It's the classic action game where the red and blue robots square off in a boxing match to see who can knock the other's block off ...  literally. And in a strange twist of fate, my folks bought the real-life game for my boys this past Christmas. So how does the Game Boy version stack up to the real-life game?

When I first got this game, I kind of chuckled to myself, I mean ... Rock em Sock em Robots??!! How silly was this going to be. Well, for starters it was silly, but not as silly as I had thought. First things first, the robots can move back and forth in the ring instead of them being stationary like the real game. The other biggie is that the robots have several different punches rather then the left and right that the real game has. A light quick punch, a powerful slow punch and an uppercut. Each robot has a life meter that slowly depletes till it becomes dazed. If you have hit your opponent into this tizzy, you must quickly alternate the L and R buttons in a sliding scale, if you can push the scale to the far right, then your robot will knock the other's head off, if you can't keep up the pace, the scale falls to the left and the robot gets a second chance at the fight with a small portion of life. There is also a second meter that fills when enough damage has been doled out, when filled, a special attack can be activated. Since there are several different colored robots to beat (and unlock) the game does have some depth to it, not much, like a kiddie pool if you will. But again, the fact that there were other robots to play and fight surprised me.

"The action never stops, unless you stop hitting the buttons."

The graphics are fairly remedial as are the robots; they all basically have the same bodies with different colors and then the heads are different shaped. If you choose the championship mode, you can battle through mini-divisions where these different robots, trash talk and then come out swinging. As you beat the divisions, the robots become much more difficult to defeat. Especially since there is only so much you can do with a very inflexible robot. The game was developed by DSI, and is part of a series of bargain priced games. Of course these games don't have the snazziest looks and sound so you kind of get what you pay for.  And what you pay for does not mean the sound is going to be top notch, or middle notch, well maybe not that bad. It's like a constant drum solo with some high pitched accompaniment. The drums are alright but the same rhythm pounding over and over does get old so thank goodness it changes up a bit when the actually fighting begins. Again, nothing truly great but a decent enough rhythm to keep you button mashing. Of course the DS does have a volume switch so you can turn it down, and chances are you will after five minutes.

"This move has a difficulty degree of 0.00000001"

The game does offer a couple different playing modes besides the championship mode (title fight); you can play a quick battle which really doesn't have much depth after playing it a couple of times. The robot challenger is merely a lower middle class robot who, after battling in the championship mode for any length of time, will be an easy battle. The other mode is a versus battle where you can actually pick which robots you want to fight. It's not a two-player mode, merely you pick which robots you would like to have fight. The computer does a fair job of providing some competition, but it's more of a way to see and play with the other colored robots.

Gameplay: 6.0
Pretty repetitive button mashing combined with the finger numbing action of repeatedly pulling the trigger buttons. It is easy to get down, though.

Graphics: 4.7
Really simple-looking graphics; you can choose which level you want to fight on but there really isn't anything impressive about the different arenas, nor the robots.

Sound: 5.3
It has a decent beat, but it loops fairly quickly, the actual combat noises are pretty silly sounding.

Difficulty: Easy
The first time I played the title fight mode, I won like 11 fights in a row without losing, I avenged that loss immediately.

Concept: 5.0
After playing the game, I saw what could have been an interesting title. The ideas were not fully realized and so I was left thinking what might have been.

Overall: 5.4
You get what you pay for here; it's a bargain-priced game that has some small tidbit of fun if played in short bursts. Otherwise it's an exercise in repetition and mindless button mashing.