finishing the game

Description

Here is a complete speed run of one of the rarest sports games of all time! This was done on Fast Speed mode, which is considered as the hardest of the two possible options (Slow Speed mode being the other), since the boxers are faster and the opponents also appear to recover more quickly. "Buster" also has the lowest possible recovery (R) rating (1/5) during this run, in order to add to the overall challenge/drama of finishing the game without getting knocked down, with nothing but first round wins. After all, nobody expected him to beat Mike Tyson, right? While playing this game, I found the controls to be really stiff at times, especially when going for the stiff right cross ironically enough! There were so many damn times where that punch just wasn't coming out when I really needed it to! The funniest thing is that the instruction manual fails to even mention this punch at all, or the uppercut for that matter! Both of these punches use the exact same button combination (diagonal Up+Right along with Button 2, or diagonal Up+Left with Button 2 when controlling Player 2), hence the problem! Anyway, enough of my ranting, here is some history regarding this game: On February 11, 1990, James "Buster" Douglas shocked the boxing world with his unbelievable upset victory over the then undefeated "Iron" Mike Tyson, to become the new undisputed heavyweight champion of the world! Since Mike was no longer the champion, his contract with Nintendo immediately expired, leading to the release of Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream, instead of Tyson. Sega, on the other hand, saw the historical upset as an opportunity to jump on the James "Buster" Douglas bandwagon in the hopes of proving that "GENESIS DOES WHAT NINTENDON'T". Seeing as how the new champion was previously unknown to most people, Sega most likely felt the urge to put out his game as quickly as possible. In Japan, there was already a boxing game out by the name of Final Blow for the Sega Mega Drive, which was then subsequently morphed into James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing for the Sega Genesis in North America, with some minor palette swapping of the main boxer. The game was apparently put out so quickly (June 1, 1990) that Buster's fight record was not even updated to 30-4-1 with 20 KO's, but rather 29-4-1 with 19 KO's, which was the record that he had prior to beating Mike Tyson! On the bright side, the game was released at a time when James "Buster" Douglas would still be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world for at least several more months. However, the same cannot be said about the Sega Master System version. Other than Rocky, the Sega Master System had no boxing games that could be slightly altered for a quick "Buster" release, therefore a new game had to be developed. While it's unclear whether or not the same team that produced Rocky (no credits are shown in that game) also put together James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing, there are striking similarities between the two, especially with regards to the structure of the boxing ring and the way in which the fighters get knocked down and hump the mat. In any event, the game definitely took longer to produce compared to its Sega Genesis counterpart and was therefore released a little too late into Buster's short reign as champion. Having lost in his very first title defense against Evander "Real Deal" Holyfield on October 25, 1990, Sega quickly decided to discontinue this game. In 1991, James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing was morphed into Heavyweight Champ for Sega Master System players located in Europe and South America respectively, with only an extremely minor name swap from "Buster" to S.Davis. Today marks the twenty-second anniversary of James "Buster" Douglas' devastating defeat at the hands of Evander "Real Deal" Holyfield. Buster's loss is the reason why this particular Sega Master System game remains so very rare to this very day. Played by Daniel "DTysonator" Teixeira o...