Ready 2 Rumble Boxing

About Ready 2 Rumble Boxing

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (1999) is Midway's comic 3D boxing game for the Dreamcast, with larger-than-life fighters such as Afro Thunder, bruising faces and a special "Rumble Flurry".

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing in Depth

Like Nintendo's Punch-Out!!, it features boxers with colourful personalities, such as Afro Thunder and Boris "The Bear" Knokimov, but it is in 3D, giving more control over the fighter in the ring, and players can choose any boxer from a large roster. Ring announcer Michael Buffer appears as himself.

During fights a RUMBLE meter fills a letter or two at a time as hard blows land, with especially strong punches earning more. Once "RUMBLE" is spelt out, the player can power up and trigger a "Rumble Flurry", a unique, heavily damaging combination for each character. Fighters gradually show bruises and swelling as a bout goes on; the idea had appeared in SNK's Art of Fighting in 1992, but reviewers widely praised the fun it added. The Dreamcast, PlayStation and Nintendo 64 versions each have an exclusive boxer, Jimmy Blood, Gino Stiletto and J.R. Flurry respectively. It was developed on PCs with 3dfx graphics cards, and lead programmer Dave Wagner said the team separated the graphics layer from the rest of the code to keep it portable, rewriting and optimising the renderer specifically for the Dreamcast.

Making Ready 2 Rumble Boxing

Midway Studios San Diego developed it and Midway published it for the Dreamcast in September 1999, with N64, PlayStation and Game Boy Color versions that November. It received "favorable" reviews on every platform except Game Boy Color, which was "mixed", and was followed by Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 and Ready 2 Rumble: Revolution.