Fight Night Round 4 ready to rumble

Fight Night Round 4 is now available in retail stores worldwide. Developed by EA Canada, Fight Night Round 4 is the first title ever that will allow players to pit “Iron” Mike Tyson against “The Greatest” Muhammad Ali. The game represents both pugilists when they were in their prime - ad in Tyson’s case - when he was relatively sane.

Besides featuring Tyson and Ali, Round 4 offers a new physics-based gameplay engine, an all new career mode called Legacy mode, and 48 boxers including Lennox Lewis, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and Ricky Hatton. Each boxer’s likeness boxing styles have allegedly been re-created to reflect their real-life counterparts’ strengths and weaknesses in the ring.

Fight Night Round 4 is available for the PS3 and Box 360.

Punch Out!! in May

Nintendo of America will release Punch Out!! for the Wii on May 18, according to an announcement by the company this morning. The Punch-Out!! series has been dormant since the release of Super Punch-Out!! (SNES) in 1994, so fans of that popular game have reason to celebrate. Not too many details have been revealed other than the promise of all of the fun of the beloved classic NES. Using the Wii Remote, players battle as iconic hero Little Mac, fighting their way through a cast of new and familiar boxing opponents in bid to win the WVBA (World Video Boxing Association) Championship Belt.

Nintendo also announced that Excitebots: Trick Racing, an arcade racing game based on the classic Excite Bike franchise, will be released for Wii on April 20; a remake of the GameCube game, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, will hit shelves on May 4.

Gamer Creates Hitler for FaceBreaker

One has to wonder why a pugilist bearing the likeness of Adolph Hitler is the most downloaded user created character for EA’s boxing game FaceBreaker - available by the company’s EA Sports World web site.

Is it because people want to beat the hell out of history’s most notorious demon, a man that epitomized evil and wiped out millions? Or could this seemingly harmless user created character be used as a way to promote antisemitism? Or perhaps we are reading way too much into all this? In cases like this, the voice of the community is paramount, because both viewpoints could prove to be true.

Whatever the reasons for this character’s popularity (as small as it is according to its statistics on the EA Sports World page), one thing is for certain: EA Sports is either unaware of its existence or is fine with it. We gave EA the opportunity to respond one way or the other, but as of this writing we haven’t received one. We’ll follow this story and tell you how it ends but we’d love to hear what you think? Controversial or much adu about nothing? Sound off!

And if the page suddenly disappears, you can see the original in this EA Sports World page screenshot we took earlier today.

Thanks to Harold Goldberg for the tip!

FaceBreaker Released

Electronic Arts has released its arcade boxing game FaceBreaker to retail outlets nationwide, giving Peter Moore one less thing to drone on about for hours. I kid, I kid.. Available for the PS3 and Xbox 360, Facebreaker is the first game to be published under the EA SPORTS Freestyle.
FaceBreaker K.O. Party for Wii, a special version of the game for Nintendo’s popular platform, will follow in November.

Reminiscent of the classic Ready 2 Rumble boxing game series for the Dreamcast (which Peter Moore also had a hand in bringing to market when he worked at Sega), FaceBreaker features stereotypical fighters , arcade style boxing with special moves and power-ups and the ability to put your own face in the game and create your own fighter. Players can do this by using either the Xbox LIVE Vision or PlayStation eye camera. If you played the demo then you probably saw Peter Moore’s mug on a fighter in the game. I had nightmares for weeks.

FaceBreaker is in stores now for a retail price of $49.99 and is rated “T” for “Teen” by the ESRB.

EA Reveals FaceBreaker

EA Canada, the same studio now handling the Fight Nights series after EA shuttered EA Chicago, is giving fight fans a more comedic and arcade experience with the freshly announced FaceBreaker. Decidedly comic in its presentation, FaceBreaker will inevitably be compared to the classic Sega boxing hit Ready 2 Rumble, though decidedly more next-generation.

FaceBreaker promises arcade-style boxing, a cast of larger-than-life personalities, flashy showmanship (like literally tying one hand behind your back and fighting your opponent), and blows that cause visible damage using a technique EA calls real-time facial deformation technology. Using FaceBreaker‘’s Photo Game Face, you”ll also be able to scan your face into the game and watch as your friends and the artificial intelligence show you what you might look like after a mugging.

Some of the characters that you encounter include a stereotypical Latin lover named Romeo and a buff Russian demolitions expert with a penchant for fighting dirty named Molotov. EA didn”t says in its announcement today how many fighters the game would offer, but I suspect all of them will have the same kind of comic appeal of these two oddballs.

Finally FaceBreaker is all about fighting using a variety of hits including haymakers, face shots and body blows combined with timing to deliver a perfect barrage of punches. Gain the momentum, use the right combos, and you”ll be able to knock your opponent out with a super punch.

Details are still light on this arcade-focused boxing game for the time being, so stay tuned for more info as it becomes available. FaceBreaker will be released sometime in 2008 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Wii.