Knockout Kings 2003 is another instalment in EA Sports boxing series exclusively for GameCube, and is an improved version of Knockout Kings 2002 released for the PS2 and Xbox.

Knockout Kings 2003 features an all-star lineup of 45 professional boxers, past and present, with which to bring the hurt. Spanning three weight classes, the roster includes many of the sport’s all-time legends, such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Evander Holyfield, to name just a few. The game also lets you create boxers of your own in a similar fashion to the WWF/WWE games of the time.

The realism of the characters’ faces, bodies, and physical movements is good for a sixth generation console game, due largely to improved motion capture technology. The realism even extends to the cuts, bruises, and facial swelling that fighters take over the course a match, making the fights more true-to-life than ever before. But, the crowds? they’re about as lively as a cardboard cutout at a funeral, you can tell a lot of focus was done for the fighters rather than the crowd. Only downside to the graphics being it runts in interlaced mode instead of offering a progressive mode, which would have been ideal for a past faction game like this. There is a fair bit of interlacing as a result.

For one or two players looking to jump right into the action, Exhibition mode is the quickest way to get going. Just choose your boxers, pick from one of ten possible arenas, and you’re ready to fight. For a slightly bigger game, try Tournament mode, featuring four or eight boxers fighting for the title in single-elimination matches — though only the first two controllers are supported. And for a single player, there’s Career mode, in which you’ll take a boxer from total obscurity to the rank of heavyweight champion, fighting every boxer in the game along the way. You can create your own boxer from scratch, is where Knockout Kings 2003 tries to keep you coming back for more. It’s cool at first, customizing your dude and climbing the ranks, but after a while, it feels like you’re just fighting the same guys with different names.

New are the Slugfest and Slugfest Battle modes, improved versions of the no-holds barred Slugfests that appeared in earlier editions of the game. In the two virtually identical modes, there are no rounds, no bells, and no rules to interfere with the action. Instead, knockouts, knockdowns, or throw-for-throw points determine winners. You’ll also find yourself able to pull special moves, respond to audience call-outs, and use the new Pain-O-Meter to ensure maximum injury to your opponent. All those options make Slugfest a welcome addition to the game.

There’s a good technical game to be had here, and given some time you’ll discover its subtleties. There’s still no guarantee that your game will be entirely tactical, but Knockout Kings 2003 comes as close to a real boxing sim as anything else out there. Only so much depth can be found in any game based mainly on jabs, hooks, and uppercuts, and calling a game the best boxing title on the market doesn’t guarantee that it’s enjoyable. Fortunately, there’s just as much fun to be had from raw button-mashing as there is from playing with skill, although the fun will probably be shorter lived.

But the game offers little else in the way of improvements over last year’s version. The menus have been redesigned, as has the career ladder. The roster has been updated, and there are a few new arenas to choose from. There is also a new long-term health feature in Career mode, designed to add realism to your boxer’s career. But as this turns out to be little more than mandatory recovery time between fights, it doesn’t add much to the game.

For a game based on two players making repeated contact with each other, you’d think that creating realistic surface collisions would have been a priority for the developers. But you don’t need to look too closely to see that successful punches don’t always hit the other boxer. At the moment of contact, fist and face can be as much as half a foot apart. This becomes all the more obvious during the slow-motion replays that occur with each knockdown, where certain camera angles reveal an agonizing lack of true contact between the two fighters’ bodies.

Another irritating feature is the ten-count that occurs once a fighter is down. Unlike replays, these can’t be skipped. Like it or not, you’re left waiting for the action to resume every time someone hits the floor. Add to this the questionable background warp that indicates the wooziness of your fallen fighter, and you really will want to get up and start punching someone. But these are minor downsides to a game that is otherwise strong overall. The boxers are faithfully designed and accurate to their real life counterparts. The in-game commentary is also notably well done, adding tremendous realism to the game by reacting to your moves. The controls are tight and easy to use, resulting in a game that mimics the psychology of real boxing.

For GameCube owners, this was the only boxing game for a while, so you were limited with choice, in spite of its problems this remains a decent boxing game. It’s good for some competitive fun even if you’re not particularly into the sport. The differences between it and its predecessor are minor, and for someone familiar with previous games in the series, that might come as a letdown. But if you think of this game strictly as an attempt to bring world-class boxing to the GameCube, then Knockout Kings 2003 undeniably does its job.