Punch-Out!!: The Definitive Review – 7 Full Reviews for Punch-Out!! and Its Sequels, Spin-Offs, and Rip-Offs

Punch-Out!! is a legitimate contender for my favorite Nintendo franchise. Actually, the only bad one really is the original coin-op. That would be more impressive if there were more games in the series, but I’ll get to that in a moment. I wanted to start my 2026 at IGC with something big. I was going to JUST review Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, which is one of my favorite video games ever, but I figured “why not do all the pre-Wii Punch-Out!! games?” And if you want my thoughts on the Game & Watch, be sure to read Game & Watch: The Definitive Review, though I should note the Punch-Out!! Game & Watch, sometimes called simply “Boxing” is nothing like Punch-Out!! at all. In fact, the formula used in that game evolved into Urban Champion.

I originally intended to include other games in this, but my family vetoed Teleroboxer for the Virtual Boy due to flashiness and eye strain, and my friend Dave talked me out of doing other boxing games. Some of them were literally impossible for me to recreate with my emulator because the coin-ops had unique inputs (Sega did a few that tried to mimic the feel of throwing punches). Others, like the Master System game Rocky or James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing for the Genesis, I really don’t think deserve to be compared to Punch-Out!! because it’s apples and oranges. Those are actual boxing games, and Punch-Out!! is much, much more than just boxing. But I wanted at least one “bonus” review so I found a very good ROM hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! to close this feature. So there’s seven total reviews in Punch-Out!!: The Definitive Review. I hope everyone enjoys! Here are the games reviewed:

• Punch-Out!! (Arcade)
• Super Punch-Out!! (Arcade)
• Arm Wrestling (Arcade)
• Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (NES)
• Power Punch II (NES)
• Super Punch-Out!! (SNES)
• Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!! (NES ROM Hack)

HAS PUNCH-OUT!! RETIRED ON ITS STOOL?

So why isn’t Nintendo doing anything with Punch-Out!! Around this time last year, reports came out that it was due to the roster being filled with ethnic stereotypes. Next Level games later denied reports about this and instead said the format has been taken to its limits and there’s nothing “unique” to do. Either way, I really don’t want to get into politics or political correctness. Anyone who has read me over the last fourteen years can probably guess that I find these things exhausting at this point. BUT, I figure this would be a good place to point out that Nintendo obviously can’t think the situation is THAT bad because Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! are both available on Nintendo Switch Online. If the franchise has been vanished the cornfield, it seems weird to still have the old games with the same characters widely available, doesn’t it? Plus Hamster Co. sells the arcade Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! as part of the Arcade Archives series. Hell, I even suspect that the Wii Punch-Out!! will be re-released before the 2020s are up, possibly with some small modifications. But those are legacy games and the Wii is now old enough to be “retro.” The Wii Punch-Out!! game is over a year older than Angela, for God’s sake.

So is Punch-Out!! well and truly dead as a franchise? Assuming Nintendo is skittish about the stereotype situation, just ditch basing the characters around nationalities and create new characters that aren’t fated to age badly. Or, instead of new characters, use old ones, but old ones from different games. One of the most popular franchises in gaming of the 21st century is Smash Bros. That could provide the template for Nintendo to revive Punch-Out!! Everyone loved the battle against Donkey Kong at the end of the Wii game, right? There you go! Imagine how many copies a Punch-Out!! where you box Link, Mario, or Samus Aran would sell. Captain Falcon could FALCON PUNCH Little Mac on Little Mac’s home turf. Kirby could eat him. 36 MILLION copies were sold of Smash Bros. Ultimate. Even if this hypothetical Punch-Out!! sold one third of that, it would be considered a smash hit and almost certainly bring back a lot of old school gamers to Nintendo. I can’t think of any franchise as universally beloved, critically acclaimed, and best-selling that is completely shut-out of modern gaming like Punch-Out!! is. What the hell are you doing, Nintendo? Three console games and it still feels like you’ve barely scratched the surface of what Punch-Out!! COULD be. Knuckle-up already and bring it back! ON WITH THE REVIEWS!

GAME REVIEWS

For those not familiar with my way of thinking of how retro games should be reviewed, I take NO historical context into account, at least for the games themselves. I don’t care how important a game was to the industry, because that doesn’t make a game worth playing today. The test of time is the cruelest test of all, but every video game must face it. I might not be here if not for Pong’s success, but I wouldn’t want to play it today. Not when there’s better options. Therefore, when I review retro games, every game gets either a YES! or a NO!

YES! means the game is still fun and has actual gameplay value when played today and is worth seeking out.

NO! means the game didn’t age gracefully and is not worth seeking out, and certainly not worth spending money on.

Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released February 17, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

I reviewed the coin-op Punch-Out!! a little over seven years ago. I didn’t like it then, and while I’m willing to admit I was wrong about Vs. Super Mario Bros. (and I used to have a snobbery streak a mile wide) I was spot-on about the coin-op Punch-Out!! Everything that a person could love about the three console games seems to be here, only it doesn’t really work. If you expect the counter-punching format from the home games, boy are you in for a disappointment. Not that it’s missing entirely. You move left and right to dodge attacks, but the actual act of throwing leather is frustratingly unresponsive. It just takes FOREVER to get the hang of because “counter-punching” in this game literally means counter-punching. You throw a punch, they block and counter-punch, then you might be able to counter-punch and get some stunned punches on your opponents.

But whether I played Punch-Out!! on Arcade Archives or MAME, it didn’t matter. The controls are incredibly unresponsive. Many button presses go unanswered, and it reduces Punch-Out!!’s good intentions into a mindless button masher where you’re happy when you land a string of punches. I have problems with the offensive game, but even the defensive one is problematic. Sometimes something as simple as raising or lowering your guard can have a delay in it, and every time I changed my defensive stance, it felt like I was punished on the offensive side of the equation by being unable to throw any punch for a second or two. Maybe they were trying to make it feel more “scientific” or “boxing-like” but it really just came across as responsive. When I don’t like popular games, I get accused of “playing it wrong” but in the case of the coin-op Punch-Out!!, I was constantly questioning it.

Eventually I did at least get good enough to beat all six fighters without cheating, though only about 10% of it felt like the home games that I fell in love with. And it’s not simply the gameplay I dislike. For a boxing game, there’s no sensation of violence at all. The NES game had punches that gave off a violent, impactful vibe and the uppercut in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is so satisfying. Getting punched in the NES game feels devastating too, as it should. The NES game does 8-bit violence just about as good as the console is capable of. None of that is present in the coin-op original. Even when you charge up the KO meter and throw uppercuts and right hooks, it has no OOMPH to it. Neither does getting punched. It feels like people fighting with oversized novelty gloves. Feathery play-fighting, and that’s being generous. Finally, I thought half the roster of fighters were forgettable and generic. Piston Hurricane (who would be much better in the SNES game), Kid Quick, and Pizza Pasta have pretty dull designs and Kid Quick’s fight is just very bland. It’s almost hard to believe they stripped this game down and still managed to turn it into a timeless, cherished NES classic. Punch-Out!! does have jaw-dropping graphics for 1984 and I’m sure it was attractive to arcade goers, but it’s just very fun, you know?
Verdict: NO!

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Arcade
Released September, 1984
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Super Punch-Out!! is a no-doubt-about-it improvement over the original in basically every way. The previous game was apparently developed as a result of Nintendo having a surplus of monitors, so who knows how much their heart was really into it. With Super Punch-Out!!, it sort of feels like the development team realized that they were onto something and leaned heavier to the more fun aspects. The counter-punching relies more on left-right dodging instead of using your gloves. The big, slicing uppercuts and hooks that the console games would make famous are thrown more frequently here, and finding an extended sequence of wide open “stunned” punches is basically the main object now. The controls are still often unresponsive-feeling but even that’s not as bad. Super Punch-Out!! is immediately, noticeably better.

And it also feels much closer to the console franchise in terms of personality. Annoyingly, the already sparse roster has been cut from six opponents to five, but these five are big in personality and they, you know, cheat. Well, Dragon Chan does (and technically in boxing you can’t ever face away from your opponent, so Super Macho Man’s spinning punch is very illegal). This required an additional dodging move, the duck. Weirdly, I only remember needing it for three out of the five boxers: Bear Hugger, Dragon Chan, and Super Macho Man. Also, Great Tiger doesn’t do his famous “teleporting” move and really just feels like a faster version of Piston Hurricane, complete with the “Hurricane Punches” move from the original game. You can actually feel that they’re starting to experiment and get a sense for what Punch-Out!! SHOULD be, but as an authorized enhancement kit for the original coin-op, they were limited by the problems the original game had.

If the first game was a prototype for better things to come, Super Punch-Out!! is the game that confirms Nintendo recognized that and had ideas for how to get there. Punch-Out!! should be about everything but boxing. If it feels like you’re obeying the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, well, it’s kind of boring, isn’t it? Here’s where it gets really weird: I couldn’t wait to be done with the first coin-op. The second game added something to the upper screen: K.O. Time, IE how long you need to knock a boxer out. This added SO MUCH replay value. I was still frustrated by the controls, but nowhere near to the degree I was the first time around. When I knocked out the unfortunately named Vodka Drunkenski in 44 seconds and change, I literally let out a cheer. The time trials also clued me in that I wasn’t fighting Dragon Chan right, as even on my fifth fight against him I failed to put up a good time.

There is a downside to the time keeping: the rematches after you beat Super Macho Man don’t record times, so if you want to treat Super Punch-Out!! like a time trial game, you have to not continue when you get knocked out during the title defenses. Speaking of which, the second wave of fighters I found to be much harder in this game. Hell, I lost the Bear Hugger fight a couple times, and I never actually made it to the second Macho fight. I decided to not reload for rematches because I wanted to challenge my fastest times. That’s what put Super Punch-Out!! over the top for me. While all the problems with the lack of authentic-feeling, painful violence returned from the original, Nintendo got close enough to the Punch-Out!! that *I* fell in love with to win me over.
Verdict: YES!

Arm Wrestling
Platform: Arcade
Released May, 1985
Designed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Arm Wrestling is one of the few Nintendo coin-ops that Hamster hasn’t brought to Arcade Archives, though I have no clue what the story on that is. I mean, Arcade Archives released Sky Skipper (which I reviewed on my 30th birthday), a game that never got a wide release and which only one unit is known to still exist. A game that rare, and rare specifically because of bad route testing, gets modern love but Arm Wrestling doesn’t? That seemed ominous to me, and then there’s the fact that Arm Wrestling has been shut out historically by Nintendo on the same level as StarTropics and Zoda’s Revenge. No references in any other game. Not even a wink in the Smash Bros. series or a microgame in WarioWare. So, I was a bit nervous, but truth be told, I think I like Arm Wrestling more than Sky Skipper. Maybe. As I type this paragraph, I’m not actually finished with my play session. I’ve only beaten all five fighters once, but Arm Wrestling is positively exhausting, like one of those button mashing Track & Field games. I doubt any game wearing a Nintendo label has been this physically taxing, at least not without some kind of Power Pad or Balance Board.

I can honestly say I’ve never played anything like Arm Wrestling before. Well, that’s not entirely true. This is considered part of the Punch-Out!! franchise for a reason and shares DNA in that both are about counterattacks. But instead of throwing leather, you want to mostly tap the joystick LEFT to try and muscle your opponent’s arm down. Eventually they’ll make a move that’s telegraphed by a facial expression or some other telltale sign, at which point you want to counterattack by quickly pressing RIGHT instead. Doing this will stun them like a Punch-Out!! sequence, at which point little bubbles will appear above the fighter that require you to hit the POW button. A “!” bubble requires a single press while “!!” might require two presses or it might require pressing RIGHT. I honestly never figured it out, but I know that just pressing buttons always seemed to fail. A money symbol does no damage to your opponent but scores points. If a skull appears, you have to wait it out. A “?” is a 50/50 chance for points or a skull. Did you get all that?

As noted in the above picture, there’s more to it than just jerking left and right on the controller. Two of the fighters require special finishing techniques to beat, and a few have Punch-Out!! like moves you have to dodge, including the final fighter spitting fire at you. Okay, so Arm Wrestling is unintuitive and physically exhausting to play, but I…….. kinda liked it. It’s also an innovator in a few ways. You know the Mario Kart “hit the gas at the right moment to get a boost” thing? Arm Wrestling did it first! Every match has a starting pistol. If you hit LEFT before the pistol, you get a foul. Two fouls is a game over, but if your timing is true and you hit LEFT on the exact right frame, you can score super quick KOs on opponents. The time trial system from Super Punch-Out returns, and honestly I think it’s more potently addictive here. Plus, unlike Super Punch-Out!!, the second wave of fighters ALSO has time trials that are exclusive to the rematches.

And those rematches are no slouches. I literally could not beat the first fighter, Texas Mac, in the first rematch. His fighting style is totally different. When I was just about to wrap-up this review, I went back for one kick at the can, and not only did I defeat Texas Mac II using the Mario Kart trick, but I won the fight IN FOUR SECONDS! I literally screamed.

Arm Wrestling isn’t perfect. I never got the hang of defending against the skulls. I never got the hang of the timing of the bubbles at all, really. In the rare instances where there was a mix of “!” and “!!” bubbles, I was always surprised when I actually got all five correct. I’m also suspect Hamster took a pass on this because it’ll be bad for analog sticks. I’m guessing even the most durable arcade units took a LOT of abuse from players, which probably explains why Arm Wrestling is a rarity. Still, it didn’t deserve to be historically blanked like it has been. It’s loaded with personality and has some of the most unique gameplay Nintendo has come up with. Yet, it can’t even get a microgame in the WarioWare franchise. I won’t suggest that Nintendo is sitting on a goldmine, but as a unique novelty game, Arm Wrestling deserves better.
Verdict: YES!

You’ll note that I didn’t mention the, ahem, infamous sound effects. For over fourteen years now my readers have given me endless sh*t because I often play games muted. Well, have a listen to what I muted this time. HAH HAH! WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?🖕🤪🖕

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
aka Punch-Out!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October, 1987*
Directed by Genyo Takeda
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

*A version of Punch-Out!! without Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream was released September 18, 1987 for the Famicom in Japan. Sort of. Only 10,000 units were made but only as prizes for special events or drawings. In this version, Super Macho Man is the final fight. Mike Tyson actually IS in the game code and requires a Game Genie to unlock, and he replaces Glass Joe. Heh, imagine if that’s how it really worked. Talk about tough love training.

You know what blows my mind the most about Punch-Out!!? I’ve always known that there’s really only six body types, with King Hippo being the sole one-off and the other ten fighters each being the twin of another (all the Punch-Out!! games but the Wii one do this), but I’ll be damned if it isn’t easy to forget because they did such a good job of hiding it. Like, Glass Joe and Don Flamenco don’t feel alike at all. Neither does Piston Honda and Mike Tyson. It wasn’t until I paid really, really close attention during this review that I started to “feel” the similarities besides the shape of the sprite. Before paying close attention, the only pairing that felt too similar was Mr. Sandman and Ball Bull, who both spin their hands before throwing a punch and look hilarious when you slug them in the gut. There’s also no hiding that their hooks look identical, though oddly I found the uppercut spite to feel unique, even if it really isn’t. For this review, I actually looked for shared moves for the first time and they weren’t hard to spot. Like Von Kaiser and Great Tiger both have an easy-to-exploit weakness when they duck. Glass Joe and Don Flamenco both have the same hilarious knockdown animation where they change directions a few times. Soda and Macho’s big, cutting uppercuts look and feel identical. Yet, my mind is blown because, if you’re not LOOKING for them, it really never does feel completely like a palette swap. There’s eleven fighters, period.

If there’s such a thing as the competition for the best job of “stripping down” a coin-op, the NES Punch-Out!! has to be the outright winner, right? Given the limitations of Famicom, especially when this started development, the “vibe” of the coin-op with huge characters and an emphasis on counterattacking was not only retained by actually optimized in a way the coin-ops never were. In terms of graphics, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! probably had the biggest character sprites seen in a game console up to this point, and they don’t feel like a “cheat” like the gigantic bosses of Contra. These aren’t bits in the background being with an invisible hit box that creates the illusion of size. If the sprites were ugly, it wouldn’t matter. But they’re strikingly memorable and create a real sense of threat. One thing that neither coin-op successfully conveys is a sense of being hopelessly outsized and outmatched. In the NES game, the opponents feel HUGE and you feel so very, very small, and on behalf of small stature people everywhere, thank you Nintendo for that. The violence is also vastly improved. Punches feel authentic and savage, thanks in no small part to some of the best damage sprites 8-bit gaming ever saw.

From spit flying out to Bald Bull and Soda Popinski’s “slot-machine eyes” to just looks of painful surprise, punches feel impactful and important. Since it’s a boxing-themed game called PUNCH-Out!!, getting the violence right is a pretty important thing. And then there’s the match design, where dodging left and right allows a chain of stun-locked punches and it’s SO SATISFYING. In addition to sussing out patterns, you can preemptively stop an attack with a well-timed punch. Doing so often earns a star and allows an uppercut. Again, the coin-op had some weak-ass vibes to its power shots. In Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the sound design and the graphic of Little Mac building up momentum before throwing the punch AND that excellent revving-up sound effect make it one of the all-time satisfying video game attacks. There’s multiple “all-time” accolades for Punch-Out!! Heck, the game starts with one of the all-time great opening stages in Glass Joe. Nobody thinks of him as a “stage” but he’s the perfect introduction to the gameplay. I’d put him right up there with level World 1 Level 1 in Super Mario Bros.

So what else could I possibly complain about? Well, I guess I wish there were a lot more fighters. There’s a hidden second quest that requires not only a password but a special way of inputting that password, but all it does is take you to a very slight remix of the World Circuit that includes the King Hippo and Great Tiger fights from the Major Circuit. If this changed up the fights themselves, it’d be awesome. It doesn’t. As far as I can tell, the only difference is losing a fight is a game over with no option for a rematch. I guess I could also complain about the logic of “winning by decision.” It’s based on a points system that makes no sense and is the final element that shatters the illusion that Punch-Out!! is a sports game. You could pummel someone into a coma and never get punched once, but if you don’t reach a scoring benchmark, they’re awarded the victory. Some of the points required are so high that I can’t imagine a person can reach them without winning by TKO (or even KO) before the bell rings at the end of the third round, and none of the title fights (or Mr. Sandman) allow victory by decision. I’d say “I wish they got rid of them entirely” but the first time I beat Mike Tyson (well, Mr. Dream, same diff) it was by decision and made me feel like a world beater.

Okay, let’s talk about the rampaging elephant in the room. No, Nintendo is never going to re-up with Mike Tyson. One thing you have to remember is that the deal that landed them Tyson was lousy for him and would never happen again. At the time they made the deal, Iron Mike hadn’t even won his first World Heavyweight Championship yet. As the story goes, Minoru Arakawa was having a drink after hours at the 1986 Winter CES and on the bar’s TV was a match between Tyson and a guy named David Jaco (it HAD to be that match, because it’s the only one that lines up with the CES story). Tyson was just starting to become nationally known and the boxing fan Arakawa, like everyone else who witnessed Tyson, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Tyson’s body was atypical for a heavyweight. He could be described as “compact strength” in that his muscular build was packed into less space than you would expect. He also had unimaginable speed for the weight class combined with his absurd punching power. He was a completely new style of heavyweight boxer. I wasn’t around for the meteoric rise of Tyson, but my father and AJ were, and they both shake their heads with disbelief when they talk about what it was like to witness it. “When he burst onto the scene, it really felt like he was changing what a heavyweight boxer would look like. But it’s been forty years and there still hasn’t been another combination of a squat frame, speed, and power. There will NEVER be another Mike Tyson. Heavyweights might do some of the things he did, but none of them do EVERYTHING he did.” Minoru Arakawa must have agreed with my father.

Predicting that Tyson would eventually claim a version of the world heavyweight championship wasn’t exactly as bold or risky as some people make it out to be. During Tyson’s rise in the mid-80’s, the heavyweight division was relatively weak following the retirement of Muhammad Ali and the biggest champion of the transitional era, Larry Holmes, was not a popular national figure (“most underrated boxer of all time” says my father). The welterweight division was where most of the fandom was at with guys like Sugar Ray Leonard. But Arakawa predicted, as did everyone else who saw him, that Tyson had a clear path to the heavyweight championship and his presence, charisma, and domination would revitalize interest in the entire sport. What’s beyond belief is that Tyson’s people agreed to the deal Nintendo offered. The price? $50,000 for three years exclusivity. Not $50,000 a year. $50K, up front, no royalties. Within a year, you wouldn’t even be able to buy a meeting to pitch to Tyson’s people for that price. It was a horrible contract for Tyson even by the standards of the era, and any “yeah but Nintendo was taking a risk” talk is mostly bullsh*t. If there’s such a thing as inevitable in sports, it was Mike Tyson: World Champion in the winter of 1986, and his handlers should have told him $50K with no royalty was a crap deal.

What I can’t believe is that there’re people who refuse to play Punch-Out!! without Mike Tyson, like he alone made the game worth playing and not the outstanding mechanics, authentic violence, revolutionary graphics, or the over the top roster of characters. I wonder if a lot of these stubborn people even beat Mike Tyson? It’s not the most interesting fight in the game. I think the Mr. Sandman fight really is the highlight. If they insist that it was Tyson’s game, I have news for them: he wasn’t even in the original Japanese release. In fact, there is no “Dream Fight” in that version. The game ends with Super Macho Man. It was one of five versions of Punch-Out!! I played for this feature, and there’s subtle differences in that original “Gold Edition” release.

Gameplay differences though? I mean besides having no Dream Fight? Nope, there’s none. It’s the same game. And that speaks the highest volume to how good Punch-Out!! on the NES is. I just played through it FIVE TIMES in a single day and I never got bored. Even though I know how to win every fight, I can still play it and have a good time. It might have aged better than any game released for a home console in the 1980s. This gameplay is age proof. I’m fairly certain stuff like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. 3 will still be fun in a hundred years, but I can’t actually guarantee it. I can with Punch-Out!! Even non-boxing fans love it, and that makes sense. It’s not a boxing game. It just has a boxing theme. What genre does it belong to? Who knows? Who cares! It’s Punch-Out!! I don’t ever render verdicts based on historical importance, but since Punch-Out!! is cruising to an easy YES!, I want to point out that Punch-Out!! represents an underrated leap forward in game technology thanks to the MMC2 chip that allowed for the bigger sprites. It looks like a carton probably more than any game that isn’t on laser disc up to that point. That’s one of many reasons why it’s timeless, and not because of Mike Tyson. And by the way, I think this aged better than the SNES game. Stay tuned for that.
Verdict: YES!

By the way, Tyson publicly stated his wish to return to Punch-Out!! years ago. If it didn’t happen immediately after that, it ain’t ever happening.

Power Punch II
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Released June, 1992
Developed by Beam Software
Published by American Softworks
Sold Separately on Steam
Available on Evercade Piko Interactive Collection Vol 1.

Please note that nothing I say in this review is directed at Piko. I’m fine with re-releasing old games. It’s God’s work, even if $8.99 is a ridiculous price tag for THIS. I’m also not blaming the programmers for it, either. They didn’t do the marketing for this. They made a sh*t game, but that happens all the time.

I’ve mellowed out a lot over the years, but every once in a while I’ll play a game that makes my blood boil. What can I say? I hate cynical games, and Power Punch II is maybe the most cynical NES game. If Where’s Waldo or Action 52 doesn’t have that title, it’s Power Punch II, which is clearly trying to imply a direct connection to Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! In fact, the original version of the game was even going to have Mike Tyson in it before all his legal problems started and he was removed from the game. There is ZERO question that the intent of all parties was to deliberately trick consumers into believing this was a sequel to one of the best selling and most beloved video games of the 1980s and that a similar quality should be expected. That really pisses me off. Unlike stuff like Where’s Waldo, I actually think in the pre-internet days that average consumers and not just unknowing parents could be fooled by this one. The Tyson name combined with the screenshots of a game that looks kinda like Punch-Out!! probably would have worked. Where they lost any plausible deniability of their intent to deceive consumers came when they had to remove Tyson, they changed the name from “Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch” to the much closer to Punch-Out!! sounding name “Power Punch II.” You’ll note there is no Power Punch #1, but does Mom and Dad know that the original game is called “Punch-Out!!” and not “Power Punch?” What a disgusting thing to do.

If the game behind all this was any good, maybe it wouldn’t be so infuriating of a business practice. But coming from Beam Software, Power Punch II is of course a horrible game. This might look like a knock-off of Punch-Out!! in screenshots, but the gameplay never comes even a little close. There is no fine-tuning effort at all in this game, and no sense of OOMPH to the punches. There seems to be a very vague attempt to recreate the counterattack system, only with looser movement parameters. The first opponent you can just throw hands with, with no sense of finesse and no dodging/countering to speak of. The second opponent turns Power Punch II from just bad to outright boring and bad. The f*cking thing keeps backing away from you and the only way to actually win is to wiggle back and forth and hit it one jab at a time since it counterattacks every punch you throw when it’s up close. And it was all downhill from here.

It’s rare I do one of these reviews and decide to quit before I finish the game, but I had no interest in seeing Power Punch II through to the end. Absolutely no effort was made towards creating a quality game. It’s the gaming equivalent of a “mockbuster” made by The Asylum, only video games in the 1990s were expensive and it’s not inconceivable a kid who was a big Punch-Out!! fan got stuck with this for their allowance money or as a present over a better game because they thought they were getting the actual sequel to Punch-Out!! I have no problem with studios making terrible games. It happens every day. I have a big problem when you try to tie that game to a legacy you didn’t build and don’t deserve, and Power Punch II goes out of its way to do that, literally. They did it with the celebrity endorsement that fell through. They did it by attaching a sequel number to the end of the name. They did everything possible to make people believe this was the next game in the Punch-Out!! franchise except make a quality game. Disgusting, guys. Shame on you!
Verdict: NO!

Super Punch-Out!!
Platform: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Released October 24, 1994
Directed by Makoto Wada and Yasuyuki Oyagi
Developed by Nintendo
Available with Switch Online Subscription (Standard)

Reviewing games that I spent a lot of time with in my formative years is always tough, but Super Punch-Out!! is REALLY tough because I got so hooked on it once upon a time that my experience playing it in 2026 bears no resemblance at all to the first time I played it. The fighters that once seemed so intimidating and insurmountable landed a combined total of two punches on me over sixteen fights. And hell, it’s actually possible to beat all sixteen fighters in under fourteen seconds each. Some of them can be beaten in under six seconds, and most can be in under ten seconds. It’s actually not even that hard to learn how to come close. It’s simple pattern recognition with a touch of RNG luck (and a trick using the pause button). Super Punch-Out!! is the easiest game in the franchise to figure out the timing for. By far, actually.

I’ve said something to this effect before, but besides other games in the franchise, the video game Super Punch-Out!! shares the most DNA with is actually Shadow of the Colossus. Both games are, more or less, boss rushes based around taking down much bigger, stronger, more capable opponents. Even the opponent count is exactly the same, and both games are damned by losing a significant chunk of the replay value once you know how to win, leaving only time trials as the main reason to come back. Well, except Shadow of the Colossus offers a gigantic world to explore for sightseeing. For Super Punch-Out!!, once Time Trials run out of steam, you have to find your own fun.

Okay, let’s do that. For this review, after beating Super Punch-Out!! with a 16-0 record and needing barely 30 seconds to beat most opponents (I did need 55 to beat Rick Bruiser), I replayed it all the way through, only I didn’t use a single power punch and I didn’t use any interrupting counterpunch. I only dodge-countered and threw random punches. If I accidentally did an interrupt, I rewound it and allowed the punch to land as punishment.

As I noted at the end of the NES game, I think it aged better than the SNES game. Even when I didn’t throw uppercuts or hooks, the speed of the enemy punches is much slower and the challenge just isn’t there. I’ll still struggle with some attacks in the NES Punch-Out!!, from Soda and Sandman’s uppercuts to Super Macho Man’s spinning punch. Similar attacks in Super Punch-Out!! are much, much easier to dodge, and there’s more defense options. Ducking is a cinch and moving your defensive stance up and down is intuitive. Because of the slower speed, I never had stress timing dodges too much. The first time you play Super Punch-Out!!, you’ll certainly struggle with some of the fights. A few decades ago, I got my clock cleaned even in early fights and needed multiple attempts to beat every one of the back eight fighters. If I didn’t lose over twenty times to guys Mad Clown, Narcis Prince, and Rick Bruiser, I’d be shocked.

Really, once you know each guy’s attack patterns, there’s not a whole left for Super Punch-Out!! to offer except the time attack. Without throwing a single power punch, I was still able to beat most fighters (but not all) without getting punched once.  Did I still have fun? Sure, but not as much as I thought I was going to have. Not even close, and I think what fun I did have is more of a credit to the formula itself. The Punch-Out!! formula is cathartic, you can’t completely zone-out while playing it, and being a tiny person defeating gigantic bullies is boilerplate wish fulfillment. The Punch-Out!! formula itself is the bulletproof thing, at least once it transitioned to a console franchise. The content of a Punch-Out!! game is practically incidental. It’s why I can tolerate generic characters like the Bruiser Bros. or Gabby Jay, but for the record, I think Super Punch-Out!! probably has the weakest roster of the console trilogy. I think EVERYONE would have preferred Glass Joe to Gabby Jay, I think Mad Clown should have been dumped in favor of King Hippo, and as noted in the caption above, I think the Bruiser Bros. are lame as f*ck and Hoy Quarlow should have been the final boss.

Don’t get me wrong. Super Punch-Out!! does a lot right. I marveled over how convincing the palette swaps were in the NES game, but somehow I never noticed that the SNES game does the same thing for all but two characters as well. I mean, of course I realized Bear Hugger and Mad Clown used the same body, and the Bruiser Bros. needed no explanation, but I swear to God it wasn’t until I played today that I realized everyone else but Narcis Prince and Hoy Quarlow share a body with someone else. The pairings are Gabby Jay & Bob Charlie, Piston Hurricane & Aran Ryan, Bald Bull & Mr. Sandman (and they did in the original coin-op as well, duh), Dragon Chan & Heike Kagero, and Masked Muscle & Super Macho Man. I’ve played this for years and I never realized that and now I feel stupid. But, to my credit, none of the fights feel like palette swaps. The Dragon Chan and Heike Kagero fights couldn’t be more different. This has to be right up there with the ninjas in Mortal Kombat in the palette swap hall of fame.

If not for the fact that I can specifically remember how much I enjoyed Super Punch-Out!! the first time I played it, this would be one of the weakest YES! verdicts I’ve ever given. Again, I had fun but I’m pretty sure this will be the last time I ever play Super Punch-Out!! The magic is, simply put, gone. And I mean gone gone. In order to jog my memory on what my original experience was like, I had to avoid using the fun punches. So Super Punch-Out!! doesn’t hold up like the NES or Wii games. I don’t necessarily think it’s impossible to get bored with this. I played the NES game five times for this feature. I was ready to be done with Super Punch-Out!! halfway through my second run today. It’s too easy. It’s too slow. It’s too clockable. I just played all sixteen fights and didn’t throw a single power punch. My record? 16 – 0 again. Was it worth doing? Not really, actually.

I did get punched more than twice, and in fact, I got knocked down three times. Bald Bull, Super Macho Man, and Rick Bruiser each got me once with a one-shot knockdown, but otherwise, not one single fight even reached the second minute EXCEPT Nick Bruiser, who I beat with about thirteen seconds left before running out of time. In over fourteen years of writing game reviews, this was without a doubt one of the hardest I’ve ever had to do because I have to go off memories from over a decade-and-a-half ago and remember that, yes, I had the time of my life playing Super Punch-Out!! once. Now, if you’ve somehow never played it, ignore this review, get off your butt, and play it. Super Punch-Out!! is, simply put, fantastic, at least when you play it the first time. Unlike other Punch-Out!!s, there ain’t going to be a whole lot left once you know the game, and it’s not that hard to memorize. By the way, that’s fine. Not every game has to hold up to the scrutiny of endless replayability, and frankly, not every game NEEDS to be replayed at all once you finish it. Give me one unbelievable day with a game over a lifetime with a middling game. Super Punch-Out!! IS one of the all-time greats and it aged well, and once you know what to do, it’s not exciting anymore.
Verdict: YES!

Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!!
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Authorized ROM Hack of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
Released April 20, 2010 (Updated March 25, 2016)
Developed by Master Phred
Link to Patch at RomHacking.Net
I use THIS TOOL to apply patches.

You knew I HAD to do a ROM hack in this feature. Actually, given the popularity of Punch-Out!!, I was genuinely, no bullsh*t stunned that there aren’t a lot more. I mean, people have worked actual magic on Super Mario Bros. 3 to turn it into virtually whole new games, but there’s been tons of Mario games over the years. Since Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, there’s been only two sequels. Apparently, the lack of ROM hacks isn’t due to a lack of interest. I’m not versed in this stuff but from what I’ve gathered, Super Mario Bros. 3 specifically lends itself to this form of game development as a ROM hacking building block in a way Punch-Out!! doesn’t. Re-Spritings Punch-Out!! is relatively easy, but using it as a template for new-feeling gameplay isn’t. So the fact that Phred’s Cool Punch Out 2 – Turbo!! even exists is kind of astonishing. Don’t think of it as a NEW version of Punch-Out!! but rather a remixed version that changes the speed and tinkers with some of the punches. But boy, does it tinker with them in a way that works.

First off, you feel the “turbo” part of WAIT give me a second…………

Okay, NOW it looks like the Angry Video Game Nerd. Where was I?

You feel the “turbo” part of “Cool Punch Out 2.” The speed is dialed up, which I was worried would make the game feel unresponsive. It doesn’t at all and works WONDERFULLY. That uptick in the speed of gameplay by itself would have probably made this worth a look as a curio, but then Master Phred messed around with the punches in a way that works. Take a remix of Glass Joe/Don Flamenco based around Disco Kid from the Wii sequel. Disco throws off-speed punches that pack a lot of power behind them, but the timing is unlike anything in the NES Punch-Out!! The Bruiser Bros. from the SNES game are here and their punches are especially hard to dodge, some of which barely have any warning at all. I’d be impressed if someone could plow through all fifteen fights on their first try based just on their Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! experience and knowledge. I don’t think it’s even possible. This plays on your expectations, and it does a pretty good job of doing so.

Mind you, nobody is throwing a NEW punch. Everything in Cool Punch Out 2 is done using the already existing assets within the game. The designer couldn’t make the new version of Glass Joe throw Piston Honda’s rapid-fire punches. He couldn’t make Soda Popinski do Bald Bull’s bull charge. He also couldn’t seem to change the rules of the game, which means the Bald Bull fight where you have to score an uppercut STILL needs to be won by an uppercut even though it’s now Rick Bruiser, and this game’s King Hippo stand-in can’t get up when he’s knocked down, nor could he have a different fighting style or even a weakness. For that reason, it’s inevitable that some of the fighters feel like very little has changed.

So it’s Punch-Out!! with where the punches are tweaked ever so slightly. But, like From Below (a Tetris game staged during a giant squid attack) already proved, small changes can yield BIG gameplay results. It’s a lot of fun, but certainly not perfect. I don’t think the game scales very well. I kept waiting for something shocking to happen in the first Rick Bruiser fight, but it was so easy it could have been a minor circuit fight. Stars are more plentiful in this game. Too plentiful, probably. Not only are there more opportunities for them, but you can now bank seven stars instead of three AND you start every fight with two. To counter this, a lot of the fights are now based around limited stamina. I’ve never turned pink so many times playing Punch-Out!! as I did in this game.

If you set your expectations correctly, I think any Punch-Out!! fan will enjoy what Master Phred has accomplished here. I remember being excited when I found out the code for “Another World Circuit” in Punch-Out!! and then being disappointed that all the fights were identical to the ones I’d already done, with only two Major Circuit fighters added to the existing World Circuit lineup. Frankly, when I found out about that code, I was hoping for something like this. So, while I was disappointed by the drought in Punch-Out!! ROM Hacks out there, the one that’s a full remix IS absolutely worth a look. It’s not going to change your life or anything like that, but it’s the “second quest” that fans of the original game have probably wanted for a long time. It turns out, even with all the limitations of ROM hacking that comes with Punch-Out!!, you can get a lot of mileage out of something as simple as playing on the expectations of the timing of a punch.
Verdict: YES!