I recently had time to sit and talk with Indie Gamer Chick, and we compiled our list of the best and worst Punch Out! characters. Have a look below and enjoy.
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Dishonorable Mention #1
Doc Louis
IGC: In order to get the Doc Louis fight, at least originally, you had to buy enough Nintendo products to bump yourself up to a Club Nintendo “Platinum Member.” Once this happened, you were given a choice between a single download fight against Doc Louis or an authentic (yet completely non-functional, unwearable unless you had the world’s most oblong-shaped head) Mario hat. I took the fight. I wish I had taken the hat. Once you got over the novelty of fighting the iconic Doc Louis, the fight itself was kinda generic and not as much of a challenge as second-phase Punch-Out rematches were. Even worse, six years later the Doc Louis fight became free for all. I could be chilling with my bullshit Mario hat right now, but no, I just needed ONE MORE Punch-Out Wii fight. I done fucked up, son.
JB: The Doc Louis fight was one of the first instances of DLC from Nintendo, but the fight was not worth the effort you had to put in in order to get it. The fight had very little that made it stand out. Hitting the chocolate out of Doc’s hand and triggering the second phase didn’t have that oomph that the main game fights had, and thus Doc Louis’ Punchout was the first instance of DLC failure from Nintendo.
Dishonorable Mention #2
King Hippo (Captain N Version)
IGC: King Hippo, what have they done to you? They turned you into Morbidly Obese Smurf. You did almost beat Princess Lana in a diving contest so you have that going for you, but still, is the blue a good thing or a bad thing? Like, is blue because of a lack of circulation in your heart, or was the normal yellow color we associate with you the result of a failing liver? Seek medical help.
JB: I never watched Captain N when I was a kid. It was before my time. Looking at the footage of it, I don’t think I missed anything.
Honorable Good: King Hippo
IGC: If not Glass Joe or Mike Tyson, King Hippo is probably the first character you think of when you think of Punch-Out. But, while the character design is famous and insanely memorable, let’s face it: we all remember this fight more for how it ends. That he’s too fat to get up once knocked down. A funny gag for sure, but shouldn’t the best Punch-Out characters be known for more than being a punch-line!!?
JB: King Hippo is one of the most iconic Nintendo villains, and yet he has only made a few appearances. He is more known for his appearance, but that appearance set up the David vs Goliath dynamic of the series perfectly.
Honorable Mention # 2: Donkey Kong
JB: Fun Fact, originally it was going to be Princess Peach who Little Mac fought as the bonus boss. However, Nintendo decided it would look bad to see Little Mac beat up a woman. But animal abuse was okay it seemed. Considering the backstory of the Donkey Kong arcade games, they were being surprisingly consistent. Still, we missed a nice chance to let Peach show off what she could really do. Nintendo also considered Captain Falcon and wanted to have him use the Falcon Punch. I can only assume they knew there was no logical reason Little Mac would survive it.
#5 Worst Character
Gabby Jay
IGC: I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t Super Punch-Out start with Glass Joe? Even weirder: why would they replace Glass Joe with a character that is functionally the same character? Look, beating up the elderly is fun and exciting. I try to do it at least twice a week. But the design and feel of Glass Joe is definitively Punch-Out!! Gabby Jay is not memorable at all. Apparently, the gag is that Glass Joe went to Gabby’s boxing school and scored his single victory over Gabby Jay, who has the exact same 1 win, 99 loss record. Which begs the question: what person with a 1 – 99 record would have a boxing school?
JB: Gabby Jay….I have little memory of this character and considering how memorable Punch Out’s characters are, that tells it all.
#5 Best: Bear Hugger/Mad Clown
IGC: This is the REAL first fight of Super Punch-Out!!, and the bizarro King Hippo who drinks maple syrup and spars with bears is what really sucked me into the experience. The simon-says gameplay and dodge-duck-counter-punch nature of Punch-Out is laid out in full during this fight, making Bear Hugger the defacto-tutorial stage of the SNES edition. It leaves a lasting impression, even if the Wii fight was much more underwhelming. And we couldn’t bring up Bear Hugger without mentioning the urban legend (stoked by Nintendo themselves) that Mad Clown was really Bear Hugger’s alter-ego. I’m surprised Leon Spinks didn’t sue Nintendo. A clown that boxes? That was totally his shtick.
JB: Bear Hugger/Mad Clown. Bear Hugger in the Wii version was every Canadian stereotype merged together and that was amazing. This guy not only wrestles with bears, but the bears also get on his case about training and act as his coaches. He downs maple syrup and has a bird in his tuque. Next Level Games had fun taking the piss out of their own country here and I salute them as a fellow Canadian. The only thing missing was a hockey stick.
#4 Worst: Rick & Nick Bruiser
IGC: For me, the Bruiser Brothers are some of the worst let-down final bosses in gaming history. Not the matches themselves. Those are fine. It’s the character design that irks me. Think of how outlandish Super Punch-Out is up to this point. You’ve fought a raging clown, an old man with a walking stick, even a luchador. What are the final two fights? Generic identical twins. Ooooh. I mean, come on. There’s a few characters fully defined by being gym-rats already. Mr. Sandman, Super Macho Man, and Bald Bull. The Bruisers are so lazy in their design and not remotely memorable. I love the idea of twins, one who is undefeated, the other whose only loss is to his brother, but the execution is weak. This was such a letdown to the game. Also, Nick Bruiser is the easiest final boss in any of the Punch-Out games. I’m not the only one who thought Rick was harder.
JB: The Bruiser Brothers were not only a let down from a final boss perspective but also basic character perspective. I joked that Gabby Jay wasn’t memorable at all, but the Bruisers are worse in that they are memorable for being utterly dull characters. They don’t fit Punch-Out, let alone as final bosses. Then again, maybe Nintendo was ahead of its time. After all, the WWE later brought us the Harris twins in a case of life imitating art.
4th Best: Hoy Quarlow
IGC: THIS should have been the final boss of Super Punch-Out!! A spry, unsuspecting old man pushing 80 who uses his cane and is deceptively tough. The trope is a trope for a reason: it works. It’s why Pai Mei is one of the most memorable characters in the Kill Bill movies. The match itself is exactly the type of intense, white-knuckle pattern-spotting that makes Punch-Out work. It’s the best fight in the game, no question at all. Give him a 120 – 0 record, make him the final boss, and I guarantee you more people would have walked away from Super Punch-Out!! with the same reverence for it that they held the NES original in.
JB: The Old Master is an iconic part of Martial Arts lore as IGC said. Hell, most fighting games have one or two examples, because it’s so memorable. I don’t remember all that much of my time with Super Punch out, except a few characters, but Hoy Quarlow is embedded forever.
3rd Worst: Mr. Dream
IGC: “Hey guys, you know that planned re-release we had for some of our classic games before the SNES comes out? Was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! scheduled to be part of that? It was? Well, um, you might want to turn on ESPN right now..” At least that’s how I imagine it went down. It’s actually not true that Nintendo didn’t want to pay Tyson’s royalty. There was NO royalty for him on Punch-Out. He got paid $50,000 up front, and that was it. Tyson was scheduled to be part of the sequel, where you would play AS Mike Tyson and fight aliens. But between the time Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was developed and Nintendo pulled their support on what was essentially Punch-Out in Space (which was later released as Power Punch II with someone who looked A LOT like Mike Tyson but was CERTAINLY NOT Mike Tyson, no sir), Tyson had been accused of a lot of not-so-great stuff and lost his title to James “Buster” Douglas in what is probably the biggest upset in boxing history. So Nintendo white-washed Tyson out of the Punch-Out re-release.. literally.. and replaced him with this. Mr. Dream. A design so generic that it makes the Bruiser Brothers look inspired. It’s literally the same fight as Tyson, with the same “one punch and you’re knocked down” mechanic that everyone remembers. But, I mean.. LOOK AT IT! That is the worst looking Punch-Out fighter ever. Why not just cut the fight? In Japan, the Famicom version of Punch-Out!! ends with the Super Macho Man bout. Without the novelty of fighting Mike Tyson, they might as well have gone back to that.
JB: Mr. Dream was a let down to people who got the game digitally after their NES cart stopped working. There was something magical about boxing against Tyson himself in a Nintendo game. Mr. Dream was just a poor Rocky knock off…I think. He was a ROM hack, and that’s all that Nintendo could do really without looking weird….well, weirder anyways.
3rd Best: Glass Joe
IGC: When you think of iconic opening-levels or areas of video games, you probably think of “It’s Dangerous to go Alone. Take this!” or grabbing your very first mushroom in Super Mario Bros 1. But for me, when I think of the perfect intro to any game series, I think of Glass Joe in Punch-Out!! The look of the character is just so.. punchable, and the simple, slow pace and limited attacks was the perfect tutorial for the world of Punch-Out!! I would argue that, if not for Mike Tyson, Glass Joe would be the undisputed icon of the franchise. So much so that I’d kinda like to see him star in a game where you train him to be a champion. How neat would that be? Oh, and the title defense fight in Punch-Out Wii where he wears a helmet is one of my favorite gags in the game. Never mind that it makes zero sense that you would defend the title against a guy with a 1 in 100 record.
JB: In wrestling, the opening match is considered one of the most important. It has the job of getting the audience excited for what is to come and keep them energized for the long show. That premise applies here perfectly. Glass Joe is the opening fight and he sets you up for how to play Punch-Out and gets you excited about what lies ahead. If anything, it just proves that the team behind Punch-Out understood wrestling better than the team behind Nintendo’s Pro Wrestling.
#2 Worst: Great Tiger
IGC: Racism! LOL! Sigh. When people wonder why Nintendo doesn’t do more with the franchise, I remind them of characters like Great Tiger or Soda Popinski (who is known as, in the arcade original, “Vodka Drunkenski” and is NOT drinking cola). Don’t shoot the messenger here. Anyone familiar with my work knows I’m not exactly the most politically correct person on the planet. But let’s take a step back into reality for a second. We now live in an era where people my age utterly lose their shit because the wife of a dean of a college dresses like Pocahontas for Halloween. In the age of microaggressions, ask yourself how something like Punch-Out!! could possibly be done without causing an internet riot? Punch-Out, when you get right down to it, is a series where you beat up ethnic stereotypes. I mean, that’s what it is! Many of the characters are downright cringey, but the worst is easily Great Tiger, who has a magic turban that enables him to teleport, skins tigers, and uses a magic carpet. While many of the Punch Out cast wouldn’t fly in 2018, Great Tiger is the only one that is undisputably a racist caricature. It’s true.
JBL Great Tiger is a character that only WWE could get away with today, So unless WWE teams with Nintendo, we wont see this character again. That is unless Nintendo wants a Netflix documentary made. That said, if Nintendo wants a Jewish stereotype, I volunteer my likeness. Unless somehow Soda Popinski was meant as a Russian Jew stereotype…hmm, food for thought.
#2 Best Aran Ryan
IGC: My choice for the most entertaining fight in the Wii Punch-Out. The Ryan fight was so animated and his feisty, almost gremlin-ish stance and movement was just a whole lot of fun. In fact, it was so fun that it makes you forget that his big move in the SNES port was dry-humping the life out of the player. I’ve never understood how this causes damage. Is it actually causing injury or is it purely from a demoralizing standpoint? The injury thing can’t be it, because what exactly would be inflicting it? It can’t be his Little Aran. I mean, he IS Irish, right?
JB: Aran Ryan was just a psychopath in the Wii iteration. He went from a character that was just kinda there in the SNES game (with one infamous ability as IGC mentioned) to THE breakout character of the game. Aran was redeemed from his origins and shows us that no one is beyond saving. Except for our worst mentions, they are not able to be saved.
Worst: Disco Kid
IGC: Oh dear. The Wii Punch-Out had one original character in it, and this is what they came up with. You know, when I was playing Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!!, I remember saying to myself “the only thing missing from these games is a character that checks all the African-American stereotype boxes but can also serve as a gay-panic stage for the truly hateful out there.” Behold, the worst Punch-Out character. It’s not even close. Disco Kid blings out his car stereo and dances around the ring all cocky and arrogant, because that’s a thing black people do. But, he dresses in purple, bleaches his crew-cut, and speaks with an feminine accent, because that’s a thing homosexuals do. It’s made of cringe. What’s worse is you can’t even say “well, times were different.” Disco Kid showed first showed up in 2009. The weird thing is the Punch-Out franchise, for all its stereotyping, actually has one of the all-time great African American characters in Mr. Sandman. Just a straight-up tough dude who doesn’t need to cheat or use bizarre special moves to be difficult. Disco Kid is a throw-away first-circuit punching bag that represents the very worst character design of any first-party Nintendo game. Why didn’t they just make the third fight of Wii Punch-Out Narcis Prince? Nobody would have been offended then, except made the British.
JB: Disco kid is the worst Nintendo character ever. A terrible addition who brings nothing to the game, was a relic of a bad past done in the present, and annoying as well. And you cannot blame Japanese culture for this, as he was made in Canada. He alone is enough to cancel out the great job Next level Games did with Bear Hugger. I apologize on behalf of Canada for our actions here..
Best: Mike Tyson
IGC: Name me one final boss from the NES era that is spoken of with more reverence than Iron Mike is. The bout is iconic. For the first minute and thirty seconds of his offense, if you failed to avoid even a single punch, you were put down to the canvas. Gamers of yesteryear still swap stories of their struggles and triumphs with him like old soldiers trading war stories. You don’t get that with Bowser or Ganon or Dr. Robotnik. For me, I’m 29, and didn’t start gaming until the PlayStation One generation. My first encounters with Punch-Out!! came with my copy of Animal Crossing and a Game Shark, so I sadly remember the bout as being against Mr. Dream. But what a bout it was. Just being able to last the full three rounds felt like surviving something awful. I never could get over the hump. Then, years later, I picked up a copy of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for the NES and fought my way to Tyson. THE Tyson. And I failed. Then I failed some more. I failed so much that I had the code to get to him memorized. I still know it off the top of my head to this day: 007-373-5963. After dozens of attempts and barely getting out of the third round alive, I was absolutely stunned to be declared the winner by judge’s decision. And it was one of the happiest moments of my gaming life. Today, I’ve got it clocked to such a degree that I can beat Tyson every single time in the second round by TKO. But that first time, it’s unforgettable. Go ahead, name one boss that would get stories like that from such a wide range of gamers from different generations. Go on. I dare you.
JB: Fighting Mike Tyson was magical. Tyson was the badass in boxing at the time and was seen as unstoppable. And here he was as a boss in one of Nintendo’s games. Mike Tyson was among the elite bosses of video games that included Ganon and Bowser and so on. His difficulty made him more of a legend which is why when he was swapped out for Mr. Dream, it was depressing. I would love to see Mike Tyson work with Nintendo again, but to play up the outlandish nature of the games, I want to see him appear as he does in Mike Tyson Mysteries. That would be hilarious and terrifying at the same time.
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I want to thank Indie Gamer Chick for taking part in this. She can be followed on twitter @Indiegamerchick. At the moment, she is handing out hundreds of free game codes not a contest but as part of her event #IGCParty.
