The crew over at Vivid Games did tremendous work on their boxing title Real Boxing. The sweet science hit Android and iOS devices last fall and made quite the impact on boxing game enthusiasts. Like the Fight Night franchise, Real Boxing allows for players to create a rookie boxer and manage his career from the amateur ranks of local and regional gyms to the bright lights, glamour, and duct tapeless canvases of main event boxing venues.
Personally, I always liked the dim lights, small crowds, low purses, and duct taped, dirty mats of the amateur portion of career mode in boxing simulations. It’s always been authentic in boxing titles that had a career mode and I always wished that THQ and Akklaim would’ve used similar career progression with their WWE and Legends of Wrestling franchises. Sure, it was touched on very gently with the WWE Day of Reckoning series on the GameCube and WWF Attitude on Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Dreamcast, but there was never a developmental to the big show or from the indies to the main promotions.
Let’s stay in the ring and get back to boxing though. While boxing simulators are a mere fiefdom of the vast smartphone game kingdom ruled by EA’s Fight Night Champion, Real Boxing has carved out a nice slice of that with a one-two punch on both Android and iOS. Vivid are heading for other arenas now by bringing the title to the PlayStation Vita next month.
Real Boxing will come out of the smartphone corner swinging with Unreal Engine 3 giving its punches that extra juice and brings a good deal of customization: with boots, trunks, tattoos, hairstyles, mouth guards, body type, skin type, fighting style are all customizable. Sure, it’s something that is standard with sports titles that allow you to create your own fighter or player, but there’s a lot of emphasis on this from Vivid.
It seems like Vivid Games are pulling out the fresh paint for this transition to more traditional gaming vehicles, but they’re also working on the mechanics to make the game more strategic. More tournaments will also be added in the PS Vita and smartphone versions to add more depth to the career mode come this fall.
Real Boxing lands on PS Vita August 27th via digital download and will be available for $9.99. New tournaments are due in October.