Knockout

The logo of the game.

***Knockout*** is a 2018 fighting game developed by Bandai Namco and published by Imaginate.

The game follows the series' traditional style of gameplay: controlling one of various characters, players must use differing attacks to weaken their opponents and knock them out of an arena. It features a wide variety of game modes, including a campaign for a single-player and multiplayer versus modes. It’s considered as a sister series to the *Super Smash Bros.* series.

The game was released worldwide on December 19th, 2018.

## Development

The development of Knockout began in December 2016. *Adventures*, *Jack & Bella* and *Peaceful* creators, directors and programmers Ulala Borkowski, Luke Robinson and Akemi Haruhi went to a meeting together and discussing that they’re thinking about making a crossover fighting game similar to *Super Smash Bros.* for the Imaginate Unlimit as a exclusive title.

A month later, Imaginate emailed to Nintendo if they wanted the Smash Bros development team and Masahiro Sakurai to work on making a crossover game similar to *Super Smash Bros.*. Half of  Sakurai’s team worked on the Imaginate fighting game as well as *Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*. In 2018, new Imaginate franchises are coming and the team must model more characters, program the gameplay (engine), model the stages, come up and make a story mode, make the game release for the Dreamlock and Switch and more. After the development is done, the 3 and Sakurai appreciate the hard work everyone has done. They had set the release date to December 19, 2018.

## Gameplay

The gameplay is very similar to the Super Smash Bros game but the button layout has changed where A is to jump, B is to grab/shield, Y is to perform a special attack and X is to attack. The goal of the game is to add damage to a opponent and once its high enough, you have to do a perfect attack to knock them out of the stage, blasting them into fireworks.

## Knockout: Eternity

There is a story mode in the game known as *Knockout: Eternity*.

Everyone is in a grassy hill where it’s cloudy. Jason Jr. points his finger out and blasts out scolding at a eternal villain named Unity with her army of NiGHTMAREs. Unity uses her Power Cube as a weapon (in her arm as a arm cannon (in battle mode)) to bring every single NiGHTMARE into her chest and shoots out a glowing silver beaming ball known as the Infinite Combo that is about to eliminate every Imaginate fighter from existence. Everyone tries to run/fly away, defend, attack and avoiding the Infinite Combo as they can but failed except 3. Those being Hannah, Jack and Echoe. Hannah hold both of their hands and run as fast as she can and then they disappeared.

The Infinite Combo has got out of Unity’s hand and took over the entire arena, teleporting herself and the failed fighters to Dimension Z. Every fighter are now duplicated as failed versions of the originals. It’s up to Hannah, Jack and Echoe to save their friends and escape the dimension. Later on in the story, once the fighters have defeated Unity, she falls into the lava and began to glow pink as she turns into a portal. Everyone began to fly out of Dimension Z and set off to a portal to earth of where they live.

## Reception

 SurferReviewer
 Game Informer
 Famitsu

## Trivia

* There are a total of 60 playable characters in the game.
	+ There are a total of 29 DLC characters. Cecilia and another random character will appear as the 30th and 31st DLC characters and the final fighters for *Knockout*.
* It’s confirmed that *Knockout* will not appear in the Imaginate Neo Reo.
	+ It’s unknown if an entirely new *Knockout* game will appear on the Neo Reo.
		- Our guess for the next *Knockout* game’s title would be: *Knockout Showdown*!