""Join the Nintendo fun... I mean, join Club Nintendo today, Mac!""
Part-2
Both of your energies are represented by bars up above. Lose all your bar and you get a knockdown. If you are knocked down and do not get up before the count of 10, you're considered Knocked Out. If you get knocked down three times in a single round, it counts as a Technical Knock Out and it's over. It is the same for your opponents. One last thing to keep track of is your heart meter. Represented with a scaling heart and numerically, it goes down when your hits are blocked or when you take a hit. If it goes to zero, you will not be able to hook or jab. Dodging a hit will bring Mac's energy back.
To play the game on a basic level is very simple, but to get to the more advanced opponents or make good time on earlier ones, you'll have to keep an eye out for Punch-Out!!'s intricacies. For instance, any time your opponent seems to be rearing up to launch an uppercut at you, a swift dodge will keep you out of harm's way. If you are quick, you can start pelting your opponent with jabs and hooks before they can put up their guard again. The basic game hinges on how quickly you master this dodge-and-retaliate mechanic. Once you have it down, and know how your opponent moves, you can then use these mannerisms and opportunities to score hits even before your opponent throws a punch.
Longtime Punch-Out!! players will take notice that reading opponents will be easier than before. Visual cues are much more noticeable with the advances animation and sound cues add to it. Most blatantly, the only newcomer to the series, Disco Kid, will rear back and proclaim, "Here it comes!" before jabbing. In some cases, it will make going into a rush painfully easy. In the later fights and modes, it will be the only thing keeping your face off the mat. If nothing else, all opponent will flash red briefly without fail before punching at you. In the rare instance they taunt or appeal, they will flash yellow briefly. Quickly nail them to earn one of three stars you can have at one time.
Speaking of the stars, they certainly take more front and center in this game than they did in the NES title. Stars allow you to use the Star Punch, a powerful uppercut that will add a good chunk of damage to your rush. If you time it right, you could even do more damage than expected with a Star Punch for the TKO. If you earn multiple stars before using the Star Punch, they will all gather into a single, very powerful Star Punch. Should you take a hit before then, all your stars are gone. How you use your Star Punches can mean the difference between a lot of things. Winning some fights by TKO even hinge on the Star Punch
Keep all these things in mind and you're ready to take on the circuits. To explain it does the game no justice to the experience, really. There's a lot of good build-up, and you'll want to beat the next opponent because of the hype surrounding it. Fortunately, the simple controls paired with the in-depth and accessible metagame behind Punch-Out!! makes the story-to-gameplay transition and integration seamless. You'll swear that the colorful characters are talking and taunting at you, the player, rather than at the ingame avatar, which gives a sense of immersion that is rarely appealed to in this game's generation.
As much as I absolutely love this system, grew up with it, and have an old-schooler taste, I'm afraid I can't speak from that standpoint alone. The game, despite being well-made and with some wide appeal, it's audience is much more limited than I give it credit for. The game's basic simplicity and tone will not work for everybody, and can actually be a turn-off for people expecting something more in-depth and less formulaic. If you're looking for a game that won't play the same in successive plays through, Punch-Out!! won't offer you that toss-up in replays.
The game's multiplayer actually does this somewhat. The characters control like a hybrid between single player Little Mac and an opponent fighter, throwing single punches or uppercuts and dodging. Dodge a hit and the other player is stunned and you get your counter punch. The goal is to get enough hits in to transform you avatar into Giga Mac and the real multiplayer begins, single-screened and all. Giga Mac works EXACTLY like a single-player opponent, making appeals to keep himself Giga (and opening himself up for counters) and tossing in hits that do great damage. The fun part is that Giga Mac is also prone to the weaknesses, as well. If he misses, the opponent can do a rush in single-player style and use that Star Punch. In between the spastic dodge-fest and how one-sided a Giga Mac transformation can be, multiplayer is still mostly fanservice.
Overall: 9
Punch-Out!! will have two camps about it, fans gushing and non-fans wondering what the big deal is. I happen to be somewhere in the former camp.
That said, Punch-Out!! could have been a lackluster revival attempt to cash in, but the people at Nintendo did try well to keep it of good quality. There just plain isn't anything like Punch-Out!! on the market today. Its cast is mostly unforgettable, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and the gameplay remains original, if not dated for the newest generations of players.
The fun factor, however, is another thing. It is nothing to detract from the experience, but requires keeping in mind for when the issue arises. The basic career mode is a cute little exhibition of what it means to control your character and what it's like to read your opponents and act accordingly to win bouts. The real meat of the game for those who are really into it is the Title Defense mode, which puts you in the gloves of the defending champion. All the opponents you faced come back faster, stronger, and with new moves or gimmicks about them to work around. The competition in Title Defense is fierce and will put to the test your Punch-Out!! skills. Lastly, there's Little Mac's last stand. Three losses and you're out, basically. The exhibition mode is where the real metagame lies. Fight opponents you've defeated again and again, this time with three challenges apiece such as a set number of punches or a time limit or even leaving the match to decision. After the career mode is over, this is the source of your fun in the same file.
Playing through the game once will yield great fun and exploration of all the different opponent types. To play through it again will give you an edge of knowing. Playing through successive times might yield diminishing gains. In between bouts there's some menu navigation to select your circuit and opponent. Even more if you're going between modes like training to career, let's say. If you're done with or don't care about the challenges, there won't be much new content after career mode is done. If you want to fight through the circuits again, you'll need to go through the menus each time to select your next opponent, which might break the flow of gameplay ever so slightly.
One thing Punch-Out!! could have done to honor its arcade-inspired roots would have been to include a mode that sent you through the entire basic game from start to finish without returning to opponent selection screens, and giving you the option of getting back in the game when you fall out. It's an entirely different play experience from picking your opponents and moving forward with goals than to just go through and play for the love of the game. If you love Punch-Out!! anyway, you'll tolerate the menu-surfing anyway.
Buy, rent, or skip: Rent ~ Buy
No doubt, Punch-Out!! is at least worth a single play through. Having the memories of that single career mode might work for you better than having that $50 game on your shelf that you don't pick up any more. On the other hand, if you do like the game's system and are a fan, you won't be thinking twice about picking this game up anyway. If there were attempts to lengthen the game's play time, such as any number of online functions, Punch-Out!! would be a better overall game. In the end, it's very functional and very fun. It's very much a game for the fans, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Reviewer's Score: 9/10
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