Fight Night Was My Son’s First Video Game — News Of Its Return Brought Him To Tears

EA Sports made the day for millions of combat sports gamers across the globe on Tuesday with one social media post. In case you missed it, EA announced the return of the Fight Night series.

I'm not sure we'll see or hear an announcement that means more to a single hardcore gaming community than this one. It was the first video game I ever let my son play. It's personal and the reaction from the boxing community spoke volumes.

The combination of the nostalgia associated with the series and EA's track record for producing successful sports titles and current technology creates expectations so lofty that they're tough to quantify.

We don't know when the game will release or what the official title will be, but we do know the game is being launched with competition already on the horizon. With Undisputed released and Undisputed 2 on the way, there are tons of questions about what the new Fight Night will be. Let's talk sports video games.

Undisputed (2023), Undisputed 2 (in development)

I've spoken with the head of Steel City (the studio behind the Undisputed series) on several occasions and he has made it clear his company has exclusive licenses to some legends and current stars like Muhammad Ali, Oleksandr Usyk, Deontay Wilder and others. That would lead fans to wonder, who will be included in the new Fight Night?

My takeaway, and this comes from multiple conversations with people who would know, is that the roster will be Zuffa fighters and anyone Turki Alalshikh has worked with that aren't on exclusive deals with Steel City/Undisputed.

If you're worried about the game having Shakur Stevenson after his recent departure from Zuffa, I'd relax a bit. While Shakur may not be a part of Zuffa any more, he seems to still have a good relationship with Turki Alalshikh and that's likely the most important part of landing on the new Fight Night roster.

The roster will be very important, but the gameplay and features will be the biggest factors. If the new Fight Night can capture the spirit and immersion that we got from Fight Night Round 3 and Fight Night Champion — with today's tech for visual performance and it delivers a strong creation suite for fighters, arenas and gear, this game will be hard to beat.

I'd just spoken with LaMonica Garrett, the man who played Andre Bishop in Fight Night Champion. He told me he'd been "on EA" about making another one. Perhaps they listened.

Fight Night has the nostalgic advantage and as much as I love and respect what Steel City has done with Undisputed, that's true even in my house. My youngest son is 20 and away in college. I saw the news about Fight Night's return before him. I made sure to tell him at a point when he would be free to have a visceral reaction.

Fight Night Round 3 is the first video game I ever let him play. He'd climb in my lap while I was playing and try to hammer away at the controller while I played. Finally, I started handing him the controller. Slowly but surely, he started to understand the game and he got good at it.

He got so good that I was having a tough time beating him whenever he selected one of the fictional boxers in the game, Ricardo Alvarez. My son's love for combat sports literally grew from the seed that was planted when I put the controller in his hand to play Fight Night. Here are images of me holding him, while playing Fight Night. And images of him shadow boxing, yeah that's what we'll call it.

So when I told him the game was coming back, he screamed, ran out of his dorm room. When he came back, he said, "Why am I crying? Like, there's tears literally coming from my eyes. This game. This is my childhood. Man, y'all don't understand."

Be on the lookout for more info as it becomes available.

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This article was originally published on Forbes.com