(Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/2/2022)
[Image from igdb.com]
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): Action
Platforms: NES
Release Date: October 18, 1987
The NES version of Punch-Out!! was a port of an arcade game released in 1984. The arcade version served as a vehicle to test the primitive limits of quasi-3D gaming, representing the playable character as a green, humanoid figure made of wireframes for greater kinetic appeal. The imperative of the arcade Punch-Out was to immerse the player as an all-star of boxing by emulating the first-person perspective of boxing to the best of their ability. However, this same feeling would prove to be too ambitious for the primitive hardware of the NES, so they had to think up something else. The NES Punch-Out!! is a journey of one’s ambition to be the best at something. It’s a typical arch for sports media, but it works due to the all-encompassing feeling of human drive and passion regardless of whether or not it relates to sports. Rocky is arguably the quintessential film about boxing (or Raging Bull, but Punch-Out!! does not detail the damning psychological aspects of a champion’s fall from grace), and the underdog persona of Rocky translates well as Punch-Out’s!! prime influence. In Punch-Out!!, the player must earn their title as boxing champion by fighting in a grueling tournament against the best boxers worldwide.
This golden-hearted, iron-stomached up-and-comer is not a nameless avatar for the player to place themselves into. The playable character is Little Mac, a young, scrappy boxer from the Bronx who does not wear the “little” moniker like many rappers do. Little Mac is of incredibly short stature, a factor that leads him to be discriminated against by the boxing association. However, upon meeting former boxing champion Doc Louis, teach him a thing or two about overcoming adversity and following his dreams of being #1. Their relationship is displayed through fight dialogue and training sequences, which are is surprisingly effective at conveying a dynamic between the two. One can’t help but be reminded of the relationship between Rocky and Mickey Goldmill from Rocky, although I never saw Mickey jerk Rocky off in between rounds. Whatever seems to work for them, I guess?
Little Mac wasn’t rendered as a smaller man due to a shorter stature fitting a less inherently capable persona. The angle at which the player will find themselves in at a top-down perspective where Little Mac’s opponent is front and center, facing his opponent from the back. Here, the player has a full scope of the opponent’s movements while seeing the relation of space between them and Little Mac. Movement in Punch-Out!! is fairly restricted to a few functions, but the restraint is enough to solidify a competent control scheme. Similar to real boxing, Little Mac is confined to the face, and body blows with his fists. Body blows are standard pushes of the buttons, while face punches are triggered by pressing up on the D-pad. The player can also alternate between left and right jabs with both buttons on the NES controller. Dodging and blocking will be performed as consistently as hitting the opponent, and both are done with the D-Pad. The one intricate move is an uppercut which the player can earn by executing various attack moves, and it serves as a stronger, wound-up version of a regular punch. While fighting, the player must keep a constant watch on Little Mac’s stamina. Once it drops to zero, Little Mac will turn an exhausted pink and have to dodge for a few moments to regain his strength. All of the moves that the player will utilize are simple, but executing them all in conjunction with the fights takes a certain level of mastery. The player will constantly be on edge focusing on the precise movements of their opponents, using a roulette of the few moves they have with style and grace to become champion.
The characters of Punch-Out that are arguably just as important as Little Mac are the other boxers he must face to become champion. Punch-Out’s!! beefy, shorts-wearing foes are an eclectic bunch, to say the least. Each of them represents a global smattering of many places around the world, such as Bald Bull from Istanbul, Turkey, and Don Flamenco from Madrid. Some boxers are inspired by other sources like Sandman, most likely an inspiration from Apollo Creed. While the cast of boxers is all unique to one another, their personas are a point of contention. The character of each boxer can be boiled down to flagrant stereotypes of their nation’s people. Glass Joe is a Frenchman who is depicted as a cowardly weakling who will surrender in the blink of an eye. The German boxer, Von Kaiser, is an all-around loser in fighting (read a book or watch a video on the history of the former half of the 20th century to learn why). Pacific Islander King Hippo is fat and lazy. Great Tiger sports a turban and uses yogi mysticism in fights, and the random Japanese phrases that Piston Honda utters between rounds would be a cause for alarm if the game wasn’t made by a Japanese company. The foul Russian stereotype known as Vodka Drunkenski has been changed to Soda Popinski, but only to better fit the family-friendly image of Nintendo.
The unsavory stereotypes that plague the fighters of Punch-Out!! make it seem as if Archie Bunker was the creative director of Nintendo in the late 80s, writing these characters from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy. Personally, the offensive caricatures were never something that irked me about Punch-Out!! They might have bothered me more if their fights weren’t as invigorating. I’ve seen a pattern in early console games that leaves me to believe that bosses were a new concept in gaming that took some time to blossom. Many bosses during this era were simple excursions and repeated often to pad the game without any variation upon numerous encounters. Punch-Out!! is essentially a glorified boss gauntlet under the guise of a boxing tournament. One might think that a game that offers nothing but one of the most underdeveloped aspects of early console gaming would be excruciatingly tedious, but Punch-Out!! is leagues ahead of its contemporaries in this regard. Each boss fight in Punch-Out!! has a puzzle property in which the player has to figure out how to defeat the fighter. The most obvious example of this is fighting against King Hippo, who cannot be defeated by wailing on his face or his podgy torso. He has a weak spot the player must find and exploit, and doing so will net the player a clear, gratifying victory after struggling to defeat him. The same goes for many other boxers in more subtle fashions. The game does pad the tournament with repeat fighters but does not falter. The returning fighters always come with a new trick up their sleeves and are much more formidable than their previous encounters. If the player loses too many matches, the arcade roots of Punch-Out!! start to show, and they must start back at the minor league. Normally, this arcade style of difficulty would be a major deterrent, but I do not mind facing all of the bosses again. Punch-Out!! is a game that one must practice, and repeat fights will shred the time taken to defeat the previous boxers.
At the peak of Punch-Out's!! array of brow-beating boss fights lies the undefeated king Mike Tyson himself. That’s right, Mike Tyson doesn’t just brand his hype-latent name on this game for the point of increasing sales. Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream in subsequent ports of the game due to Mike Tyson tarnishing his image) is the final boss of Punch-Out!!, and he’s about as hard as fighting him in real life. In all of the vexing hardships the player endured up to this point, none of them will prepare them for the match against Kid Dynamite. His unpredictable haymakers will paint the ring with Little Mac’s blood and broken teeth, and having to climb back up from the bottom here is one disheartening affair that has crushed many gamers. If you were wondering, I am not one of the proud few who have defeated Mike Tyson, for I am not a demigod with supernatural abilities.
Punch-Out!! was the game on the NES that I’m sure was developed to bank on the overnight success of a young Mike Tyson and drain money from those who would not have been interested in video games in the first place. With great effort and impressive innovation, however, came an outstanding title on the system that made some unparalleled strides for gaming. Among all of the standout elements like the progressive, underdog narrative and the simple, effective control scheme, Punch-Out’s!! legacy lies with its bosses. Offensive caricatures aside, the boxers in Punch-Out!! exemplify a level of challenge and intricacy that had not been seen in the medium. All of the varied fights are exhilarating in their own unique ways, and they all culminate in the mother of final bosses: Mike Tyson himself. There is so much more to Punch-Out!! than the novelty of putting Mike Tyson in a video game.
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