Punch-Out for the Wii is a boxing game about a 5 foot 7 inch, 17-year-old “Bruiser From the Bronx” named Little Mac, who is starting from the bottom of the boxing food chain and working his way up to the championship with help from his trainer Doc Louis.

The history of the Punch-Out series, (which was originally called Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out) made its debut on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1987 and sold 5 million worldwide and in 2001 was voted the 14th most beloved game ever. In 1988 everyone in America could agree that Nintendo’s most popular games were Mario, Zelda, and Punch-Out. Sadly, this game has kind of fallen off the map due to it only having 3 console game titles and 2 arcade games, when compared to Mario’s 200 game appearances it’s nothing. Nintendo made Punch-Out specifically for America’s love of boxing at the time. Even today due to people’s love for the game, they still do speedruns and blindfolded speedruns of the game.

Some fun facts about Punch-Out for the Wii are as follows:
Little Mac grew a whole foot from the NES version to the Wii because in the NES version Little Mac was only 4 foot 7 inches and in the Wii he was 5’7″.
In the old arcade version, Soda Popinski, one of the fighters in all the Punch-Out games in the series, was originally named Vodka Drunkenski due to the character being a Soviet boxer because when the Arcade game came to arcades, the Soviet Union hadn’t fallen yet and the character was supposed to look like Victor Drago from Rocky 4 but changed his look due to copyright.
Mr. Sandman, another character in every Punch-Out, was supposed to be Muhamad Ali but changed his look also due to copyright from the boxing industry.

Getting away from the copyrights, other facts of this game are the really small differences that are in Punch-Out Wii and Punch-Out NES. One is that in the Wii version, when Little Mac has a K.O. punch (Star Punch), he uses all the stars that you have built up by hitting in the right place at the right time, and the more stars you have the bigger the punch. In the NES version, Little Mac uses 1 at a time with each being equally powerful.
Grand Tiger in the NES version is the hardest in the game (beside’s Mr. Dream Man) and is so unpredictable that most speedruns that people do are ruined by the fact that they don’t know half the time what he is going to do, so Nintedo added a gem on his turban to signify what he was going to do, a year after in the newer NES Punch-Out. In the Wii version, Great Tiger is still one of the hardest to beat but is still so dramatically easier. The infamous Wii remote is known for not responding, but in Punch-Out it works amazingly.

All in all, the Punch-Out series is a game you should try because of the simplicity and the accomplishment you feel when you beat the fighter you have been stuck on. I give this game, Punch-Out for the Wii, a 9.5/10 and the Punch-Out series a 8.5/10.