Punch-Out!! Finally Announced for Nintendo Wii – In-Game Video & Screens Included

1. Retarded Penguin on October 2, 2008 3:16 pm

   the cell shading looks cool but i am not sure i would buy this game…maybe rent it

2. steve on October 2, 2008 8:55 pm

   looks freakin’ awesome!

3. Nelson Santiago on October 3, 2008 5:29 am

   I think part of myself came back alive…now im gonna buy Wii. I like the cell-shading! and is a good thing is bringing charatcer alive. Lets go Little Mac!

4. killquick on October 3, 2008 9:23 am

   punch out was on the nes or the super nes

5. Gunny Highway on October 3, 2008 7:11 pm

   I’m there, it would be awesome if they have a Tyson easter egg.

6. Jonathan Zungre on October 5, 2008 1:53 pm

   I’m so in. Mike tyson’s punch out (which later became punch out after mike got in trouble with the law) was on the NES. Super punch out was on the super nes.

7. tm d on April 3, 2009 7:13 am

   I'm sure that they're using the classic characters to entice the relatively few gamers left who actually played the original MTPO (when it came out, not emulated), but I think a few unknown characters would have done well in introducing it.

   Don't get me wrong: I especially love the fact that both the (simple) tactics used against certain characters and the music remains roughly the same, at least when it comes to this video.. but if this is a simple rehash of something born two decades ago–except with motion control instead of button mashing–then there's a very big creativity deficiency in NES HQ.. which is very unlike Nintendo. They have constantly introduced sub-par hardware, at least in terms of their immediate competition, and made up for the fact with brilliant uses of said hardware. I'm just not sure if catering to the near-30 year old crowd is the best direction in the long term, although it makes perfect sense: veteran gamer buys wii for kids, discovers old titles/concepts from childhood prime reinvented with new technology, buys more wii titles as a result and expands as a gamer whereas they would normally stick to what they know (that is, halo, counterstrike, etc).

   Of course, if they released a remade version of FFVI for the wii, I'd slit a whore's throat for access to it.. but then again I'm not so sure that the new control scheme would really make it a better experience despite the modernized graphics (and that's despite the sub-par graphics compared to competitors). And yeah, I probably will play punch-out just to relive the simpler times I had before tripping balls and going to college for a liberal arts degree instead of something practical.. but it won't lead me to buy other wii games. If anything, it will lead me to install emulators on the wii via the twilight hack (and an ENTIRELY illegal IOS, which even if I do d/l I will not admit to it), and I'll play old school games in the old school way.. without paying Nintendo the $5 or $10 that I have repeatedly spent on the actual cartridges over the years.

   I guess Nintendo can be a little risky now, and I think they've already shown their willingness to change their normal demographics with the recently released titles (I remember the uproar when Nintendo refused to show blood in their Mortal Kombat port.. now I can routinely catch someone on fire, smash a tire over their head, thrust a sign post through their brain and repeatedly slam them against a spiked wall for extra points), and I think appealing to the fathers (and sometimes mothers) of the children with remakes of vintage games might be a successful endeavor–at least financially–but they still need to appeal to the holy grail of modern consumerism in the end: mid-to-late teenagers. And demographically, Nintendo has failed thus far in that concern.

   You can win parents and you can win children under 13, but unless you really offer something direct for the upcoming generation they will only nibble, not bite. Nintendo planned this, I'm positive: Appeal to the children of old gamers first, until said kids get too old for the simplistic gameplay offered by early wii games, then appeal to the parents with remakes of classic and memorable games they once played with vigor.. but I think that they are still missing a huge opportunity.

8. tm d on April 3, 2009 7:14 am

   Yes, gamers grow up, have kids and naturally buy those kids games and systems.. but Nintendo is missing the in-between. While the average young parent will recognize and love a new punchout, the average 18-year-old will simply migrate to the xbox360 or ps3.. and continue with that line of product for years to come simply because IT'S WHAT THEY KNEW AND STILL KNOW.

   In the short term, Nintendo will do fantastic with their current lineup.. but they are also skipping a whole generation by appealing to future parents and current parents alone (instead of relatively-close-to-being-parents). If they don't rectify this, they will lose a decade of gamers, which could mean that Nintendo will once again be known for card games, not console games. That is, unless they come up with something on par with the iphone in terms of use-value as well as entertainment-value, and win a whole generation over simply out of convenience.

   But then Nintendo would be less of a game company and more of a smartphone company, right? Apple did it, and although their path was a bit different the core concept should remain the same.. but I honestly can't tell what Nintendo is thinking here in terms of future viability. The hardware is worn, the games are either entirely juvenile or completely R-rated, the controls are innovative–and seem perfectly suited to a shooter that for some reason or another can't be realized (at least until the release of the Conduit), and piracy is actually far more easy to implement than it was in the last generation of consoles (you don't have to open up the wii to hack it, whereas other consoles you at least had to buy hardware to run unsigned code or use a hotswap method that most people simply do not understand). Add those things to the fact that the wii doesn't even have a mass-storage solution like the last generation (and the current), and you have a problem with future viability: while everyone and their dog owns a wii, they also have a dreamcast locked away in a box somewhere with 50 burnt games that they never would have played or bought in the first place (which means a loss not for the game developer, but for the console provider).

   I love the Wii, actually.. and despite my rant, I don't even have children. But their business model has already bored me, and everyone I know who has bought a wii hardly turns it on.. either they were never interested in it and simply bought it for their kids until they grew up and became uninterested themselves or they bought it because it was so different but the lack of new and interesting content slowly eroded any interest they might have had.. or the person simply had a lot of money and connections when the wii was first released.

   In any case, I am drunk and ranting. Plus playing a burnt copy of No More Heroes.

   So if Nintendo was aiming toward people like myself,then they made a serious financial mistake.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Comment Now

Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks.

Notify me of followup comments

Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.