Fight for Life

When looking at Electronic Arts�� 23-year timeline, you can mark out two sep-arate eras in its history��before and after Madden NFL 2001. Although EA was already the major player in console sports games by the PlayStation era, the hyperrealism made possible during this generation took a hobbyist pursuit and turned it into a social phenomenon. Worldwide, EA had no less than 10 million-seller sports games in 2003, from football and basketball to snowboarding and golf, and the combined sales were enough to dwarf the revenue of nearly every other third-party publisher.

Due to this recent tradition of explosive EA Sports success, the pressure is on for every new franchise to excel, no matter what its subject matter. ��EA��s games come out on a yearly cycle, and they make sure they��re innovating every year with a new feature,�� EA producer Kudo Tsunoda explains. ��It��s not a matter of making the game a little better; it��s a matter of doing something innovative with every game you make.�� That��s the task he��s been assigned with Fight Night 2005, due out next spring for the Xbox. His job is to take a game that revolutionized boxing sims last year and somehow make it even more revolutionary.

Tsunoda��who is half-Japanese and named after his father��s World War II pilot buddy��faced an uphill battle with the first Fight Night last year. Boxing is a second-tier sport in the United States that��s been dogged by corrupt promoters and a lack of name-brand talent. ��Boxers try to hold on to their titles,�� he laments. ��The champions don��t want to fight the promising newcomers because they��re scared of losing their title and the paydays.��

His team��s solution: concentrate on the raw tenets of boxing and create a control system that keeps players coming back for more. ��The great thing about boxing,�� Tsunoda says, ��is that on some level, everyone knows how to box. It��s not like memorizing a football playbook; you��re just trying to hit the guy without getting hit yourself.�� That was the origin of Total Punch Control, a system that uses both analog sticks to give you more precision control over your fighter than any other boxing game, including, ironically, EA��s own Knockout Kings series.

For Fight Night 2005, the main innovation lies in refining Total Punch Control to��in Tsunoda��s words����deal with button-mashing once and for all.�� Although gamers praised the analog-stick system, many boxing fans stuck to the traditional button-oriented controls, which were easier to score combos with. Having been refined this year, Fight Night��s punch system is faster and easier to deal with: Not only are combos pulled off more quickly, but haymaker punches, attacks with enough power to deck a guy in one stroke, can be launched by deft spinning of the right analog stick. Add to this more detailed graphics, actual boxing strategy (you can now hug your opponents), and a manager mode, and you have enough innovation for yet another notch in the EA Sports empire.

Fight Night, just like every other EA Sports game, is about more than just having fun��it��s also a serious simulation. ��I��m not a big soccer fan, but when I play FIFA, I actually feel like I can go out and play better soccer afterward,�� Tsunoda says. This devotion to realism in its chosen subjects is what has made EA such an enormous player, in more ways than one, in its post-Madden 2001 era.

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Xbox Nation.