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 Title Bout Championship Boxing
 Reviewed by Thomas Gerbasi (December 30, 2003)
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Unlike followers of other sports, boxing fans usually wind up with the short end of the stick when it comes to seeing their dream matches become reality. Whether it’s due to stalled negotiations, different promoters or network affiliations, or just apathy, the odds of seeing some of today’s best matchups are slim and none.
Enter Title Bout Championship Boxing (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/tb/), the latest and greatest incarnation of the boxing simulator that started as the board game Title Bout and that was most recently known as Title Fight 2001. Designed by Jim and Tom Trunzo (who have over 30 years experience in simulating the sweet science), and programmed by Andreas Raht and his team at OOTP Developments, TBCB is the product that can put all those mythical arguments to rest – or maybe even start some new ones.
A text-based simulator (there are no graphical representations of real fighters), TBCB displays blow-by-blow fight results via scrolling text. For those of the younger generation, this by no means takes away from the enjoyment of the product, and it actually enhances your immersion into the fight, as you won’t see a virtual Butterbean boxing circles around Muhammad Ali.
That’s not to say that the graphics are second-rate, because they’re not, and the bells and whistles are the best yet in a Trunzo product. From a display of two generic fighters landing blows, clinching, etc, to allow you a view of the action, to the easy to use interface, and top-notch sound effects (crowd noise, bells, punches landing, referee counting), you’re more involved in the action than ever before.
And while the diehards among us could care less about such things, to attract a new audience, OOTP Developments has raised their game to compete with the other products in the marketplace, and has succeeded.
But like I said, the diehards don’t look for pretty graphics – they want to see 1) the amount of fighters included in the game, and 2) how realistic the results are. After spending some significant time with this product, I can say that TBCB exceeds all expectations.
As far as fighters go, the selection is immense, with over 3,600 pugilists from past and present rated in 39 categories from hitting power to ability to draw crowds, with everything you could possibly imagine in between. And no matter how big a fan you think you are, you will find someone in here you never heard of. Luckily, in association with the Boxing Records Archive at boxrec.com, you can click from any fighter in the game and be brought to his record at boxrec, making this product as educational as it is recreational.
Among the new additions to the fighter screens are options to insert a fighter’s website or biography, and check out extensive stats from the bouts which you run, and when going through current fighters, you can also see their current career stage, so while a young prospect would be rated “pre-prime”, a faded journeyman could be rated “post-prime” or “end”.
The Trunzos (who have also had help in rating retired fighters from Dan Cuoco of the International Boxing Research Organization) have been doing this for decades, so their ratings are usually spot on, but if you want to change any of the ratings or create your own fighters, you’re able to – in fact, a primer for creating fighters is included in the game’s manual.
Also rated in the game are active and retired trainers, cornermen, referees, and judges, and all can have an effect on the outcome of a fight.
Once you’ve decided on who you would like to see fight, you’ve got a ton of options to choose from – you can check on a fighter’s condition, designate whether he will be the recipient of a favorable judging bias, the location of a fight, the referee and three judges, cornermen, the rules and number of rounds for the fight, as well as what areas the fighters will focus on in training. Sounds like a lot, but you can save your defaults, or even bypass all of these options entirely. There are even pre-existing rules sets included with the game – from the unified rules to the specific rules of the WBC, WBA, IBF, and other sanctioning bodies – or you can make your own rules.
In the ring, the results of the fights are realistic with a slight enough chance for an upset to take place. The commentary has also been put through the wringer and the blow-by-blow is much improved over previous versions of the game, a fact that will please many of the diehard fans. Cornermen also play a bigger role, with the trainer and cutman getting 60 seconds to dole out over various areas, such as: working on swelling, working on cuts, motivation, or imparting strategy.
In my playing of the game, I’ve noticed a better flow to the action, with action fights producing a lot of drama, and bouts between two stylistically mismatched fighters being boring and drawn out, like they would be in real life. Another nice touch during fights is the generic heads that graphically display the cuts, swellings, etc of each fighter.
Once the fights are over, punch stats can be viewed, and you also have the option now to save the blow-by-blow readouts of every fight – a nice touch to re-live the classics.
If that was it for this new edition, most fans would be satisfied, but OOTP Developments really went to town on this one, adding a number of new and enhanced modules to truly make TBCB a complete boxing sim.
Fight cards can be made with six bouts, and after the card is complete, you can see whether the show will be shown on pay-per-view or not, as well as the purses for each fighter. Odds for each bout are given as well, and you can bet on the outcomes of one or all of the contests, with your running bankroll being displayed as the bouts play out.
Another key addition to the game is the enhanced scheduler, and enhanced doesn’t even cover it. You can add bouts individually to the scheduler, with each bout being fought as many times as you would like it (even 1,000 times, if you so choose). Or, you can use the autoscheduler, and set parameters to determine matchups. Let’s say you want to schedule five bouts between flyweights that fought in 1954. You can, and the program will find ten flyweights that meet the criteria and match them up. Or let’s say you want to have ten bouts between current fighters from Puerto Rico against current fighters from Mexico. You can do it. Want to have a fighter fight eight fights against fighters who are rated the same as he is overall? You can do it. Gamers will spend hours with the autoscheduler alone.
There is also a stats area, similar to a League Leaders section, where you can check out your leading fighters in 21 categories, from winning percentage to lowest opponent connect % in a fight. The rankings department has also undergone an overhaul (and tweaking is still being done by the development team for a 2004 enhancement patch), and now it’s possible to see rankings from all the major sanctioning bodies for the fights you conduct on your pc, with each sanctioning body showing things a bit differently. In other words, if you can think of it, it’s probably here.
Having played the Trunzos’ products for at least 20 years, I’ve watched the dedication of both Jim and Tom to put out the best boxing simulation possible given available technology, whether it was cards, dice and a board, a Commodore 64, or a PC. Now having teamed up with OOTP Developments, they have a squad behind them that can put this game into a wider array of homes. Luckily, with Title Bout Championship Boxing, they’ve got the product that can appeal to any sports fan – from the boxing diehard to the casual observer who wants to learn more about the sweet science. Needless to say, TBCB is highly recommended.
For more information on TBCB or to order, visit http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/tb/
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E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
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