eSports Boxing Club developers Steel City Interactive shared screenshots of a freshly rendered boxer today. The athlete in question? Legendary boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. The team took to Twitter to show off how Robinson will look in-game. These sure are some screen shots!
Sugar Ray Robinson Enters the Ring
Here's your first look at one of the greatest pound-for-pound fighters of all time, the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson, in #ESBCGame 👑 pic.twitter.com/S8cQBdnOY7
— Undisputed (@PlayUndisputed) July 5, 2022
Robinson is the latest Legend to join eSports Boxing Club’s star-studded roster. He joins fellow Sugar Ray, Leonard, as well as a who’s who of top shelf, greatest-of-all-time boxers. As with a lot of ESBC’s images and renders, Robinson is looking good. I think I had worries when Steel City said they would be recreating some of the world’s best boxers in their prime, and they’ve since put those worries to bed.
eSports Boxing Club – Sparse Updates, Slow Future
Updates for eSports Boxing Club have been few and far between. Last year, Steel City announced they would be moving away from a monthly update. Those updates sufficiently built hype, but in a situation where the developers knew they would be releasing the game much later than their initial window, it makes sense to start saving up for larger, more substantial updates. When they cancelled their Early Access release, the decision made a lot more sense. The scale was growing, and so was the team, and so was the project.
Updates this year have felt scarce, however. In April, footage from the game’s Spring playtest hit the internet. In early May, we actually got new footage of Canelo Alvarez and Dmitry Bivol and their ringwalks. The walk-ins looked good, and Todd Grisham’s commentary lines felt natural and not spliced together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4OR4jAy0E
Later in the month, Steel City Interactive dropped a developer round table. The last bit of news from the ESBC Twitter account features an in-game render of Irish boxer Jono Carroll. Which, to be honest, was not the most flattering image.
https://twitter.com/ESBCGame/status/1534926836811145218
The Robinson renders are much more polished and resemble the in-game footage we have seen. Which makes you wonder; will every fighter be so lovingly rendered? Is Carroll’s render a bad omen for the game’s create-a-boxer kit?
It’s tough for any game to maintain the level of hype eSports Boxing Club has received. It’s easy to look back and scoff at the original time frame. Steel City Interactive wants to make the premier boxing game, though. We’ve seen this with other companies who worked on games in more crowded sports, the cycle can be ruinous. At the end of the day, it depends on how much trust you can put into Steel City Interactive. I think it’s safe to say we trust them.
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