Punch-Out!! series

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ratsoalbion
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Punch-Out!! series

Post by ratsoalbion »

Please post below your memories, opinions and experiences of any or all of the various Punch-Out!! titles (arcade, NES, SNES, Wii) for potential inclusion in the upcoming podcast.
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Alex79
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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by Alex79 »

My first experience of Punch Out wasn't actually with Punch Out at all. It was enjoying Frank Bruno's Boxing on the Amstrad CPC, which I didn't discover until years later was a direct ripoff or reskin of Punch Out!

I bought Punch Out for the Wii many years ago and never got around to playing it, so the first time I ever played the actual, original game was on the NES collection on the Switch Online service. I thought it was excellent, very simple and easy to get the hang of, but incredibly tough towards the later stages of the game. Super Punch Out was just a nicer looking version of the same game, but recently I've been playing the Wii version with my children after seeing them enjoy Wii Sports Boxing. I did the classic, "if you like this, then try this..." with them, and indeed they really enjoyed Punch Out for the Wii. We play it on motion controls, so it's a decent bit of exercise after a few rounds, too!

I think Punch Out is a highly enjoyable series of games, and whilst later fights can sometimes feel a little unfair, there's always a pattern or tactic to learn which leads to success. I can't imagine there's much life left in the series, but I think Arms is possibly the closest we've come to a new game in a similar style on Switch.
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AndrewElmore
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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by AndrewElmore »

I assume the NES game will be well-covered, but I find it interesting that the Wii game has been growing in popularity in recent years. I picked it up at a thrift store (sorry, 'charity shop', I almost forgot what podcast this was for a moment!) on a whim some years back, vaguely aware of its positive reputation. Some time later I popped it in and gave it a spin and very quickly found myself having a fantastic time. There's something so satisfying about the near-rhythm-game nature of Punch-Out!!'s pleasantly frictional inputs. Granted, it's no God Hand, but what is? The animation freezes and sound design work in tandem to sell every impact so effectively. The art direction as well is so strong in its hyper-specific cartoonish aesthetic--everything has a this almost semi-transparent, gelatinous, candy-coated sheen to it. All around a delightful game to pick up and play, provided you have a CRT. And that's kind of the sticking point with the whole series for most folks these days. Those timing windows are incredibly tight, and they were not made for display technologies that introduce additional latency. You might be able to get away with an FPGA based hardware emulation solution and a TV with a very fast response time in game mode, but I'd imagine the home console versions of these games must be more or less unplayable if you just plugged your SNES into your TV, for example. And that's a shame, because for all the wonderful preservation efforts in games, their inherently interactive nature still tends to lead to some hiccups here and there that impede current and future players from having the sort of experience, or indeed difficulty, the game was designed with in mind. I don't have much to say about the arcade game beyond "the green wireframe player model is really cool" and "the constant repetition of 'BODY BLOW' has soured more than a few arcade experiences for me over the years whenever trying to play a machine nearby."

But I think one of the most prominent elements of Punch-Out!!'s legacy at this point is its wildly brazen cartoon racism. I'm sure this will be discussed during the issue and at the time of writing this I have been awake for 26 hours so I dare not place much trust in my ability to maintain anything resembling coherence at this moment, but wow this whole series really is a sequential lineup of xenophobic stereotypes ranging from harmful to bewildering. Much of the character art is strongly reminiscent of aspects you'd find in violently bigoted right wing political cartoons in the early 20th century here in the united states. There's an awful lot I like about these games, but they do make me quite uncomfortable all the same.

Punch-Out!! is one of those auxiliary Nintendo franchises that hasn't seen much light in quite some time, and frankly I'm not sure what else they could really do to revive it at this point. Arms tried to do something a bit different, even if nothing about it was necessarily to my personal taste, but were I charged with the task of making a new Punch-Out!! game now, all I could imagine doing would be dropping the bigotry and accounting for input lag, so that there's at least some version of the Punch-Out!! formula that will be easier to bring with us into the future. Actually I'd probably just try to redirect those funds towards a new F-Zero game from Amusement Vision but I digress. ^_^
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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by Toon Scottoon »

A lot has changed since I played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! 30 years ago. Obviously the game no longer features an ear chomping convicted rapist and pigeon enthusiast's name in its title or final stage, and the blatantly racist stereotypes parading around the virtual rings in this game are not as easy to ignore. However Punch-Out!!'s design is still a sweet science all it's own, disguising what is really a rhythm action - puzzle game behind a pugilistic facade that creates a "one more try" game loop I find as addictive now as I did when I left my NES running hot overnight between the Soda Popski fight and the Bald Bull fight back in the eighties.

As to the sprite work, it's obviously racist and also as impressive as anything I can think of from the 8-bit era, including Super Mario 3. Like a lot of artwork there are visual flourishes in this game, the hyperbolic eye-bulges, the use of scale, the articulation of space in a 2-D world that deserve to be preserved and closely studied, but also probably need to come with some kind of disclaimer or trigger warning so that people can come to this masterpiece of a game on their own terms.

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Complicated Technical Knockout
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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by Jobobonobo »

My introduction to this series was through the Wii Virtual Console when I had some spare money and decided to try out the NES original out of curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised as I usually struggle with enjoying titles from this era but this was a really delightful affair, being less a fighting game and more of a puzzler. Learning how each fighter operates, anticipating their attacks and taking advantage of an opening made each fight a unique experience and tested your memorisation in a fun way. The sprite work is amongst the best the NES has to offer and really makes the cast of characters you go up against some of the most unforgettable opponents out there. I was never good enough to get to the end though and if I remember, Mike Tyson was not in the Wii Virtual Console due to the controversy surrounding said boxer. Even though it was challenging as so many NES titles were it was never in a cheap way and as such I was always up to give it another go. It was one I always meant to go back to but I obviously got distracted by either a newer title or life events. Absolutely one of the true classics of the NES in my opinion.

It was also on the Wii where I tried out the latest instalment and I loved it. The presentation was incredible and the characters were more larger than life than ever before. The Wii remotes were well suited to dodging and punching, making each fight especially compelling. Just a fun little package overall that encapsulated the Wii at its best.

Overall, seeing Little Mac going up against his towering opponents almost makes Punch Out look like a more light-hearted take on Shadow of the Colossus and it could be that timeless image of the mighty hero conquering the larger, stronger opponent that helps the series as a whole endure as much as it does to this day.

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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by Cornelius_Smiff »

After numerous years of exhaustive undercover journalism, I have come to the conclusion that boxing is corrupt.

Super Punch-Out and the Dragon Chan opponent are my case and point. He kicked me in the face! This is an egregious afront to the otherwise squeeky clean reputation that boxing has worked so tirelessly to achieve.

All joking aside, the sense of satisfaction I felt after I beating this level was pretty special. Ironically I went on to beat the game thereafter with nowhere near the same level of frustration. I am not sure if this was put in place as a skill check or just a cheeky 4th wall breaking nudge nudge wink wink.

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Re: Our next podcast recording (9.1.22) - 551: Punch-Out!! series

Post by stvnorman »

If I want an 8-bit boxing game it will always be Frank Bruno on the Spectrum, but what I soon realised when I became totally obsessed with Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream on the NES Classic Mini is that it’s not really about boxing at all. It’s about rhythms and patterns, and while I had fun becoming the champion in its madcap boxing world, that only a small part of the reward in finally beating it. I’ve had a quick go on the follow-up on SNES Classic Mini, but a few years on I’m still not ready for that level of commitment again now I know what I’m in for, as wonderful as it may be!
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