As you might have read in another review on our site, the console version of Rocky is pure gold. Everything is in place with a solid boxing engine and terrific use of the license. So naturally the move to the GameBoy Advance ought to house the same level of promise, since it stands to reason that you really can’t mess with a good thing too much. Unless you’re Virtucraft, the developer team behind the boxing stinker Mike Tyson’s Boxing. Why Rage gave this team the license to one of its biggest potential moneymakers, I will never know. What I do know is that it’s about damn time Nintendo ported over Punch-Out themselves, or else we’ll never get a decent boxer.

It seems that Virtucraft actually took a step back from Mike Tyson’s Boxing, if that’s even possible. At least Mike Tyson had a 3D engine, where Rocky on the GBA just returns to a 2D side-shot, meaning that the category and strategy of movement is completely removed. Instead, you just move your boxer left and right up to the other boxer, and then try to slug it out. Emphasis on try, because the control is so sloppy that you’ll be easily frustrated and realize your best shot at winning is to just slam buttons like mad. In short, strategy has been eliminated too.

Although the control system at least tries to model the console version, with a mix of evasive maneuvers and jabs, it is far clumsier then I would have ever thought possible. The main idea in the good versions of Rocky (or good boxing games in general), is that speed is the key. Speed is everything because speedy jabs and uppercuts are supposed to be differently paced. Therefore you have to think about whether there is enough opening to fit an uppercut in, or if you have to break down the opponent with a quick flurry of punches first. Rocky for the GBA completely ignores this essential for boxing and in the process creates one of the worst playing games ever. Normal punches are just as sluggish as uppercuts, except that the uppercuts are now made practically impossible because you have to be right up next to the person. At the speed the boxers move, it can take around 5 seconds to walk up close to deliver the blow, and by that time they’ll have no doubt seen it coming and begin slowly punching you back.

If only that was the only control issue though, Rocky might’ve been merely mediocre. Instead it adds one other completely horrific addition that was done right in the console versions: evasive maneuvers. Pressing the L Trigger will dodge, but things get quickly out of hand. For one thing, half of the time dodges aren’t even necessary – the punches don’t connect to start with. It’s frustrating as all get out to keep throwing punches and see the guy just standing there, not doing anything. He isn’t blocking, but he isn’t getting hurt either. It’s also impossible to hit certain types of blocks, and since you can hold these dodges as long as you want… effectively making a bout go on forever. While it was the rare bout in Rocky for Xbox that went on longer than six rounds at max, I regularly fought around ten rounds in the GBA version before we even got knocked down for the first time. This makes the game slow and awkward for any gamer on the go, and it certainly makes it extremely not fun. In fact, I couldn’t see a real way to enjoy this title if I tried, especially after seeing what a great product Rocky is on other systems.

Of course, the biggest asset for such a terrible GBA game is the license. In that sense, the GBA Rocky gets the ‘Movie Mode’ in practically its entirety, with the training exercises having been changed to suit the new control layout. While it is fun on some level to box against Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago and Tommy Gunn, such little things don’t matter when the game is as fractured as it is. If this were a 3D effort with a boxing engine that actually felt solid, the Movie Mode would be icing on the cake. Here, the icing doesn’t matter at all because the cake is either rotten or non-existent.

So to sum up everything… the gameplay of Rocky for the GBA would be enough to make even Rocky want to give up and quit. It has no redeeming features, since the Movie Mode is basically rendered inaccessible by unplayable control. This is one to avoid, and let’s just pray we get a good-playing boxing game sometime soon.

As I noted earlier, Rocky makes the switch from 3D back to 2D, with less than pleasing results. The animation is laughable, with ‘swivel models’ that seem to magically rotate their torsos around without their legs budging, and the arenas and backgrounds are very low-res. The fighter models at least look like their counterparts, sort of. Rocky and Clubber Lang are the most recognizable, with Apollo Creed and others all sort of mixed together in a big jumble. The character models themselves are often low-res, and the stiff animation doesn’t help things. If there were to be a comparison drawn, I’d say the game that has graphics closely resembling Rocky’s would be Rock ‘Em Sock
Em Robots, and I mean the actual game that we all grew up with. The fights resemble those crazy robot fights so similarly, I can’t help but wonder if Virtucraft employees played just a tad too much of that classic game in their youth. Back to the graphics, I’m not sure if the framerate is constantly chugging, or if it’s just a bad, bad case of the slowdown… but whatever it is, the game is also slow as molasses. You’d have more fun looking at Mike Tyson Boxing, and that’s no joke.

Luckily at least the sound is above average. From the crisp, clear delivery of the Rocky theme in the beginning to the sound effects, everything is as good as can be on the GameBoy Advance hardware. Of course, the quality is still below other consoles (particularly when the lack of storage space eliminates intro songs and the like), but when compared to other GBA games, Rocky is a champ on the audio side.

Thankfully, one of the nice things about Rocky is that the game has no redeeming value on the replay side, so the question about whether you should even rent it never comes up. Yes, it supports multiplayer… but I pray you don’t know a friend who bought this. Instead, most gamers would be likely to try the Movie Mode, until they realize the gameplay is non-existent. In the trashcan you go!

In the end, Rocky is a game that’s easy to stay away from. Your money would be better spent on purchasing its big brother for one of the big consoles than it would be for even renting this for the handheld. It was a bad idea giving Virtucraft yet another boxing license to muck up; I have nothing against the developer, but let them never come near a boxing game again.