So, I’ve catalogued the many reasons that I respect Nintendo’s whole Punch-Out!! franchise, but the entire cause of this resurgence of interest rests on the fact that the newest Wii version of the game is one of the greatest things to ever happen to humanity. Polio vaccine? You have nothing on punching cartoon characters.
Nintendo has completely made good on its promise to get people off of the couch and into a truly interactive gaming experience with many different games. While Wii Fit was a program that got me moving and exercising for a little while, the appeal of the super-cute little ‘Mii’ version of myself that the game uses to personalize the experience just wasn’t cutting it for me. It’s hard to take something seriously when the figure representing you has a head about the same size as its body. After a few weeks, my interest trailed off and the Wii balance board started to collect dust.
So, while Punch-Out!! doesn’t offer a full-body, moderated workout, it absolutely got me motivated to move. The lifestyle of an artist and writer is a relatively sedentary one, and when you combine that with a year full of illness and injury, you have one chubby little nerd. The most important step in weight loss is getting started at all, and I’ve finally found myself doing something more active than I have for a full year. I consider that a victory.
In Punch-Out!!, you play a diminutive boxer named Little Mac, and predictably, you aspire to move up through the ranks and become the world champion at punching things. Using the Wii remote in one hand and the Wii nunchuk attachment in the other, you punch, duck, dodge and block your way through the complex patterns of attacks that your immense opponents throw at you. It’s not ridiculously difficult, but reaction time and poise are just as important at the ability to throw a quick jab, all culminating in a very artful experience that transcends he implied brutality of what you’d expect from video game boxing.
While you can play the game with a standard controller and not move at all aside from your thumbs, purists will play Punch-Out!! standing up with arms flailing. A certain veracity sets in when you realize that you simply cannot defeat an opponent because you’re just too tired and your reaction time has been physically diminished by your actual motion. After my first day of playing this, my arms were very sore and I was sweating. After the third and fourth days, I found that my abdominal muscles were sore, as well as my upper thighs. The motions required by gameplay do indeed force you to use these muscles to throw accurate punches. It’s the kind of soreness that results from actually doing exercise. While I’m not here to imply that Punch-Out!! is a cure-all for obesity, it’s one critical, initial step towards me finding my health again. Is it the fact that if you punch the French guy hard enough, croissants will fly out of his head? Maybe.
The intuitive gameplay is something that just about anyone should be capable of mastering, as it rarely goes beyond hitting the ‘duck’ button at the right moment or punching with the arm that will do the most damage at any given point. Your ducking, blocking, dodging and headshots are all determined by the directional stick on the Wii nunchuk controller, unlike the controls for Wii Boxing in which these motions are all controlled without the involvement of any buttons at all. While I would have liked to see these kinds of complex body controls with Punch-Out!!, one does have the option of hooking up the Wii balance board to control some of these movements, though reaction time tends to be diminished.
The graphics are crisp, the animations and characters are genuinely funny, and as you fight your way through all of the challengers a second time to retain your title, you almost feel bad for them. Sure, they become insanely difficult, but there’s so much personality there that it’s hard not to.
I don’t know if Nintendo has ever disappointed with one of their native franchise titles, and this is no exception. There are lots of Wii games that are worth collecting, but this is in the top ten that I now consider essential.
