'Rumble' leaves a lot to be desired

By Matt Grandstaff

For the Daily

When the Sega Dreamcast launched in September of 1999, one of the hottest selling launch titles was Midway's over the top arcade boxing game, "Ready 2 Rumble." Gamers were given a light hearted boxing game with amusing characters that brought back memories of King Hippo and Super Macho Man in the 8 bit Nintendo classic, "Mike Tyson's Punch Out." Now the sequel, "Round 2," becomes the first boxing game for the new Playstation 2 console, along with an encore for the Dreamcast.

The strongest selling point of "Round 2" is its comical cast of boxers. The majority of the characters from the original game return, including favorites Afro Thunder, Butcher Brown and Angel Rivera. In addition, new characters including punk rocker Freak E. Deke, hippy Freedom Brock and Robox Rese-4. All of the characters have hilarious trash talk comments and special moves that relate to the personality of the character. In all there are 23 total characters, including new celebrity players. All of the characters are beautifully rendered and animated on the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 game engines. You can actually see the fat rolls on Mama Tua jiggle.

As far as game play is concerned, "Round 2" is very similar to the original. Boxers punch and duck until one opponent goes down three times. The highlight of any match in this game is when one opponent spells out "RUMBLE" by landing major blows on the opponent. When this is accomplished, special moves can be activated that will bring your opponent to the canvas in no time.

This is updated in "Round 2," for if a boxer spells "RUMBLE" three times, a special move can be delivered that will throw the opponent out of the ring. In addition, boxers can now go for cheap shots after an opponent is about to go down, which make the opponent go into a graphically impressive dizzy spell.

Unfortunately, aside from fun characters and wonderful graphics, "Ready 2 Rumble" is only fun for short periods of time. It is fairly easy to roll through computer opponents in both exhibition and career modes in attempts to get new characters.

Also the two-player mode becomes annoying as the boxer who knocks down his opponent first usually goes on to win the match. Like the ring announcer who promotes the game, Michael Buffer, "Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2" becomes stale after a few fights.

Grade: C+

Midway

Playstation 2/Dreamcast

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing:Round 2