Throw a right, throw a left, and then call the contractor because those two new holes in your wall need fixing. Why the sudden need to redecorate? Well that will come from Showtime Championship Boxing, which will leave you frustrated enough to throw your entire stash of controllers through a wall. While this isn’t a terrible offering, the whole premise of the game feels shallow because of the lack of real life fighters and venues.

You start off in this game with three fighters per weight class, each with equally ridiculous names like Punchbag Pat or Lazy Lorenzo. This lack of fighters is something that really hurts this game. With sports games we’ve become accustomed to one of two things. Either there will be a nice array of real-life contenders, or the fighters will be cartoony enough that we form our own bond with them regardless of their authenticity. But when faced with the choice of cozying up to the tattooed Russian, Terrible Ivan, I’d simply rather not. Since these characters have no personality or defining style to them, it’s simply a matter of which skin you like on your boxer. All attributes are the same on the characters, and all perform equally in the ring.

After picking your character you then move on into the ring where you can duke it out for one of three different belts, the Amateur, Contender, or Showtime belts. After you’ve blazed through these modes you can take a shot at the King of the Ring event where you take on a string of six boxers in a row, giving you the chance to unlock the final boxer in the game. You may find yourself throwing in the towel after the first fight though, as a combination of unresponsive controls and difficult opponents makes this game rather frustrating to play.

The controls are both simple and smart; the Wiimote controls the right hand while the nunchuk controls the left. The nunchuk is also responsible for which direction your fighter is tilted, which dictates how much damage they will receive from certain hits. But trying to get your fighter to swing is where the problem lies. The lack of responsiveness this game possesses kills any and all potential it had to be enjoyable. While normally Wii games all suffer from some degree of unresponsiveness, this one exceeds any issues we’ve encountered before. Waving the remote two or three times per hit becomes tiresome very quickly, and being rewarded with an opponent who seemingly cannot be hurt is simply more frustration than one can bear.

In combat there are two gauges which you must pay attention to. The life bar and the stamina bar. The life bar obviously shows how much health you have left and how close to a knockout you are, while the yellow stamina bar shows how much power you are putting behind your throws. This bar depletes very quickly though, especially when your opponent seems content to block for an entire round at every angle you can imagine. Frustration definitely runs high after a round or two and you are being totally dominated by the man in the other corner.

Multiplayer mode is basic and simple one-on-one combat, with no frills added on. Since this game is bare-bones to begin with, this is no surprise. So while this game tries to offer an enjoyable boxing experience, the lack of features simply knocks this one down for the count. If the controls were fully functional then it would be easy to overlook the other flaws, but without many redeeming qualities this game remains a poor choice for someone searching for a boxing title.