I'm finally back to my beloved SNES, after not having finished a new SNES game for the entire year of 2018! When I got my SNES Classic Edition, I really enjoyed playing Super Punch-Out!!, but found that playing it on an emulator was nearly as difficult as playing Punch-Out!! The SNES sequel features a far larger emphasis on memorization, and less of a focus on fast twitch reflexes compared to its ancestor, but the input lag you get from playing through an emulator is sufficient enough to make the experience less than ideal. So I tacked the cartridge back onto my list, and my parents got me the game for Christmas, giving me an excellent opportunity to get back to my SNES, and enjoy a game from what is becoming one of my favorite series. I was also inspired by the Gaming Historian's recent excellent video on the history of Punch-Out.
Super-Punch Out!! jumps over where the NES left off, and really is far closer to the experience from the original arcade games. You have a view from behind the boxer, similar to the arcade games, and the huge sprites and colorful palate looks far more like the arcade experience than does the more humble NES game, with its more muted tones and hilariously tiny boxer. It also adds a significant amount of complexity to the control scheme. In Punch-Out!!, you could block, dodge left, dodge right, jab left, jab right, body blow left, body blow right, and uppercut. In Super Punch Out!!, you have a dizzying (for this series) array of options added, including a flurry of uppercuts, a power punch to the body, and flurry of power punches to the body, blocking high, blocking low, and ducking. Unlike the NES game, in which you got uppercuts by attacking an opponent at a particularly weak time, in Super Punch-Out!! you now have a meter that builds up as you land any successful strike at any time, and the meter goes down when you are hit with a punch from your opponent. This lends it a more authentic boxing feel, as you need to wear down your opponent with consistent pressure, unlocking the opening to strike with powerful punches for the knockdown.
Super Punch-Out!!, despite these differences, still feels very much like a Punch-Out game, however. You'll still be facing comical opponents from a variety of racial stereotypes, although these are significantly toned down from the NES game, needing to memorize their patterns, and wear them down for three knockdowns. Certain punches will work at certain parts of their patterns, it's just that exploiting them is a bit more complicated now with the addition of a new arsenal of strikes and avoidance techniques at your disposal. There's definitely a big focus on ensuring that you feel that your opponents are filthy cheaters in this game, as you'll face off with a clown who tries to hit you with juggling balls, a Chinese martial artist who will launch flying kicks at you off the turnbuckle, and a Mexican Lucha Libre who will spit in your eyes, reducing your vision. But for the most part, the game tries using these new cheaters to reinforce the age old story of Punch-Out-fighting against impossible odds to become the champ.
There are a lot of things I really love about this iteration of Punch-Out. The time attack mode is a godsend that was long overdue, allowing you to both practice against an individual boxer for the purposes of getting higher scores in the world circuit, and also challenging yourself to knock down your opponents in a much faster manner. I wish, however, that they would have made this option available as soon as you had faced an opponent, as it would have made grinding out their tactics a much simpler proposition. Instead, you'll spend a lot of time chewing through old opponents again and again, which does get old at times. It also uses some of the advancements in cartridge technology to good use, including saving your place in the world circuit, as well as keeping track of all of your fastest knockdowns and highest scores. The bright colors and excellent designs of the boxers were also excellent.
I felt that other things didn't translate quite as well. I thought the updated view of the boxer was technically impressive, but undersold some of the implicit David vs. Goliath storytelling. In this game, Little Mac just isn't that little! The music was, frankly, dreadful. A large chunk of the soundtrack seemed too reminiscent to Star Fox in tone and style, and the rest was pretty boring. The more complex controls also seemed a bit too complex, and added little to the gameplay. The magic of Punch-Out!! is how intuitive everything seems, while also being incredibly difficult to master. It was tough to get used to all of the varied controls from this one, and found myself stumbling over whether or not block was neutral, or up, or down, just to name one example.
These are really small quibbles, however, as Super Punch-Out!! is just a tremendous game. It's not normally mentioned in the pantheon of great SNES games, and I get that. When I did my top ten list of SNES games, it didn't make it. Part of that was that I'd never really played it at the point I wrote that list. But looking back on it now, I can't think of any of the 10 I'd bump for it. It's not better than Street Fighter II, or Donkey Kong Country 2, or Final Fantasy IV, although it's probably close to the first two titles at least. And there's no way it can touch the top 7, which are all incredibly innovative and polished. The SNES is known well for its high flyers like the top ten list, but there are just a ton of high quality games in the next tier that just give it new life for me, all the time. This is in that class with games like F-Zero, Star Fox, Super Mario Kart, and Secret of Mana-all games that have significant flaws, but are ultimately just a tremendous amount of fun, and are essential additions to any retro game enthusiast's library. I'll give Super Punch-Out!! a 9/10.
Up next on the home console version of What I'm Playing is a little game I've been looking forward to for a while now, and which I've already completed! Check back in in the next few days for a few more reviews...
-TRO
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