Retro Review - Punch Out!

Editor’s note: I originally authored and published the below post on a now defunct site called “The Cool Ship,” where it ran on January 29, 2012. Enjoy this reprised content!

Person A: “Mega-Riboxord-san is the best, his special attack is un-blockable!” Person B: “No my favorite character is Tim, he has the best combos. I will pwn¹ you!”

[steps on soapbox]

This fictional dialogue demonstrates the difference of opinion I’ve seen when it comes to fighting games, even among the fighting fans themselves. Sometimes when I just sit in a room of fighting game fans and listen, I start to wonder if fighting games deserve their own entertainment category.

This way you would have sports, tv, books, music, movies, games, and fighting games, then the fighters would be broken down into sub-genres much like books have fiction, non-fiction, biography and so on.

I feel like this would clear up some misunderstandings, such as whether Mortal Kombat is better than Street Fighter, or Tekken than Dead or Alive. It would also offer non-fighting gamers an excuse when they are asked, “what is the best fighting game of all time?” My inevitable reply, “oh I’m just a gamer, I don’t get into fighting games. But I have played Punch Out! for NES.”

Awkward silence.

Silly debates aside, I really do like fighting games, I just may not go out of my way to play them. For this retro review (I didn’t forget to review a game) I thought, why don’t I find a fighting game from before it became its own branch of the entertainment industry? Ok I am making up that last part, but you know what I mean.

[steps off soapbox]

Summary

Punch Out! for NES fits my prerequisites for an obscure fighting game like a glove. Street Fighter II was only a twinkle in Capcom’s eye at this point, and Mike Tyson had a few more years before his rape conviction and the famous biting of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Maybe it was better that Nintendo didn’t get to name this Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! like they wanted.

The nostalgic perspective

I was two years old when this game was released, I think I was more concerned with causing my parents trouble than I was with playing video games. I don’t think I started playing games until I was about four, and then it was PC games not Nintendo. So I never played this game until I decided to review it this week.

The now perspective

Now that I have played it, I’m hooked. Right hooked to be precise. You fight as a boxer named Little Mac, mostly for his size relative to the other boxers. Each fight faces you against a progressively more difficult opponent, and as you fight each character the game teaches you how to play fighting games.

If I had played this a long time ago, I would be a better fighting gamer today. I learned in the first match against Glass Joe how to follow the simple formula, dodge and punch. This principle applies to the rest of the game, although later fighters do a much better job of hiding when they are about to throw a punch.

As in poker, you have to read each fighter for their tell, then use it against them to go for a knockout. Check out the pictures on the right to get an idea of what I mean. Or you could just go wipe some dust off your NES, blow on the cartridge leads, and slam it in the console for a great retro fighting experience.

I’ll even admit, the graphics on most NES games suffer a sad fate on our big, beautiful 1080p screens, but Punch Out! scales well for an 8-bit arcade port. The inclusion of a Mario look-alike as the game’s referee just seals the deal for me. Plus the difficulty curve in this game would make any professor blush compared to their pathetic grade curves, which are never nearly curvy enough for me.

Final thoughts

If you want to straddle the line between being a gamer or being a fighting gamer, Punch Out! is a perfect choice. You still get to say you played a fighting game, but it is one of the best fighting games ever made, and it even spawned a modern iteration on Wii.

If you are already a fighting gamer and you haven’t played this NES gem, I suggest you set some time aside from Street Fighter IX and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon But Worse This Time to get back to the basics. You might learn a new technique from this classic to apply to your modern fighting style, or you might just appreciate the technical achievement of the fighting in this retro fighter.

Was this the fighting game you were hoping I’d review? Do you think I chose wrong? Leave me a comment below, or challenge me to a match of Tekken 3 on Playstation, probably my all time favorite fighting game. Now you know.

¹pwn: a slang gaming term meaning to enslave within the boundaries of the game world