Close but no cigar
This title has it's share of good and bad. Sure, Punchout for the Wii is reminiscent of the childhood days when you spent an entire week trying to beat Mike Tyson after school. As a matter of fact, the fighting style and the story are still pretty much the same. You start off in the World Video Boxing Association's (WVBA) Minor Circuit as a 17-year-old up-and-comer named Little Mac. You fight several "David and Goliath" battles as you fight against many professionals who all are at least two times your size. Each fighter has his own unique strategy and weaknesses.
While this title is still very entertaining, there are some obvious flaws that bring down the value of this title. Issues with the controls along with a lot of annoying little features down the stretch make the sheer enjoyment of playing a Nintendo classic, well, almost resentable. I will break down the good, bad, and ugly for this title. It's up to the readers if you still think it's worthwhile.
THE GOOD
-Like I said, the game is reminiscent of the old NES and SNES titles. If you decide to play with the Wiimote only, you can even turn the controller sideways and play the exact same way you did on the NES. If you have purchased Punchout virtual console then it is the same.
-For a more realistic experience, you are able to use the Wii Fit balance board. The board allows you to dodge from left to right and duck. You can also use Wiimote and Nunchuk to play.
-Many of familiar faces appear in this game. You still start off battling with Glass Joe. With the exception of Disco Kid, all of the other fighters are from the NES and SNES titles.
-Punchout is very challenging. It's not insanely difficult to beat but it will take a while to understand the strategies of some of the characters. While most of them retain their same basic fighting styles, they have added a few slight differences to keep the player honest. There are a lot characters who will use hesitation moves to get you to duck and dodge prematurely. Mr. Sandman will even jump at you and say "BOO!"
-There are many different modes of play. There is now a head-to-head, two player mode. To make it even more interesting there is a "rage meter" that allows players in H2H to transform into Giga Mac, a huge, overgrown, powerhouse that opens up a whole new set of power moves. There is also a practice mode that allows you to fight against holographic images of each fighter without taking damage (or the penalty of taking a loss in the ring).
-Career mode is broken into three different parts. The first is just a regular career mode like any of the other games. You fight one boxer, rank up, and eventually fight the champion of the Minor, Major, and World circuits. The second mode is even more challenging. You are defending your title against the same opponents. There is a catch though. The weaknesses you had found previously are going to be corrected this time. For example, Glass Joe can't take a jab to the face so he gets a helmet. King Hippo can't deal with a body blow...so he tapes a manhole cover to his belly. The third mode is called Mac's last stand. It is more like the traditional NES Punchout where you can only lose three times before you are forced to retire.
-The characters get bruises as you go along. It's not like the original where they just stick a band-aid on your head. Guys actually bruise in areas they are getting beat up in. If you keep punching a guy in the head, he might develop a knot on the head or a bruise on his face. If you give him a lot of body blows, his stomach will appear purple and discolored.
THE BAD
-Each character has a stereotypical cinematic followed by a dramatic entrance to show the personality of the character. Personally, I don't care if Don Flamenco fights bulls with roses in his teeth or Glass Joe eats crossants and drinks coffee while wearing a beret.
-Each character has comes to the ring speaking his own language. They continue to speak their own language throughout the fight. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't cut to another cinematic in between rounds. So instead of reading subtitles like back in the old days, you get to listen to Von Kaiser talk trash about you in German.
-The new character, Disco Kid, is kind of...umm...feminine to put it nicely. First of all he comes in the ring dancing like it's the 70's and then he stops and poses and smiles. It wouldn't be so bad if he didn't scream like a little girl and grab his face every time he got uppercut. To make things worse...when you defend you tittle against him he comes back as some Richard Simmons wannabe personal trainer.
-There is no 3-loss rule in the original career mode. You can lose as many times as you need to. That's actually not a bad thing, but the game is tough enough for you to lose most of the guys at least once. You probably aren't going to the World Circuit undefeated.
THE UGLY
-Doc Louis returns in this game, but this time he is very annoying. For some reason, Nintendo decided that he needs to have some obsession with chocolate. Now, instead of giving you advice on how to win the fight, he usually talks about chocolate instead! When he does give advice it's either way to late to pull of a victory or he is talking in riddles and you still have to figure out how to beat the guy by yourself. To make it better, he jumps in the ring after every fight in typical Don King style and jumps into you camera time.
-Horrendous is the nicest way I can describe some of the controls. As good of an idea as it was, the balance board is not a good idea for this title. If you can get Mac to move at all he is going to go the wrong way about 25 percent of the time. The thumbstick on the Nunchuck has a hard time differentiating between up and left sometimes. As a result, sometimes you want to block and end up just dodging left (or vice versa). In any event, this malfunction almost always causes you to take damage.
Overall, this is still a good game but it needs some fine tuning. The cartoonish atmospher is typical in Wii games but they added it to Punchout and it already makes it kind of lame starting with the first cinematic. If they fixed the controls it might be a little bit easier. Maybe if they gave it the kind of play they used in Wii Sports boxing, the controls would be a little more user friendly. You could still even use the balance board.
Punchout was a good, solid effort at remaking an 80's clasic but it wasn't solid enough to actually be as entertaining. Maybe next time.