Legends of Boxing Review

I came across this game yesterday and was immediately brought back to my Junior High years back in the early 80's.  My dad had a game called Title Bout which was a boxing simulation game.  I'd seen it in the game closet, but I'd never seen my dad play it.  Well, one day, I was "sick" and stayed home from school.  I asked my dad if I could play Title Bout and he said that's fine as long as I didn't expect him to play with me.

I devoured the rules and set out to replay a match of Muhammed Ali vs Sonny Liston.  The rules were poorly written, but they seemed to capture the feel of boxing.  I think I ran three matches over the course of that day.  I played a bit more, but my Junior High attention span quickly gravitated to something else.

Well, yesterday when I heard of Legends of Boxing, I figured I had to give it a shot especially when I heard the price!  The game is completely free.  There's a 10 page rule "book", four pages of various charts, a scoresheet, and a few optional downloads.  The game can be played with either dice or a downloadable FAC deck.

There is an optional download called the Fighter Ratings Workbook that has over 1450 fighter ratings plus automates the scoresheet process.  It also allows you to print fighter cards.  I haven't even delved into that yet because one of the other downloads caught my interest - the Career Campaign Add-on.

With this Add-on, you can create your own fighter and take him through a career.  Rules are given for generating your fighter's stats and there are rules for creating the opponents for your fighter.  Your fighter starts off fighting regionally and if successful, will move up to fight nationally.  If your fighter competes favorably on the national level, he will then fight internationally.  Check back later and you can follow my fighter's progress though the ranks.

Overall, this game is a great deal of fun and seems to capture the feel of boxing.  A quick check of the boxers rated in the Fighter Ratings Workbooks looks like the fighters are pretty well done.  The game focuses more on simulating matches than strategic decision making.  That said the game is very fun.  You could run a heavyweight tournament to see who is the best heavyweight of all time.  Or you can replay some of you favorite fights.  It's absolutely free to download and I highly recommend this game to anyone interested in boxing games.

Legends of Boxing can be downloaded at http://legendsofboxing.tabletop-sports.com/lob_home.htm