Rip-offs: Power Punch 2 - NES (1992)
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Power Punch II's development history is an interesting tale. Riding on the heals of its successful Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Nintendo decided to begin working on a sequel with the help of a development company named Beam Software. Things started going down hill before it even got started. Mike Tyson, the poster boy for the series, was facing trial for rape accusations. That served as a problem, for this upcoming game was to star him again, and this time, you were actually were going to control him. To not raise controversy, Beam Software had replaced Mike Tyson with a look-a-like Mark Tyler, who wore pink short to differentiate him from his obvious inspiration. It didn't stop there. As the game continued in development, Nintendo disapproved of the game's terrible quality and dropped its contract, leaving another company to publish it. That dubious honor would go to American Softworks Corp. The original title was going to be Punch-Out!! 2, but since Nintendo owned the rights to Punch-Out and handed the game over to American Softworks, they gave it the confusing title of Power Punch II (there actually is no Power Punch part one).
So here you are, as Mark Tyler, the Greatest Boxer Ever. So great that humans can't even touch you. Mark Tyler is so cocky, he says he'll except any challenge any where, from any one. Some aliens catch word of this and challenge him to an intergalactic boxing championship of epic proportions. Mark Tyler accepts this out of this world challenge and prepares to do battle. With such an intriguing story, how could Nintendo pass this game up?!? If the story wasn't enough to make you vomit in disgust, the rest of the game will. Before each fight, you can go and train. I strongly suggest you train or you will lose no matter what. Good luck however on figuring out what exactly to DO in training. Correctly mastering the training segments will power you up for the next match, and my word, will you need it if you plan on seeing this game to the end (not recommended).
The actual fighting scenes are about the equivalent of someone spitting in your face. This game was going to be the sequel to the brilliant Punch-Out? For starters, the essence of the gameplay is entirely removed - there's no dodging and counterattacking, and thus, no real strategy. It's just punching, dodging, and more punching. The computer controlled combatants are grossly overpowering and always command the fight. They have an over powering reach and they back up to dodge your attacks. That would be just fine, if only you could do the same thing. You can only move left and right. I'm not talking about a sidestep like the usually Punch-Out!! norm, I'm talking about slowly inching either left or right. While your opponent is able to dance all over the place, you are stuck on a single plane. Want to give your opponent a swift uppercut? Go ahead. Oh wait, he moved back one inch, making you miss entirely. Another horrific downfall of this game during the fights is the overwhelming power of your opponents. It seems as though they can attack you with quick jabs only to lose most of your life gauge. Compared to your punches, where it feels as though it takes 20 jabs in the body to bring your enemies' life gauge down one notch. Turns out the aliens are better than Mark Tyler.
From a technical stand point, this is mediocre at best. The game would have had decent graphics for 1986, but this game wasn't released in 1986. It was released in 1992. Every single character is remarkably ugly. Things don't fare much better in the sound department either. As a whole, the game walks the fine line between being boring and massively frustrating. It's like in the same league as Strider Returns: Journey From Darkness as far as piss poor "sequels". It's no wonder Nintendo decided not to publish this. A beta ROM still featuring Mike Tyson was released on the internet in 2009, for those who are curious.
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Power Punch 2
Power Punch 2
Power Punch 2
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Wade Hixton's Counter Punch - Gameboy Advance (2004)
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Developed by Inferno Games, Wade Hixton's Counter Punch is an obvious tribute to the Punch-Out!! series in terms of gameplay (especially compared to the SNES game). It's pretty much the same setup - during fights, you have a variety of punches ranging from left and right, up and down. You've got an uppercut, block, and you can dodge left and right. Besides your regular health meter, on the bottom, there's a power meter which grows from each punch you connect, and below that is a fatigue meter. Much like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, you must keep watch of this meter so you don't over exert yourself and be unable to attack. Also like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! is the inclusion of rounds instead of just three minutes of fighting. Each match gets you some cash, which can be used to purchase extra moves.
Wade Hixton's differences outweigh the similarities between it and Punch-Out!! For starters, there is a story mode, albeit a very weird one. Wade Hixton's car breaks down in a small, podunk town. While your beloved car is being worked on, you stay at O'Reilly's Pub to wait and wet your whistle. Trouble starts immediately as you take the seat of Rocco McScrub, and he challenges you to a boxing match. The whole story is exceeding bizarre, but it oozes goofy charm. The rest of the characters are an amusing bunch, including a pimp named Sweetness, a witch doctor named Jobu, a demon straight from hell named Gus Incubus, and even a gorilla wearing a tuxedo. And in a true video game fashion, there's even an evil Wade Hixton doppelganger to fight.
The graphics in this game are incredible, and I must commend the talented artists. Sure, each attack has probably only three or four frames of animation, but the huge characters looks fantastic. The game has a delightful cartoonish look that fits the game world nicely. Each opponent is hilarious and and their attacks sometimes become more over the top than even Punch-Out!!'s - Rocco, for instance, sics his pet raccoon on you. There are plenty of other cool touches, like the trailer trash card girls in between each round.
The difficulty is a little steep, seeing how it takes a lot of punches to knock your opponent down ,and it has the arcade Punch-Out!! blocking system (you have to press down to block down, ugh). It's pretty obvious the developers were huge fans of Punch Out!!, and they did a great job updating it for the GBA.
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Wade Hixton's Counter Punch
Wade Hixton's Counter Punch
Wade Hixton's Counter Punch
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Frank Bruno's Boxing - Commodore 64 / Spectrum / Amstrad
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Oh...man. Elite published a computer game a long time ago that is such a monstrously huge rip-off of Punch Out, it's hilarious. In addition to getting a famous boxer to endorse it, several characters are ripped straight from the arcade Punch Out games, including Bear Hugger (renamed Canadian Crusher), Dragon Chan (Fling Long Chop) and Vodka Drunkenski (Andra Puncharedov.) And somehow, they managed to come up with even more offensive characters - Raviolo Mafiosi and Frenchie France are relatively tame, but Antipodean Andy is the worst kind of blackface stereotype. I guess this kind of ripping off wasn't too uncommon in the European computer gaming scene - see: The Great Giana Sisters, the ripoff of Super Mario Bros, except Nintendo actually found out about that one.
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Frank Bruno's Boxing
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Spin-Offs - Arm Wrestling - Arcade (1985)
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As the title suggest, this arcade title has nothing to do with the Punch-Out!! series. However, it was developed by the same team behind Punch-Out!! and there are many similarities, namely the same two screen setup and the graphics. Arm Wrestling has the same graphic engine as the Punch-Out!! arcade games, and features bright vibrant colors and an assortment of enemies to take down, ranging from a Texan, a sumo wrestler, a monkey robot controlled by a little girl, and Frankenstein's monster's son named Frank Jr. The one arm wrestler named Mask X is actually Bald Bull in a mask, and seems that has been inspired to create the character Masked Muscle in the Super NES Super Punch-Out!! Players take the opponents down when the characters make a face and strange noises at you and you frantically wiggle the arcade stick and press the button frantically to bring his/her arm down. The game isn't nearly as fun and was never as popular as the Punch-Out!! games were.
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Arm Wrestling
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Captain N
One of the villains in the cartoon and comic book series was King Hippo from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! Voiced by Michael Dovovan III, King Hippo came from Punchland and served under the evil Mother Brain from Metriod. Along with Eggplant Wizard, both were insanely stupid and idiotic, and served as typical comic relief. In a strange artist decision, King Hippo's skin is blue.
Cameos
In WarioWare, Inc.: Mega MicroGame$ for the GBA and WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Games for the Gamecube, Jimmy's boss stage is called "Punch Out". Jimmy's description is, "Fancy feet & sweet moves! KO that guy, baby! If he's got flash in effect, it means he's comin' at you!" Basically, you have dodge from the opponents punch when he's flashing (dodging either left or right) and then landing him one right in the kisser.
Wario Ware Touched! for the Nintendo DS has a micro game called "Button Masher" where you have to press the A button on a NES controller to do one of three things. One of the things is to hit a boxer as he stops lowers his arms, clearly inspired by Punch-Out!!
Super Smash Brothers Brawl saw the what Little Mac could be in 3D. While not being an actual fighter in the game, he can be summoned from the assist trophy item which is basically a Pokeball with various Nintendo characters in it. Little Mac is literally half the size of most of the fighters and when he is in play, he will run towards the closest opponent and either send a barrage of punches at him or star uppercut. He even has the NES sound effects every time he punches!
Little Mac would later also show up in the Skip Ltd. game Captain Rainbow for the Wii with other obscure Nintendo characters like Takamaru from Nazo no Murasamejou and Lip from Panel de Pon. Little Mac has actually became overweight and it is up to Captain Rainbow to help train Little Mac to lose the weight and once again fight in the boxing ring. This game never came out in America.
Thanks to Uncle555 for the Power Punch II scan and MP83 for shining the light on that Frank Bruno game.
Links
Red Tom's Punch Out Page Most complete site on the original NES game.
Classicgaming.com - ROM of the Week Arcade Punch-Out!! winning game of the month at Classicgaming.com
Nintendo Database NinDB's entry for the Punch-Out!! Series.
Super Punch-Out!! Nintendo of Japan's official site for the Super NES game.
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King Hippo in Captain N
WarioWare Inc
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Captain Rainbow
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