Iron Ring

Grayhaven, 1992. The shipyards closed a decade ago. The cranes still stand over empty piers, and the money moved underground.

The Iron Ring is an illegal, invitation-only tournament run by a promoter known only as the Broker. Every bout is somewhere new: a cargo pier after the night shift, a night market after curfew, a hotel roof at dawn. The floor is always marked the same way, with a circle of welded chain dragged into place before the crowd arrives. Fighters enter for the purse, to clear a debt, or to settle something the courts won't. The spectators bet. Nobody calls the police.

Iron Ring is an early-90s arcade fighter: big pixel-art sprites, four attack buttons, throws and specials, short explosive exchanges, and 1-on-1 online play.

What's in the ring

• Arcade: each fighter's story. Five bouts venue by venue up to the title at The Crown, then the Broker's invitation, then an ending of your own. Continues, and win quotes after every match.
• Versus CPU: Easy, Normal or Hard. The arcade ladder climbs through five CPU levels, from Rookie to Champion.
• 2 Players: local versus on one keyboard, two pads, or one of each.
• Online: play a friend anywhere with open-source Dockerized dedicated server. One of you creates a room and sends the invite (server:port/CODE), and the other pastes it. Rooms are private by default. 
• Training: hit and hurt boxes, frame data, frame advantage, an input display and a choice of dummy behaviour.

How it fights

• Four buttons: light and heavy punch, light and heavy kick. Throws and throw techs, a special per fighter, knockdowns, best of three rounds.
• Counter hits, combos and cancels: cancel a connecting normal into your special.
• Heat: the crowd's attention, built by hitting, getting hit and blocking. It lasts the whole match and pays for one thing only, the Breakaway: a guard cancel that staggers the attacker and turns the exchange around.
• No desperation supers. Comebacks come from Heat and reads.

Controls (defaults)

	Player 1	Player 2	Gamepad
Move / jump / crouch	A D / W / S	Arrow keys	D-pad or left stick
Light / heavy punch	F / G	Keypad 1 / 2	X / Y
Light / heavy kick	H / J	Keypad 3 / 0	A / B
Guard	Space, or hold back	Right Shift, or hold back	Right shoulder or trigger
Throw (close)	F + H	Keypad 1 + 3	X + A
Pause	Escape	Escape	Start

Playing online

1. ONLINE on the title menu. Enter a name. The SERVER field is already filled in with the public Iron Ring server.
2. One player chooses CREATE ROOM, then COPY INVITE, and sends the invite to the other.
3. The other player chooses PASTE INVITE, or types the invite or just the six-letter room code.

Both players need the same version of the game. The game tells you if yours differs from the server's.

Want to host your own server for your group? The dedicated server is a small separate program for Linux or Windows.