Boxing Game

Mikkel Petersen

Status: Preview, Findability: 5/5

Our next entry never had a proper name unfortunately and was just known as “Boxing Game”. It was originally started back in the 80’s by Mikkel Petersen, mostly as a hobby project in 1988.

The game was abandoned for many years until around 1996, and development continued in small drips and drabs until around 2000. From this point the game was not touched again, and almost 13 years on now – it seems unlikely that the game will ever see completion. Mikkel felt that it was too late for the project, and that’s why he walked away from it in the end.

Looking at the preview – although lacking on background graphics and title screens, the game is actually playable with fighting moves, rules and a scoring system. It’s actually quite a neat game, and a huge shame it never got completed.

Genesis Project released the final state of the game in May/June 2013 for people to check out for themselves. They have added a menu system to select basic options for playing the game and warn that occasion the game may hang on round 10.

So go and check out a neat boxing game that never was. Mikkel recently kindly gave his own history about the game, which you can read in creator speaks!

Contributions: Genesis Project

Supporting content

Available downloads

Creator speaks

Mikkel Petersen talks about work on his game:

“I didn’t really have a grand plan with it but I thought that the other Commodore 64 boxing games somehow lacked gameplay..it didn’t feel like boxing, whereas all the other fighting games were awesome. I borrowed a lot of inspiration from Return of the exploding Fist and International Karate.

I thought that once it was finished, I might be able to sell it, but that wasn’t really what motivated me, I would have done it for free (and I guess, that’s what I did heh).

Unfortunately I started too late and suddenly Commodore 64 was ancient. I did initially start development in 1988, but when a failed attempt to install Dolphin Dos ruined my computer, development was set on a hold. Later on when I could afford a new computer, time had kind of ran out, but I continued just for the hell of it.

I used Zeus Assembler for coding. The characters are made up off 7 sprites each, and since C64 only had 8 sprites, I used raster interrupts to be able to draw the last 6. For that to relatively easy manageable from a development perspective, I’ve made a little library I called “virtual sprites”..a set of adresses that mirrored all the standard settings for sprites (x,y, color etc) but for 14 sprites instead of 8. A small raster interrupt routine updated the real sprites with the virtual ones. One just had to take into consideration that some sprites could not be viewed alongside others, but had to be way below or up on the y axis.
I wrote a little program called “virtual sprite builder” where you could place each virtual sprite, the finished picture would then be saved as “image” and that “image” would again be linked to a move.

A move would then consist of several images. In the sprite builder you could create new moves, and set up hit areas (what part of this image is that glove, what is the head,what is body etc.)

When working with the source code, it was often necessary to use the memory used for graphics, so in development it wasn’t always possible to see all the graphics at once, or even have the entire source code loaded in at once. I had to load one part, compile it, then load another part, compile that, then load the part that I would actually work on. Though it was difficult to work on a Commodore 64 compared to modern computers, it was also enjoyable. The simplicity of it all is something I often miss. I might give it another try if I get the time.”

Update history

24/04/16 – Added creator speaks by Mikkel Petersen

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 7 Comments

7 Responses to Boxing Game

  1. Hey, just wanted to update on this. That you posted this game here inspired me to remake it as an online version, where you can play against others as well, as well as single player. If you want to try it out you can go to http://retroob.com

    Thanks for reminding me of this, or I might have forgotten all about it. It was hellish work recreating it as a browser game, makes me wonder how on earth I could make this on C64. But I guess it’s just that C64 magic :)

    • Great to hear from you Mikkel, that’s amazing news! I’m really chuffed that having the game hosted and a page on it inspired creation of your online remake. Brilliant work!

  2. Hello. I’m the maker of this game. I remember I mailed it to you but never expected it would work. Or that I would ever see it again.
    Love how you figured everything out and even added a menu to the game.
    I wish I still had the code for this. Did you add another character set ?

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