Punch-Out!! Review

Yes, it’s no secret by now thanks to some healthy advertising.  After a 15-year sabbatical, Little Mac has come out of retirement to grace the latest Nintendo console with the greatest – and most over the top – underdog story in the video game world.

For those unfamiliar with the Nintendo’s classic boxing series, as well as those fresh off the heels of the boxing simulator in Wii Sports, Punch-Out!! will take you by surprise with its delightfully different, if not simplistic approach to fisticuffs, as well as its flamboyant characters and reaction-based game play.

And for those quite familiar with the series, including the undersigned, who once bested Mike Tyson in the original NES version (long before his ear biting days), Punch-Out!! will deliver the same challenge and progression-through-learning-by-loss experience that it did some 22 years ago.

One of the best features of Punch-Out for the Wii is that the control scheme has remained largely unchanged from its original design.  You can choose to either go old school by fighting with your Wii remote held sideways in classic NES controller style, or you can take a more modern approach with the Wii remote and Nunchuck.  I found the newer remote and Nunchuck style to be just as workable as the classic controls, though the decision of which one to use ultimately comes down to preference.  The game also offers Wii Balance Board functionality, though I was not equipped to review that feature.

Punch-Out!! is all about dodging and blocking your opponents’ attacks so you can counter-attack during the limited openings in their defenses.  But certain opponents are only susceptible to certain attacks or certain combinations, and certain attacks can only be counter-attacked in certain ways.  Punch-Out!! is at its heart a game of discovery, even if that discovery is accomplished by the hair-pulling experience of losing to the same opponent repeatedly.  The developer of this title, Next Level Games (of Mario Strikers fame), has described the Punch-Out!! series as more of a puzzle game than a boxing simulator, and that description couldn’t be more appropriate.  If you’re expecting to wildly throw punches as you did in Wii Sports, you’ll find yourself kissing the canvas in no time.

Little Mac, the underdog (and undersized) protagonist of this title, has only five attacks with which players may work: left and right punches to the body, left and right punches to the head, and a star punch which can only be used if Little Mac has obtained a star by attacking his opponent during a short flashing sequence.  But punches alone don’t win a match.  In fact, they’re less than half of the equation.

True mastery of Punch-Out!! is obtained by timely dodging your opponents’ attacks with a left dodge, a right dodge, a duck or a block.  It is in this regard especially that the series has advanced over its earlier iteration.  Whereas the original Punch-Out!! allowed you to avoid an attack with any sort of dodge or duck, the Wii version’s enemies must often be avoided by a specific form of evasion.  And a large amount of progression in this game is based upon your ability to recognize attacks and react to them in time with the proper dodge, duck or block.