"Fun for a couple of rounds, than it knocks you out"

Ready to Rumble was the first boxing game on the Dreamcast, at least I think so.
Ready to Rumble is not a realistic boxing game, but just an fun, cartoony one. And I'm very happy they did it this way, because a realistic boxing game would have been very boring, just like it is on TV most of the times.
When I first played it I was really amazed because the characters looked amazingly detailed. And the music was also very good. But how about the game itself and why did I like it?

Graphics 9/10

The announcer, the characters, the people and the ring look amazingly good (as I said before). It's not perfect though, because sometimes you see that the boxer is modelled in parts, the body parts just overlap each other. But still it all looks very smooth and colorful, not much more to say about this.

Sound 8/10

The sound is also pretty good; the intro has a catchy tune (or you hate, like one of my friends did) and the boxers and punches sound good too, the taunts of the boxers are very fun to use.

Gameplay 7/10

This is where the game starts to be disappointing; after you played a few matches in the arcade mode to practice you'll want to start working on the championship mode, but then it hits you: you can easily beat your opponents and the training mode just sucks, it's just so boring to press some buttons and than see that you got a very bad rating!
So, the championship mode is only fun to complete once and to unlock some new boxers, but the multiplayer mode is much better: playing against your friends is very cool and than you realize that boxing can be fun...I think this game is just a cool multiplayer game and it's not meant to play alone.

Replay 6/10

As mentioned above the single player mode is way to boring to played more than one, but the multiplayer mode should keep you satisfied for quite a while, just make sure you let your friends win once in a while or they'll start hating you and the game and your copy will be totally useless.

Overall 7/10 (actually 7.3/10)

The game looks great and sounds good, but it just gets boring to soon, unless you play it against you friends. Only buy it if you have many friends, who like you and boxing! :)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/02, Updated 01/08/02