IGN writes: "Don King is a luminary of the sports world. He has transcended the sport of boxing and is now a genuine celebrity, not from setting foot in the ring, but instead as being the greatest hype man the sports world has ever seen. And that hair. The man would be nothing without that outrageous hair. He and his hair are now making their first entry into the world of videogames with Don King Presents: Prizefighter, a game that is essentially 2K Sports' belated answer to EA Sports' heralded Fight Night Round 3. It brings with it a list of 40 licensed boxers (ten classics including James Braddock, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, and Joe Louis), 25 venues, and some of the best entry music we've heard in a sports game. But what really matters, what makes or breaks a boxing game is the core gameplay.
Prizefighter takes a slightly different approach to its mechanics by abandoning the tried and true right stick approach to punching, replacing it with a more traditional face button style. X defaults as your jab, Y is your straight punch, A is your left hook, B is your right hook with a combination of two buttons required to pull off an uppercut. In our few hours with Prizefighter the punching system was responsive and relatively fast-moving. Animations follow along accordingly and look as you'd expect, though things weren't quite as responsive in our early build as we'd like to see. Granted, it is easier to tap a button than swing an analog stick, so it may have been the fault of spastic fingers rather than the gameplay."