Prince Naseem Boxing, Codemasters’ knockout 
PlayStation game is due end October.

PlayStation™ fanatic and 26 year old WBO Featherweight Champion, Prince Naseem Hamed faces his toughest challenge yet – against millions of PlayStation™ gamers in the fight of his life. 

Prince Naseem Boxing is set to dominate the true-to-life fighting games genre and delivers the perfect balance between a realistic simulation and an action game to provide a gripping and entertaining playing experience.

Prince Naseem Boxing offers three distinct boxing games in one knockout package – from world championship showcase boxing, to hard and fast arcade boxing right through to a management-style career game.

Like Naz himself, the key to the perfection is through the speed of play and in the recreation of the adrenaline rushing, intensity of the sport within a video game where snappy punches come from nowhere. However, rather than players simply button-pummelling hoping to land punches, players must learn strategies and tactics that are true to the boxing ring craft. 

16 individual international boxers, including Naz, are featured in Prince Naseem Boxing’s Showcase (the world championship action option) and Versus (the arcade option) games. 

The on-screen boxers all move and act realistically. Each boxer and their every move is a complex combination of movement force, mass, and inertia physics creating a true feeling of actual human movements and the varying power of punches.

In the Showcase game, the player faces each of the boxers in a world tournament league where winning a match against one, ‘unlocks’ another opponent to face. 

The action of the Showcase game takes players around the world to 16 international locations ranging from small-town boxing halls, to arenas to full on massive stadiums in Japan, LA, Las Vegas, France, Germany, Russia and the UK.

Versus offers a fast-paced fix of boxing with gameplay modes especially suited to party play option for up to eight players with winner stays on. 

For a change of pace, Prince Naseem Boxing’s World Game features 90 boxers and offers a strategic approach to boxing management. The World Game is wholly career based, the long-term objective being to manage a chosen boxer through a successful career. 

While offering a superb level of management detail, the World Game is not bogged down in over-complicated statistical data; it takes a Tamigotchi-style approach becoming a “Boxergotchi” game of management. 

The separate Practice game is set in Naz’s personal training gym and is a game in itself; the gym sessions deliver specialised training where players are taught boxing skills including defence, movement, punches and dodging and blocking, practising with trainers of different skills and abilities 

Throughout the action sections of the game players have skills to learn and master. For example, players need to understand and utilise the positioning strengths of their boxer; there’s a skill in getting your boxer’s body in the right position to be defensive yet give attacking freedom.

Prince Naseem Boxing’s gameplay is all wrapped up in the showbiz presentation of world-class boxing matches, complete with highly excitable action-reactive ring-side audiences. The game also features funky original audio tracks from London-based trip-hop pioneer DJ Rocs (hear them at his web site, www.livinginvenus.com).

Prince Naseem Boxing is scheduled to land its punch on PlayStation at the end of October.

ENDS

CODEMASTERS WEB SITE

•	www.codemasters.com

| Notes to Editors:
Established in 1986, Codemasters is a leading developer and publisher of best-selling interactive entertainment products for a global audience on current and future gaming platforms and channels. This has been quite a year for Codemasters. The company is the winner of Queen’s Award For Enterprise in the Innovation category and was featured in the Sunday Times’ Fast Track taking the number two position for the highest annual profit growth at 118.97%. Furthermore, the Central Region’s Entrepreneur of The Year 2000 awards saw David Darling, Founder and Chief Executive of Codemasters, scoop both the “Overall Entrepreneur of the Year” and “Young Entrepreneur Of The Year” awards. Codemasters’ genre-leading brands include Colin McRae Rally, Touring Cars, Micro Machines/Maniacs, and LMA Manager. With an annual turnover in excess of $100 million, the company is headquartered in Southam, Warwickshire, UK where it employs over 400 staff, and maintains European operations in Germany, France, Spain, Benelux and plans to set up operations in Scandinavia. The company entered the US publishing market in 1999 and has an online gaming US-based development facility in Oakhurst, CA. More information about the company and its products is available online at www.codemasters.com.