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With apologies to Rick James, nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
In small doses, it whisks us blissfully back to simpler times when we called video game controllers "joysticks" and happiness was measured by the number of quarters in your pocket.
But too much nostalgia is a bad thing, as seen by some of the half-assed compilations of old-school video games that have flooded store shelves in recent years, or classic 8-bit games that have been dragged kicking and screaming into the current generation. Sometimes things from the past are best left there.
Not so, it turns out, with Nintendo's Punch-Out!! (No, I'm not shouting. There really are two exclamation marks in the title.) This beloved relic from the coin-op, NES and Super NES eras is a blast from the past that comes out swinging on the Wii, landing a solid right hook to the solar plexus of joy.
Developed by Vancouver-based Next Level Games and based on the old-school Punch-Out!! series, the game does what an update of a classic should do, keeping the core feel of the original intact while spiffying up the graphics, adding new bells and whistles and making us cry fresh tears of rage and frustration. Oh, but it's good rage and frustration!
For those somehow unaware of the original, Punch-Out!! is as simple a boxing game as you could ask for, at least on the surface. You play as the series' longtime protagonist Little Mac, a tiny fella with a big heart who dreams of pumelling his way through 13 opponents and claiming the championship belt.
This isn't Fight Night Round 3, though, and Punch-Out!! is no more a boxing simulator than Mario Kart is a NASCAR game. It's all about reflexes, timing, memorizing the signature "tells" that each opponent makes before busting out a powerful blow and simply having a heck of a lot of fun.
Since it's being reborn on the Wii, it's natural that Punch-Out!! makes use of the Wii's motion controls, allowing you to hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in your fists and swing away, similar to the boxing mini-game in Wii Sports. But you've got added control over where your blows land, and if you're feeling especially active, you can add the Wii Balance Board to the mix to register your bobs and ducks.
Or you can just sit on the couch and play the whole thing using the directional pad and buttons on the Wii Remote, with none of that calorie-burning, heart-pumping moving around required.
However you do play it, Punch-Out!! deserves to be experienced. It's a fantastically fun blast from the past, even if it's a bit disappointing that there's no online play (it's Nintendo, what do you expect?) and a few of the lesser-known fighters from the earlier games are missing (and no Mike Tyson, unsurprisingly. But at least fat Canadian boxer Bear Hugger made the cut.)
BottomLine:
A loving update of a classic Nintendo title, Punch-Out!! is a lot of fun, even if it does remind us just how tough the original game was at times. Body blow! Body blow!
4 out of 5
