Download Panza Kick Boxing

Apparently, Panza Kick Boxing is seen as one of the best fighting games for the Amiga. This game is a good conversion for the PC platform.

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. Ultimately, you can challenge the best boxer, André Panza himself - being an actual triple world champion.

A nice and unique feature - as far as I know - is the presence of "programmable moves". From the main menu you can assign 13 moves per match from the staggering 55 modes available. It takes some trying before fully understanding how to use deals, but you will figure this out after not too long. During a match, you will hit your opponent when one of your blows hits a non-protected part of your opponent's body (head, torso, and thigh). When you are too far or close, your action will miss. Obviously you or the opponent can also block attacks. In the upper-left and -right corner of the screen are 4 light projectors. These indicate the physical strength of the boxers. When they are all turned black the boxer is knocked out.

The game supports CGA, EGA and VGA graphics with PC bleeper or Adlib sound. The (VGA) graphics look decent enough, with some smooth animations. The (Adlib) sound is functional, but nothing more than that. The game can be operated by joystick (unfortunately I could not test this) or by keyboard, with the buttons or , together with the eight directions on the numeric keypad. A big shame is that the training sessions weightlifting and skipping-rope are very difficult with the keypad. I couldn't complete them even after several attempts.

All in all, it is a good fighting game. The game is more than just hitting the attack buttons as fast as possible; it actually asks for some skill. At the same time, it is not the fastest action-paced fighting game, which might not be what you want.