158: Body Blows

Number 158
(19.2 points)
Body Blows
1993: 53

Before Doom made everyone want a first-person shooter on their machine, Street Fighter II made everyone want a one-on-one beat 'em up. Team17 rose to the challenge of making a playable fighting game with one joystick button.

Take your pick from a selection of fighters and duke it out one-on-one, it's as simple as that. What makes it unusual is the control system: rather than trying to emulate the coin-op and console fighting equivalents, Body Blows uses a system not unlike IK+ and Barbarian. Moving the joystick without pressing the button moves your character around, whereas moving it while holding the button performs various actions as punching, kicking, blocking and doing special moves. Holding the button for a second or so before releasing results in a separate move such as throwing a fireball. This system made the game popular with Amiga owners at the time, even if it doesn't hold up to scrutiny today.

Before commenting on the game, I have to mention that the Amiga 500 version was the one picked for the list, but there was a later AGA version which has a few tweaks to the game, as well as running faster on an Amiga 1200. Not only that, the CD32 saw Ultimate Body Blows, arguably the best version to play as it adds more characters and lets you use the CD32's various buttons, so take your pick. Aside from that, I can't say that this is easy to recommend today: it's a Street Fighter II-style fighting game designed for a single joystick button, so even though Amiga owners of the time loved it because it was the best they could get, time does not shine favourably on it (and besides, some of the character designs are a bit ropey to say the least).

Recommended TOSEC disk(s):
Body Blows (1993)(Team 17)(Disk 1 of 4)[cr CSL]
Body Blows (1993)(Team 17)(Disk 2 of 4)[cr CSL]
Body Blows (1993)(Team 17)(Disk 3 of 4)[cr CSL]
Body Blows (1993)(Team 17)(Disk 4 of 4)[cr CSL]
Body Blows (1994)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 1 of 4)(Boot & Disk 4)[cr FLT]
Body Blows (1994)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 2 of 4)(1)[cr FLT]
Body Blows (1994)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 3 of 4)(2)[cr FLT]
Body Blows (1994)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 4 of 4)(3)[cr FLT]
Ultimate Body Blows (1994)(Team 17)[!] (CD32)