Celebrating 30 years of Nintendo's Punch-Out!!

"Put him away!"

As this month marks the birthday of one of Nintendo's most fondly remembered arcade and console series, we will take a brief look at the original game that started it all.



Like many of the classic-era arcade games, Punch-Out!! had a somewhat odd reason to exist in the first place. Apparently due to the fall off in sales on the blockbusting Donkey Kong series, Nintendo found themselves with a warehouse full of TV screens that were supposed to have been put into arcade machines. as Donkey Kong wasn't selling as much anymore, what were they to do? Make a new game, of course! But this time, build one with two screens, to use up the surplus and clear out the much-needed warehouse space.

By using two screens placed on top of each other, it allowed the designers create a game with large, eye-popping sprites on the lower screen, whilst being able to keep all the necessary information on the upper screen. The game was in the creative hands of both Genyo Takeda (who had a big part to play in the creation of the likes of StarTropics and Pilotwings 64) and Shigeru Miyamoto (the one and only), who was handling all of the character designs. The music was created by the then-unknown Koji Kondo, who soon found fame with his much-loved music in Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda.

It is testament to the creativity of these men that Punch-Out!! has endured for as long as it has. What could have been a fairly characterless sports game (imagine muscled 'tough guys' in place of the likes of Glass Joe or Piston Hurricane) was stuffed full of charm, and Miyamoto's design sensibility allowed future games such as Star Fox and F-Zero to break out of the restraints of their respective genres. By making the 'challenger' character (that's you) wire-frame for the most part, it allowed us to get closer to the action than previous, 'side view' boxing games had in the past.

Punch-Out!! was followed by Super Punch-Out!! in the arcades a year later, and in '87 was ported to the NES, initially with a Mike Tyson license agreement. In 1994, Super Punch-Out!! landed a KO on the Super Nintendo and Famicon, bringing a much more faithful version of the arcade classic into homes. In 2009, we finally got a new edition on the Wii, marking the last of the official Punch-Out!! games. Not all is quiet for the series, though, as Nintendo announced only last week that the iconic 'Little Mac' from the home console versions will now be a playable character in the new Super Smash Bros game due out on the Wii U later this year.

Only time will tell if we get a new game in the series, but we will look at the sequels individually over the next few months.