Body Blows

Moby ID: 1970
Amiga Specs
Conversion (official) Included in

Description official descriptions

Around the time of the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2, Amiga specialists Team 17 came up with a similar one on one beat 'em up, designed around the machine's strengths and weaknesses.

In one-player mode you have four characters to choose from - brothers Dan and Nik play identically, Lo-Ray is a Buddhist Monk, and Junior a failed boxer.

The opponents include a Ninja warrior, a businessman whose post-fight catchphrase is 'I'm sorry about that', and a thin Spanish girl. The backdrops feature lots of color and animation, varying from wrestling rings to building sites and beaches.

The control is designed around one-button controllers, with special moves generated by pushing in a certain direction and pressing fire, and one 'super special' move by holding fire for a few seconds. The real skill is in combining these moves effectively.

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Screenshots

Credits (Amiga version)

23 People (19 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Graphics
Concept
Programming
Design
Project Manager
BodyBlows Dance Music
Menu/In-Game Music
Sound-Effects
Additional Graphics
Post Sound Processing
Vocal Effects
Extra Special Thanks To
"PDOS" Disk Loading System Licensed From
Play-Test Team
  • Andy
  • Paul
  • Craig
  • Vad
  • Marton
  • Daft-Andy
  • Katrina
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 19 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 23 ratings with 2 reviews)

A PC beat em-up is always welcome

The Good
I liked the fact that I actually had a "beat em-up" to play, as a PC Gamer in the early 90s!

The Bad
It was nowhere close to Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat though...

The Bottom Line
In “Body Blows” our task is to defeat the vicious underworld leader, Max. Allegedly, he conceals a terrifying secret that we will try to reveal. We select our fighter from up to ten diverse characters, each one with unique skills and techniques. We will have to be victorious against the other nine, before we reach Max.

The game features graphics that are passable even today. The characters are well represented and nicely vary in height and size. There are also some beautiful, but static, backgrounds. Digitized voices and powerful hard-rock electronic themes enhance the fighting atmosphere.

There is a fair amount of different moves for each character. The controls are quite simple too. No difficult combinations of keys are required for the special abilities. Every move is achieved by pressing the action key along with a direction one. All the characters have a ‘super move’ apart from their special ones. These are executed by holding the action key down, enough time for the ‘power bar’ to fill up.

In the ‘One Player Game’ we can play as all the ten contestants, whereas in the more demanding ‘Arcade Game’ we choose our competitor out of the available four. The game has a two-player mode and also supports a tournament. There, up to eight human players start from the quarterfinals and get disqualified on the way to the final. We are allowed to modify battle rules according to our likes, through several options. Among others, we can determine the number of rounds and their time duration.

The area in which “Body Blows” presents its major weak points is the quality of combat. Winning is mainly about making a rush on the enemy. Rather than elegantly and stylishly neutralize him, we struggle to take our adversary by surprise and overwhelm him with continuous hits. The ‘Mercy’ option attempts to amend this, with ‘Mercy’ on we can not make any attack moves or prepare a ‘super move’, when our opponent is on the ground. Another issue is the somewhat rigid way the sprites behave. They do not seem to have sufficient flexibility and fluidness in their design and animation. Finally, it would be much better if an actual scenario, with good character profiles and endings, existed.

Overall, “Body Blows” is a nice and pleasant game. If we take in account that the PC has not seen many upstanding games of this genre, this one is definitely recommended. All characters are colorful and enjoyable to play with. Also, Max’ mystery is a nice element that is worthy of playing to unravel. Memory adjustments and slowing down might be needed to play this game.

DOS · by Iron Lord (40) · 2016

Bad, even for a DOS fighting game.

The Good
- The graphics are colourful and have nice colours.

  • A wide group of fighters to chose from, male, female and coming from several different nationalities.

    The Bad
    - Everything! Animations suck, sound and music sound like a downgraded version of the Amiga original, the gameplay is repetitive and the characters lack the charisma of those coming from similar games ("Mortal Kombat", "Street Fighter").

This is a cheap looking fighting game that shouldn't have been ever released.

The Bottom Line
A very, very bad fighting game that only got some distribution because PC gamers didn't have any decent fighting game (apart from "Sango Fighter") before Super Street Fighter II, which was released two years later.

DOS · by Neville (3554) · 2007

Trivia

Enhanced edition

One year after the original Amiga release, Team 17 published an enhanced version of Body Blows based on the modified engine of the game used in the sequel - Body Blows Galactic and Ultimate Body Blows. The new version could be used only on Amigas equipped with an AGA chipset (all the graphics were redrawn from scratch). The game consisted of many new things: the possibility to choose all the characters instead of only four in a single player mode, resting time of the characters after three times fall, "mercy mode", three speed levels, changed game interface, improved handling and steering, smoother animation. Amongst new things, there is also a new type of 2 player mode called "Tag Team". The difficulty level of the whole game is a bit lower and the characters more or less were kept on the similar strength and power abilities.

References

The obvious reference existing in the game is the last opponent. His name is Max and you need to fight him twice: once when he is in his human form and the second time when he is in his true exoskeleton form named T-17 and looks exactly as T-800 from "Terminator" movie.

Cheat mode

The game consists of a built-in cheat mode. Among many other things one of its features is giving the possibility to play as Max.

Information also contributed by mailmanppa

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1970
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Andy Voss.

Amiga added by Martin Smith. Antstream added by lights out party.

Additional contributors: Martin Smith, mailmanppa, Simon Carless.

Game added July 16, 2000. Last modified January 29, 2024.