Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. We will be going from Metroid Prime: Hunters to Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. From Tetris DS to Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses. Yes, I said Barbie.

This week I am going to be taking a look at Animal Boxing.

Good news for Michael Vick, there is now a game he can play where he can fight as many species of animals as his little heart desires.  This game is Animal Boxing for the Nintendo DS.

Yes, this is a game where you beat the crap out of furry creatures.  Don't worry though, these are closer to the anthropomorphic animals in games like Animal Crossing.  It's not like you are pounding on a cute little defenseless squirrel.  As cruel as it sounds though, that probably would have made the game more enjoyable.  And yes, you do get to pound a cock, as in a rooster.  He's the lightweight champ.

The very first thing you need to do after starting up the game is turn the DS, not on it's side though.  No, this game forces you to turn your DS upside down.  Yeah, I thought it was stupid too.  It makes a little bit of sense, but I think it would have worked just as good the normal way.

When you get into the game, you need to make your human character.  You don't play as an animal, just as a person who pounds the snot out of animals for sport.  The character creation was surprisingly varied.  You get a lot of parts to choose from.  After your boxer is ready you can start fighting.  You can choose to either go through the championship fights, which will start you off with a helpful tutorial, or you can just do single Vs. fights.  That's about it.

Control wise, all of the punching is handled through the touchscreen.  Want to jab?  Tap the screen where you want to hit.  Need to throw an uppercut?  Draw a line upwards.  It's fairly straightforward.  That's not to say that it is always responsive, because it isn't.  While I was playing it, only about fifty percent of my punches did what I wanted them to do.  As far as blocking and dodging punches, that is controlled with the face buttons/D-pad. This part works much better than the actual punching.

Now, graphically, this game isn't too bad.  Everything ran smoothly for me with no noticeable slowdown during the fights.  The backgrounds look pretty decent, as do the character models.  I am a big fan of the cel-shaded look, and this game pulls it off fairly well.  Surprisingly, not much to complain about here.

It is easy to see that Gammick put some effort into this game, but it just falls short. If they make a sequel, fix the touchscreen controls, and maybe add in some online play, and I could see it being a decent game.

FInal Score - 4/10