Punch-Out!! is a game that has aged gracefully, yet is very fun and challenging
You are Little Mac, a 107 lb. boxer hailing from the Bronx, New York. With the help of your coach Doc Louis, you take the World Boxing Federation by surprise and strive to earn the rightful place as the WVBA Champion. Along the way you meet boxers with unusual skills such as teleporting, devastating uppercuts, and a bull charge that can send you straight to the mat. However, you can avoid taking any sort of damage by blocking or dodging left or right and then retaliate with your own punches.
The controls in Punch-Out!! are spot on and excellent. It is very responsive, and it has to be, since most of the blocks and dodges require a split second response. The controls are also very simple with the 1 and 2 buttons on the Wii-Remote being used to do left and right jabs and pressing up simultaneously triggers hooks. You can also activate the star punch by pressing the plus button, which is only given if you hit your opponent in a special area at the right time. Star punches are more powerful than the regular punches and are often important to use on certain boxers. Blocking is activated by pressing the down button at any time, while dodging is activated by pressing left or right. Overall the controls are very easy to learn yet very tough to master
The whole gameplay often relies on you knowing how to expose the opponent's weak point and using it to your advantage, all while avoiding damage to your opponent's attacks. Most of the opponents in the game have on move that is hard to avoid and often sends you flying to the mat if not avoided properly. However with time, effort, and practice you can easily defeat them. One problem I do have with opponents is that they are sometimes a little too unforgiving to the players, especially the newcomers, which can infuriate many gamers and often enough leave a lot of damage to their walls and controllers.
The graphics in the game are superb and some of the best used graphics on the NES. Though some of the opponents have recycled bits, it really doesn't matter due to the great graphical designs on them. Little Mac and Doc Louis also look great. You can tell that the developers took their time to deliver very good graphics, just by looking at the boxers, the crowd, and even the the screens in between the fights. The animation is also very fluent, yet creative like Great Tiger's Teleportation Punch, Bald Bull's reaction after getting hit in the stomach, or even King Hippo's embarrassed reaction after he discovered that his pants fell after being punched in the mouth. This is truly NES graphics at its best.
It is also worth noting that the personalities of each character are very funny and hysterical. I can imagine many gamers smiling or laughing at Doc Louis and Little Mac's mid-fight conversations or even the way some opponents are introduced, such as Don Flamenco dancing to Carmen with a rose in his mouth. Those things are what make most of those fighters unforgettable.
The sound in the game is also very superb. Everything from the opening theme to the punches are excellent. There are tons of sounds for different situations and they all fit in perfectly. My personal favorite is the music used during the fights, which is very memorable. To make things simple, the soundtrack may be limited, but this is some of the best video game music you will listen to.
The lasting appeal of the game will be very long for newcomers but for veterans of this game, it will a little over an hour, since most of the time is spent trying to figure out all of the opponent's moves and trying to knock them down. One warning I will give is that the last boss, Mr. Dream is brutally difficult and it will take you a very long time to get to him, let alone knock him out. But if you give proper dedication and time, you can easily finish him off. However once you beat the game, I can assure you that you will want to have multiple play throughs just for fun.
Punch-Out is an incredible game and easily one of the best games of all time. It manages to be challenging, yet very fun to play. Though people may be put off by the hard difficulty not used a lot in today's games, there is no excuse for you to not play this game. This is one of the greatest boxing games ever crafted, and at $5 you could not get a better deal. And no, you don't have to join the Nintendo Fun Club to be able to play this gem.