Panza Kick Boxing

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game features both single and multi player mode. The single player mode also offers a career game. You start off with a kick boxer having some random - low - physical capacities, namely strength, resistance and reflex. You can train your boxer to improve these stats. You will improve your resistance by skipping-rope, strength by weightlifting and finally your reflexes by kicking moving targets. However, when using keyboard controls, the training sessions are very difficult. Training and boxing opponents makes you stronger and enables you to challenge better boxers. The moving list is huge and count over 35 moves available! There the usual low-kicks, high-kicks, punches, back-fists and a lot more to use. Ultimately, you can challenge the best boxer, André Panza himself - being an actual triple world champion.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The CPC+ (and Amstrad GX4000 console) version features really nice graphics with vivid colors and smooth sprite animations. The game here runs in Mode 1 (320×200 pixels), thus bigger gameplay screen when compared to the CPC (runs in Mode 0 - 160×200 pixels). Also the CPC+ version offers a few nice touches at the background compared to the CPC, such as the lights above the ring being used as the player's energy bars (fading out). What is really impressive is the number of available moves for each fighter (as found in all versions), all of which are nicely animated! According to the developers, it took two years work to digitize all the blows, falls, foils and to recreate more than 120 combat positions, with the assistance of Andre Panza himself! Pretty impressive that is. The game here looks close to the 16bits Amiga and ST computer versions, limited of course to the CPC+ hardware.
Sound is fine too, offering a nice introductory tune, while there are a few nicely composed SFX of kicks and punches during gameplay.