Just when I think I've finally beaten the oldest game in my backlog, I find a new one, although I think this truly is my oldest game in the backlog. Punch-Out!! was one of my original NES games, although I had the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! version that most people had. For the uninitiated, Punch-Out!! was an existing Nintendo arcade franchise that was technically extremely impressive in the arcades. Porting it to the NES meant some serious downgrades in terms of graphics, but the essentials are very similar, or so I'm told by the internet. The game was released in two versions, one with Mike Tyson as the end boss, and one replacing him with a sprite swap named Mr. Dream (following the expiration of the three year license obtained from Tyson). Other than the sprite swap, the games are identical. I've never played the arcade version, and up until I got my SNES classic, I had never played another game in the series.
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! destroyed me as a child. I could beat Glass Joe and Von Kaiser routinely, and also was able to win the first fights with Piston Honda and Don Flamenco on occasion, but was never able to get past stinking King Hippo. I did, however, have the codes somehow, so was able to try out most of the fights, getting savagely crushed by nearly every other fighter in the game. I was drawn to the game's simple controls, big gorgeous sprites, and sense of humor, but didn't really have the reflexes or the resources to clear this game or even come close. Now, however, as a grown man with fully developed reflexes and access to google, I finally dropped Mr. Dream over the weekend, and didn't cheat at all to do so. My copy of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! couldn't be saved, however, resulting in needing to get a copy of the much cheaper and nearly identical Punch-Out!! instead.
The game is a series of boxing matches in which you have access to a very limited set of punches and movements. You can jab with your left and right hand, throw body shots with your left and right hand, throw an uppercut, dodge left, dodge right, and block. Success in the game is based on your ability to dodge opponents' attacks and deliver your own in return, which depends on your ability to identify your opponent's patterns and react to them with sufficient reflexes. Such a pattern based game becomes largely about your ability to grind the game for a while until beating the opponents becomes nearly second nature. By the end of my run I was capable of polishing off every fighter in the game while barely being hit up until Mike...Dream... But up until the end, I would get capped off against various fighters, spending probably the longest times trying to get over Soda Popinski and Mr. Sandman. But once the patterns are learned, the game is reassuringly simple.
You box against opponents possessed of various degrees of offensive racial stereotypes including the drunk Russian, lithe and romantic Spaniard, and mystical turban wearing Indian. I don't believe any of these were intended in bad faith by Nintendo, as each is an impressive fighter in his own right, save for Glass Joe, but if this is the kind of thing that bothers you, stay away. You must work your way up the boxing circuits (Minor, Major, and then World) in order to secure the dream match against Tyson or Mr. Dream, depending on your version. By the way, for my money, just get the vanilla Mr. Dream cart. It sells for nearly $20 cheaper than the Tyson version, and is almost exactly the same. Also, stay away from this game on emulators like the NES Classic Edition or Virtual Console. The slight input lag from emulation makes this game extremely tough for anyone, so I'd go for the NES/cart option if at all possible, and certainly if you want to have a prayer of beating Tyson/Mr. Dream. Everyone else should be beatable, although Mr. Sandman and Super Macho Man might be pretty tough on an emulator.
So how does this game stand up today? It was absolutely fantastic! The beautiful art style, perfect controls, and excellent conveyance of plot with only the tiniest bits of text make this a true hallmark of the potential of 8-bit gaming in the 1980s. It is certainly in the top 10 of NES games, and one of the most original concepts/executions that I have seen in a video game up until the modern day.
The graphics are perfect. I would want absolutely nothing changed about the way the game looks. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the game's graphics is the way in which they used the limitations of the NES to advance a narrative in the game. In the arcade version, your boxer is a wire-frame person of similar size to your opponent. This allows you to see through yourself to your opponent, which allows you to react to his moves. It is a technical marvel for the time (released in 1983! Seriously, go look at this gorgeous baby!), but the wire frame boxer would have been impossible to replicate on the NES hardware. They had to find a way to make the experience similar, but placing the camera behind the boxer would have resulted in an obscured version of the opponent, which detracts from the core gameplay mechanic.
Instead of the wire frames, thus, they replaced the titular Little Mac with an actual little version of the character. Your character is perhaps 1/4 of the size of even the smallest opponent, and is positively dwarfed by the bigger boxers. Little Mac must literally leap to punch his opponents in the face with even a simple jab, which makes his path from unknown challenger to world heavyweight champion that much more compelling. At no point in the game after your fight with Glass Joe do you feel like, based on the look of your opponent, that you should be favored in any match. You have to win the game with your brains and your guts, because your body simply will not do. You need to hit dozens of punches on your opponent to score enough knockdowns to win, while some can knock you down in one or two hits. After each circuit title, you're treated to a montage of Little Mac running behind your trainer's bike, reinforcing the notion that Little Mac must work to get everything. Nothing comes easy to this little guy, and you can really identify with him, all because of a clever adaptation by a skilled development team.
The sounds are great as well. There is only one real song to the game, and it works pretty well in the background. It's definitely in the background, however, as some of the signals you can work with come from the sound effects (apparently some people can beat this game blindfolded, which makes my week and a half trek through the game feel a bit embarrassing). You can score stars by hitting your opponent at the right time of his moves, and can use these stars to unleash devastating uppercuts on your opponent. These stars pop up with a nice visual and sound effect, rewarding your skillful play.
The controls and gameplay are absolutely perfect, and this ultimately is the key that makes the game. If Little Mac didn't react on time, or did things you weren't telling him to, you'd have no prayer of beating this game. But ultimately only you can defeat yourself, and the controller just becomes an extension of Little Mac, a tool to bob, weave, and sting your way to victory. The game is as simple as could be, but so deep once you dive in that it provides the perfect curve of mastery.
The game is continued at various points by password, and you basically have to continue from the beginning of the last circuit. This is one weakness of the game, in that unless you use cheat passwords, you won't be able to grind an opponent repetitively, needing to reclear the same old fodder on your way up to your nemesis over and over again. Even with Tyson/Dream you'll still need to beat Super Macho Man before making your way to champ, which is extremely irritating. This comes across as and unnecessarily difficult part of an already difficult game, and create a lot of busy work to get to the payoff that you are looking for. By the way, you have my full permission to use the codes to practice any given opponent, as long as you go back and beat them the hard way once you've mastered it.
The game is one of the rare ones that has aged better as time has gone on. At the time I was playing it, there was very little way to know how to beat some of the trickier boxers in the game, save for a Nintendo Fun Club magazine subscription, or perhaps a Nintendo Power subscription. How, for example, am I to know that if I block while Soda Popinski is preparing to uppercut that he will stare stupidly at me and let me hit him in the face for a star? The entire game has reinforced the notion that only hooks and jabs are blockable, and that you can't guard against uppercuts. There are several annoying little tricks thrown in this game that make beating it really challenging unless you know them. And the most notorious trick in the game, the camera flash/guy nodding during both Bald Bull fights, was only recently discovered! This was a game made to be mastered in community in the internet era, so it really feels better now than it did then, with at least a small refuge there for you when you hit the wall.
This is not part of my review, but I just have to say that Tyson/Mr. Dream is definitely not the hardest boss of all time, unless you have average/poor reflexes. He would be pretty much unbeatable in that circumstance, but the developers give just enough time to react to his moves if you're paying attention, making him regularly beatable. I beat him the first time after probably a total of 45 minutes to an hour of grinding him, which is far less than I spent mastering the pattern of Yellow Devil in Mega Man, or even Dracula in Castlevania (this one was probably harder due to the fact that I was playing on an emulator with input delays). This boss is definitely beatable, so if you're holding out on the game due to thinking that it's simply too hard to beat, dive in! Part of the fun is getting routinely whipped, getting later and later into fights, and scoring more and more knockdowns until finally have your opponent's number. The grind is the game, and it sparkles.
This game is a true gem of the 8-bit era, and is a must play for anyone who enjoys good video games or the chance to experience a fun and largely unexplored wing of video game history. I feel like the concept of precision timing based combat could have been used in other games, but it pretty much died here, which is a testament to its brilliance of vision and execution. It definitely isn't perfect, but it's a true joy to play 31 years later, and should be a part of your collection and out of your backlog if you collect/play NES games. I'll give it a 9.6/10. Happy training!
No comments:
Post a Comment