Recently playing Arms on Nintendo Switch brought back memories of an old mini-game featured in the first Ape Escape. That mini-game was called Specter Boxing.
Arms and Specter Boxing are not exactly the same in terms of mechanics, although they feel more similar than other boxing games I’ve played. It mainly has to do with the way characters move and how they move their arms.
In Fight Night, the feel is different because fighters are moving left and right. Not to mention you are rotating the analog sticks in order to punch. In Arms, you have to use the Joy-Cons and move them up and down to punch. In Specter Boxing, you move the sticks up and down with each stick controlling the arms.
The thing that makes Specter Boxing challenging is because you are unable to move your feet. You have to know how to block and strike your opponent at the right time. In Arms, you can thankfully shuffle left and right plus move forward and backward to dodge your opponent. Courtesy of “yosuke77”, you can look at gameplay of Specter Boxing below.
Accuracy plays a big part in Arms though as you need to position your real arms to aim to the opponent. Constantly punching like a maniac is not going to be very effective because you will miss your opponent lots of times.
To make things more interesting in the game, you have a super meter where you can unleash an ultimate attack. Ultimate attacks deal a lot of damage, but they don’t always guarantee a victory. You have to make sure to use them at the right time or else your opponent can dodge it.
The game also allows you to grab your opponent. In order to do this, you throw both arms forward at the same time. Again, grabs are effective but spamming it too many times can be your downfall as you are leaving your body free for more blows if you are not successful.
Needless to say, Arms is a fun game but you may need a lot of practice in order to be good at it. I didn’t have a chance to play the game that much, but let’s just say I needed more time as I wasn’t very good at it…
Anyway, the game will be out for the Nintendo Switch later this year. There’s still no release date for the game, but it should be out in Q2 of 2017. Once we know a release date we’ll let you know.
