Punch-Out!! Review

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Next Level Games
Rating: E10+
Players: 1-2 (offline only)
System: Nintendo Wii

Pretty much every even remotely good and/or popular game from the 8 and 16-bit eras has a fanbase eagerly hoping for a current-gen sequel. One of the most dedicated fanbases was the Punch-Out one, the series was second only to Kid Icarus in the ranks of abandoned Nintendo franchises everyone wants a sequel to. The waiting was rewarded, and after 15 long years Punch-Out!! is finally here to continue the five game series with two names between all of them. Taking a series that hasn’t been seen in three console generations and making it meet modern content demands while still retaining what fans love about it isn’t easy, but Punch-Out!! (referred to from now on as the very appropriate POW, for Punch-Out Wii) has completely succeeded in every way.

Punch-Out is to boxing as Mario is to Olympic jumping events. The series only resembles boxing in superficial areas, and even those are greatly stretched (I’m going to place my money on Glass Joe’s one win being against the hopelessly inefficient referee). The game can best be described as series of boss battles with heavy puzzle elements. Even Glass Joe would crush you if you traded blows, and going on the offensive is rarely a good idea. You have to learn each boxer’s tells and punch animations, then counter with a flurry of punches when the time is right. You only have four types of punches, plus a super punch you can perform and power up with stars earned by hitting opponents at the right time.

There are 13 opponents in POW, plus a hidden one you won’t see until after quite a bit of playing. Each of the opponents is completely unique and filled with personality, all of them being national or boxer stereotypes so over the top you couldn’t possibly be offended by them. 12 of the boxers return from previous games in the series, the roster dominated by characters from the Nintendo Entertainment System Punch-Out (everyone except Mike Tyson and his much hated replacement returns). The gameplay is a mix of the two console Punch-Outs, with the core gameplay of the Super Nintendo Super Punch-Out and the round/health/powerup system of the NES one. The biggest addition to the gameplay is a much larger emphasis on the type of dodge needed to avoid specific attacks. You can still dodge to the left or right and duck, just like the SNES Punch-Out . However, while in that game most attacks could be dodged with by moving both left or right with some opponents having a single attack that required ducking, in POW almost every opponent has attacks that will require ducking or dodging in a specific direction. This adds a huge amount to the challenge of the game, but the difficulty doesn’t stop there. The other main tweak to the gameplay is a revamped super punch system, you can get up to three stars that will stack on each other. Instead of getting more than one star punch if you have multiple stars, having two or three will result in one incredibly powerful punch.

POW is a very hard game, requiring you to build up your skill and experience with each boxer before you can triumph over them. The difficulty plays a large part in ensuring that the game isn’t the quick single sitting $50 game many feared it would be, but it’s far from the only thing. The first career mode, where you fight each of the 13 normal boxers once, actually can be finished in an afternoon if you’re persistent. Thankfully, this is much less than half the game. After defeating everyone, Title Defense mode opens up. In Title Defense, all of your opponents have basically become new fighters. TD Glass Joe WILL beat you, and it just gets harder from there. As series fans will know, POW has a few less characters than Super Punch-Out (which had 16). Do not let this fool you into thinking POW has cheated you. Every Title Defense character is a completely new fight, the game essentially has 27 opponents (the secret character only has one form), and you’re not finished once you’ve managed to beat Title Defense. Both forms of every character have their own set of three challenges, giving you a grand total of 81 objectives. These will push you to completely master each character, if you can complete the challenges you’ll wonder how just winning against the TD characters took you so long. Unfortunately, some of the challenges get a little too hard, specifically the ones that make you find every star on opponents. You’re probably going to need to hop online for help with a few of them. As if this wasn’t enough content, there’s a survival mode style challenge and then a ridiculously hard final fight for each character version that will force you to apply the techniques you learned in the earlier challenges. As I’m sure you can tell by that laundry list, getting 100% in POW is a huge undertaking, and should easily take around 30 hours. There’s also a multiplayer mode, which has some interesting ideas but isn’t given much emphasis, with no online and only letting you play as Little Mac. You can go into a super mode and turn into a semi-new boxer called Giga Mac in it, but sadly there is no way to fight Giga Mac in one player. I get the feeling the designers agreed with me that Punch-Out just wasn’t suited for multiplayer, but included a token one due to demand.

The presentation of POW was given as much attention and content as the game modes. There is little in the way of in-game graphics besides the boxers and referee, and the game takes full advantage of this. Each character has an incredibly detailed cel-shaded model, with an amazing range of animations (every opponent has animations for their anticipation of you landing a punch). Each boxer also has four movie quality traditional animation stills to convey their story, with a new set for their Title Defense modes. All the boxers are constantly talking, and while the perfect use of their native languages is impressive, I would have preferred at least English subtitles for them. Five of your opponents speak English, and being able to understand them adds extra personality and entertainment to them. Thankfully, the non-English ones still manage to convey plenty of personality with between round animations and tone, and there’s a nice bi-lingual bonus if you do speak any of the non-English languages. Little Mac is mute (ironically, he’s one of the few Nintendo protagonists who wasn’t in his 8-bit appearance), but the much loved Doc Louis has tons of dialogue, with several unique bits of advice/commentary for each boxer. The music is great, but with so much action and talking going on it can be hard to make it out during gameplay.

POW is one of the most impressive revivals of a long dormant franchise I have ever played. This was not an easy series to transfer to a modern gaming climate, but Next Level Games pulled it off perfectly. Whether you have been waiting for this throughout the last 15 years or are new to series, whether you plan to work until you achieve 100% or just want a fun and over the top experience, POW is one of the best Wii games available and a must buy. There are way too many meme-tastic quotes that could end this review, so feel free to insert your favorite.

Score: 9/10