By Fair Means Or Foul

Copyright : Superior Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Back when Boxing was the biggest sport entertainment standing next to Football the software developers of the time decided it would be a great time to release some sporting games of a different kind to the home computer market, BFMOF was born. The idea of the game is simple, become the boxing champion by beating the living crap out of your opponent and trying not to make the ref fall to sleep (it does happen btw).

Graphics

By Fair Means Or Foul is one of the best looking boxing games ever to be released on the Amstrad CPC. With great graphics on offer, very nicely drawn boxers that move superbly around the ring, a nice selection of colours to detail both the background and the characters your eye instantly goes to and a subtle hint of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. The developers obviously had a good time coding this game as the croud start shouting things like "Hit Him!" and "What A Pair Of Pansies" (illustrated by speach bubbles) and lets not forget the referee who decided to take a nap during the fight if you take to long throwing the punches. There are no graphical glitches such as flashing graphics, no colour problems as everything can clearly be seen, and the overall visual layout is absolutely superb and one that was no doubt copied and cloned in later games of the same type.

Sound

Sound is reasonable, while we don?t get to hear any pumping music track at the start of the game we get more than enough sounds from the match itself, punches, bells, crowd roars, floor stomps and much more. This is one of the best sporting games on the CPC, let?s face it there are only a few football games that hold the mustard and as for golfing games, well you might as well not have bothered coding them. This game demans you to turn up the volume during play and show off the power of your CPC to that smug C64 owner around the corner.

Gameplay

Gameplay is about as simple as it gets, though as it?s a boxing simulator you can?t really expect anything more, punch the guy until he either falls flat on his arse or the bell rings and you win due to points. The control system can be a little tricky if you use the keyboard option but once you get your joystick plugged in and setup there should be no stopping your knockout power. Because of the raw addiction to punching someone in the face (imagine it?s someone you really hate) this is one game that most players will find hard to put down as you feel the blood and sweat poring down your back.
In short this is a boxing game that MUST be added to your collection, god knows there have been some complete failures in this area of sports entertainment games but we can assure you that if you add By Fair Means Or Foul to your CPC collection and give it a shot, you will not regret the decision. Get it NOW!
By the way, though I owned this game originally I can honestly say that the above review is not biased in anyway as this was the first time I played the game since the early 1990s.