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 at least 100 moves/positions 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 Amstrad CPC version is quite good, offering really nice graphics for its hardware limitations with vivid colors and smooth enough sprite animations. The game here runs in Mode 1, thus smaller gameplay screen, but better visibility of the details (note that, the CPC+ version run in Mode 0, thus bigger screen size). Also the CPC version misses a few nicel details compared to the CPC+, such as the lights above the ring used as the player's energy bars (fading out). As with all versions, what is really impressive is the number of available moves for each fighter, 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.
Sound is fine, offering a nice introductory tune, while there are a few nicely composed SFX when kicking and punching during gameplay.