Greetings, blind pugilists, and welcome to the sightless fighter's guide to Knockout Kings 2002! Knockout Kings 2002 is a boxing game developed by Black Ops entertainment and published by EA Sports. The game is available for both the Sony Playstation 2 and Microsoft Xbox. It was first released in North America on March 4th, 2002, and in the rest of the world about a month later. This guide specifically covers the PS2 version. In this guide, you will learn everything you need to know in order to become the best blind Knockout Kings 2002 player you can be. This guide won't cover absolutely everything, as there's simply too much content to go through. Instead, only the parts of the game you're most likely to use will be covered. The following 5 topics will be discussed in this guide:
In this section, we will run through some of the menus you will come across in Knockout Kings 2002, as well as the different ways these menus can be navigated.
In Knockout Kings 2002, menus have 3 navigation methods, which this guide will refer to as type 1, type 2 and type 3.
When you first load Knockout kings 2002, after the intro scene plays, a type 1 menu will appear asking you to choose a difficulty setting for the game. Note that this menu is silent, meaning it has no background music. However, you will still hear clicking sounds as you navigate. The default option in this menu is Rookie, with the options being Amateur, Rookie, Pro and Champion. Once you hit X on the desired option, the background music will start, and you can press Start to access the main menu. This difficulty menu will appear every time you launch the game unless you choose to save your options to a memory card, which we'll cover later.
In this type 1 menu, you will find 4 options.
This automatically loads a fight with all pre-fight options, such as boxer, opponent and fighting arena, set to the game's defaults. Choosing PlayNow will bring up a type 3 menu where you can choose any of your selected fighters to play as, I.E. which fighter you want to control. In this case, since everything is set to initial defaults, the options are Muhammad Ali and Lennox Lewis, with Ali being the default option. Once you've chosen an option, simply hit X to start the fight.
This option allows you to choose between 3 game modes: Exhibition, Tournament (not covered in this guide) and Career. We'll cover both Exhibition mode and Career mode in the game modes section.
This is the game's settings menu. It allows you to customize various in-game options, such as rules for matches, audio/visual settings etc.
Contains credits and other related information about the game.
Scrolling down twice and hitting X in the main menu will take you to the options menu, where a wide variety of game settings can be configured. When you access the options menu, a type 1 menu will appear where you can select a settings category. There are 2 categories of settings you can configure. The first category, Rules, will be highlighted for you. The second category is Audio/Visual. Simply highlight a category and press X to bring up its respective options.
The rules menu is a type 2 menu containing 8 options. Scroll up and down to highlight an option, left and right to adjust it.
Unlike the rules menu, there are only 4 options in this category, with 3 relating to audio and only one relating to visuals. Again, this is a type 2 menu. Up and down to highlight, left and right to adjust.
Once you're satisfied with your configurations in either the rules or audio/visual menus, simply press X to apply your settings and return to the main options menu. There are 2 ways of applying settings.
From the main options menu, with the 2 categories highlighted, hit Triangle, scroll down once and hit X. You will be asked which card you want to save your data to. Most people will have a card in slot 1, so just press X. If you want to save to a card in slot 2, go down 1 and press X. In a few seconds, you will hear a low pitched woosh, and return to the main menu, with the options item highlighted. Scroll up twice to return to the Play Now item. The advantage of saving your data to card is that whatever is stored on the card is automatically loaded when the game is launched, so you don't have to set all your options each time you launch the game.
From the options menu, just press Triangle and X. You will find yourself back on the main menu with the options item highlighted. Scroll up twice to get back to Play Now.
After the main menu appears, scroll down once and press X to access the type 1 game modes menu. In the game modes menu, there are 3 game modes to choose from.
Exhibition mode, the first option in the game modes menu, is simply a bog standard boxing match. When you select this option, you will enter into a menu where you can choose a boxer to fight as. This menu is type 2, so feel free to scroll up, down, left or right. You'll have to rely on a bit of trial and error here, as Knockout Kings 2002, unlike 2001, 2000 and 99 before it, doesn't have boxer intros. The default highlighted option is Muhammad Ali. Kazahiro Arikawa is a nice, powerful fighter to start out with. He can be chosen by scrolling right 7 times from Muhammad Ali. once you've picked a fighter, hit X to move on to the opponent selection menu. Again, this menu is type 2. Hit X once your desired opponent is highlighted. Once your boxer and opponent are both selected, a type 3 menu will ask you to choose an arena to fight in. Scroll left and right to navigate the options. The available arenas are:
This is Knockout Kings 2002's multi-player/split screen mode. We will not be covering this mode.
Down 2 from exhibition mode is career mode. In career mode, you fight in a series of matches that get progressively harder until you reach the title bout, where, should you win, you will be crowned the undisputed world champion of boxing. Are you daring enough to take the title? Once you press X on career mode, a type 1 menu will appear with 3 options.
Allows you to design a custom boxer and select various attributes, such as name, hair style and colour, eye colour etc. Do not select this option.
This is the option you want, as it simply allows you to choose a boxer from the game's roster like you would in exhibition mode.
Loads a custom boxer if you've created one. Once you've chosen a fighter in the select Boxer menu, arrow down twice to the option labelled Fight, and hit X twice. You will hear a short intro scene, and the first fight will begin. The best way to proceed with career mode is to treat each series of fights as a group, with the first group having 4 fights, and all groups after that having 3 fights. Here's a simple navigation sequence.
Here are the various moves you can perform during fights, along with the relative PS2 controls.
Despite being released way back in 2002, Knockout Kings 2002 includes a wide range of accessibility features designed to assist those who are blind as much as possible. This is especially true with the game's various sound cues.
As stated before, the game's menus include different pitched clicking sounds depending on how you scroll. Selecting menu items has a kind of woosh sound, and going back to the previous menu has a lower pitched, more bassy woosh sound. If you try to select an item that is locked and therefore can't be selected, you will hear a harsh, loud beep, kind of like a program error tone or a wrong answer buzz in a quiz show.
The in-fight commentary can be very helpful when gaging how you or your opponent is faring in a fight. For instance, you will often hear (insert boxer here) looks hurt, or (insert boxer here) is about to go down! Using this information in combination with haptics, mentioned later, can be a great way to know whether a change of tactics is needed to save yourself from defeat and turn the tide against your opponent.
When a fighter is knocked down, you will hear either a series of gunshots or loud bangs, and the knockdown replay will be slightly echoed. You will also often hear heartbeats, camera clicks and other effects during the knockdown animation before the fighter hits the ground. Also, if you get knocked down, you will hear your fighter's heartbeat, along with the count to 10 being significantly lower pitched. When your opponent is down, the count is at normal pitch, and there's no heartbeat during the count.
Aside from the PS2 controller giving off a short pulse when your boxer is hit, one truly awesome way Knockout Kings 2002 uses controller vibrations is by having them act as a kind of health meter for your boxer. When your boxer's getting beaten and their health is starting to drop, you will start to feel short, rhythmic pulses from the controller, almost like a heartbeat. As you get closer to being knocked to the ground, these pulses will get faster and more violent, until you are eventually knocked down for the count. This is a brand new feature in Knockout Kings 2002; I don't even thing previous versions use controller vibrations! This not only helps blind players, but also those who are deaf/hard of hearing!
I hope this guide was able to help you on your journey to becoming the ultimate blind Knockout Kings 2002 world champion. Knockout Kings 2002 is a truly spectacular title, and really makes an effort in doing the boxing game genre justice. If you wish to contact me, you can do so in the following ways:
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