Conference Call for Don King Presents: Prize Fighter

By Joe Haygood | June 9, 2008

Chase over at 2K Sports was nice enough to send me over an invite to the press conference for their upcoming game, Don King Presents: Prize Fighter.  The conference call covered the Xbox 360 version, and only addressed the Wii and DS versions of the game as coming shortly after the 360 version of the game.  The call also gave us the surprise of both Don King and Larry Holmes showing up to answer questions about themselves and the game.  The only problem I had was not knowing how to get my new phone to record the conversation, because if you have ever listened to Don King, you realize that you need a seatbelt to keep up with the man as he speaks.

Matthew Seymour, executive producer for 2K Games started off the phone call letting us know that the game is to be released on June 10th.  It will also give players about 15 hours of playability through the main campaign.  Prize Fighter is being presented in a far different way than past boxing games.  The game plays out in a documentary style, where people are being interviewed about you and your successes and failures.  Each time they go over a memory, it goes back to that time and you play through a section of the main story.  It is the first time that I have heard of any game, let alone a boxing game use this style of play, so it had me a bit intrigued.

The story mode covers all facets of the life of your boxer, including inside and outside of the ring in regards to your boxer.  You will have fights, lining up promoters, meeting people, going out with women, it is all there, in all of its bling like glory.  No mention was made to the promoters that would be in the game, or if Don King was the only promoter available.

The game will also have many current and legendary boxers that you will fight against, including Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Sam Peter, Sannon Briggs, Andrew Golata, Kelly Pavlick, Joe Casagi an Julio Caeser Chavez, Jr.  Unfortunately, Chavez, Sr. would not be in the game, so no father-son duel will happen.

Moving from the single player, there will also be a robust multiplayer component that will extend the life of the game, long after you finish the single player story mode.  You can have a stable of up to five fighters, so you can create boxers in several weight classes so you never feel like you are stuck in one mode.  Want to fight fast and light, create a lightweight.  Want to bruise and brawl, create a heavyweight, and then switch between them as you feel like playing.  Three modes of play are available online.  The first is an exhibition match where you just fight one person, in one match.  Next up is a single elimination tournament where you will fight in a bracketed tournament trying to get to the top of the heap.  The most intriguing mode was the Fighters Club Round Robin mode, where you will enter a bracket of 16 and then fight in designated fights over a certain amount of time.  Think of this like a Fight Club mode where you prove the pound for pound best fighter in the tournament.  It sounded like a strange concept, but it seems like the developers were sold on its uniqueness and challenge.  The game will use the TrueSkill ranking system to match players up evenly.

One thing that they mentioned was that you will not see “The King” showing up in this game.  The developers felt a bit creeped out by that, and wanted to stay a bit more true to the boxing world, so they went after most of the licenses that were out there, so you will see clothing, boxing rings an equipment coming from all of the companies that you know.  They even have the official punch counter signed on.

It was mentioned that the game would have some donwloadable content, but it was not really a focus by the development team.  They wanted to put more emphasis on the game standing on its own merit.  It will also not have an online spectator mode at this time.  One thing that they did mention is that you need something for a spectator to do while watching the fight, so they said that maybe someone will implement a betting mode for spectator mode.  Not with real money, of course, so it would be interesting to see if that comes into play as a downloadable mode in a patch.  That way you could spectate in an online fight and throw down virtual money on who would win.

One thing that the developer would have liked to put in the game, were a lot more of the stories that Don King had to tell.  Matthew mentioned that they had hours and hours of conversations, as well as spending a lot of time going through the huge boxing video collection that Don King owns and they just had way too much material to put in the game.  Also, they said that the rating of the game would have to be changed, because some of the stories definitely went into the “M” rating.

At this point, we had both Don King and Larry Holmes in the room and they both put a spin on the game.  For Don King, the game had to do with life.  You want to play the game and feel like you are a part of the game.  For Larry, it was all about being true to yourself.  Make sure to concentrate and focus in the game, because when you don’t pay attention, or get out of a groove, you end up losing.  Mind you I am paraphrasing a bit, because as I mentioned before Don King and Larry Holmes gave us lots of information, but without a way to record, I was a bit flumoxed in trying to write it all down.

The game is being developed by Venom Games, who put together the Rocky and Rocky Legends games.  Matthew stated that this game would not be as difficult as those two games were, as that was one of the criticisms received on the Rocky games.  He also mentioned when asked to compare this game to Fight Night 3, that while Fight Night 3 got a lot right, it was a launch title and that it could have done a few things better, but it was pressured to get the game out for launch. 

Commentary is being done by Jim Lampley, of HBO boxing commentator fame.  Jim was asked at the beginning of production to sign on to the project, and did when he heard the quality of the audio in the other 2K Sports games.  He will be joined by Emmanuel Stewart, who will provide color commentary for the boxing matches.  Matthew let us know that this was the first boxing game to have a color commentator for the boxing matches.  There is also a huge amount of voice over work done by Don King himself, telling stories, or mentioning events in the game.

The last item mentioned in the call were the boxing styles used by the fighters as well as how the game will implement rules for knockouts.  First off is that the boxers will not have specific styles, but there might be some subtle differences as to how each boxer will look with their stylings, but in the end, it is a general style system, ie. fast puncher, heavy puncher, defensive, etc.  These are not the actual styles, but just a way to notate the way the system is suppose to work.  As for knockouts, the game will use traditional rules for the knockout.  This is the three knockdown rule, a TKO (technical knock out), and a standing 8 count or knock down 10 count.  You can be saved by the bell however, although it was not sure if this would be the case in the last round.

And with that the call ended.  I for one was rather surprised at how much Don King was involved with the game.  A lot of times, you just envision someone slapping their name on something for a chunk of money, but by the passion the man has for everything he is involved with, you can tell that he has put a lot of time and effort into this game. It was also interesting to see that they were using this documentary mode to tell the story of the fighter.  Look for Don King’s Presents: Prize Fighter on June 10th.