson Soft, Sunsoft, and many others. You begin a game by pitting yourself against Marciano, the Rocky knock-off I mentioned before. The first thing I noticed (and liked) was the size of my opponent on the screen. He took up about 1/3rd of the television screen. NEC wasn't joking when they compared China Warrior to Kung Fu (NES) in the promotional tape; the TG16 can push bigger, more colorful, and just more sprites on-screen at once, even if some of those sprites are just the accumulation of much smaller ones... At any rate, the only thing physically visible from your perspective is your gloves and the CPU opponent. You're given three different meters: the stamina meter is your health, the energy meter can be interpreted as how much health you have left in reserve, and the punch meter which I'll get to in a moment. The D-Pad allows you to guard and side-step while Button II and I are your left and right jabs, respectively. (I could never figure out why game companies opt to put roman numerals/letters in the reverse order. go figure.) By holding down either button you charge your punch power and then release for a much stronger punch; that's what the punch meter is used for. Regular punches don't really do much anything so you'll have to rely on charged punches in order to win. Each round lasts for 3 minutes of sped-up time (much like Punch-Out!! on NES) and if you can manage to knock your opponent out three times before the round ends you'll win. Either that, or you'll need to have drained the energy meter out of your opponent so that he can no longer recover and get up. Whenever you knock somebody down both you (if you've lost some stamina) and your opponent recover via the energy meter. In order for you to regain it you must dodge and block your opponent's onslaught for however long it takes.

The game features many boxers you'll have to fight and have rematches with such as Marciano, Mick, and Samson. Here's the first problem with the game; they all fight too similarly. They're certainly textbook fighters because they'll cycle through about 7-10 punches and then repeat that same pattern again and again with very few change-ups. You can tell what your opponent is going to do next from the way they bob and weave about. At first you'll be able to take one helluva beating before going down, but as you continue to defend your National Boxing Championship belt you'll begin to feel the heat as boxers become much more formidable. Repetition is what drags this title down. Even the end quotes by your opponents after being victorious are always the same - "You were lucky today, but I'll be back again. The next time, you might not fare so well." Yeah, yeah.... One thing I do like is how damage accumulates into bruises and lacerations on your opponent's face, but that simply cannot rescue this game from mediocrity. The music is nothing worth mention, so there goes that. The sound effects are decent enough though, not that there's that many to begin with.

I really wanted to like this game, and actually a part of me does. But the personality of the boxers in a boxing game like Punch-Out!! mutes any potential for excitement. You'd be better off playing the Genesis game James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing (from back when he beat Mike Tyson), or even the Genesis/SNES Chavez Boxing titles. Or... you can always do like me and stick with the best boxing series of all time - Punch-Out!! It'll do you good.

- Michael