Game Boy Advance

Wade Hixton's Counter Punch

The biggest obstacle I faced was getting acquainted with the controls, but after a very short amount of time, I had no trouble finishing this game. Thinking back on Wade Hixton, and his short, but enjoyable adventure in Big Piney, makes me really think that the only problem with the game is that it didn’t last as long as I had hoped it would. If a game has to have a fault, this would be the best fault a game can have.

Wade Hixton's Counter Punch is just what the doctor ordered and does a very respectable job in keeping with the Punch Out! tradition. Though the fights do lack in variety and the number of boxes is kept at a minimum, the overall style and presentation of the game more than makes up for it. It may not be as good as Nintendo's original, but since Nintendo isn't doing anything to keep the fans happy, Inferno Games is certainly going to try... and their first attempt is WELL worth the $19.99 purchase price. If you loved Punch Out!, you'll simply LOVE Wade Hixton's Counter Punch. It may not be perfect, but it is a great attempt at capturing the feel of Nintendo's abandoned franchise.

Whenever a Game Boy developer releases a boxing game on the handheld, it's almost always followed up in review with, "Game X is all right, but it's no Punch-Out." After the release of Super Punch-Out! on the Super NES, Nintendo has left a hole in the market that many Game Boy teams have attempted to fill with their own take on the arcade boxer. But as hard as they try, these designers miss the boat on what made Nintendo's series such an amazing videogame and come off second or third rate boxing designs...especially when compared to Nintendo's true classic.

Ihr erinnert euch noch an Punch-Out? Das abgefahrene Boxspiel? Dann werdet ihr an Counter Punch eure Freude haben. Ihr schlüpft in die Rolle des abgehalfterten Wade Hixton und schlagt euch im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes durch bzw. duelliert euch mit allerlei fiesen Gesellen. Ihr steuert den Helden aus der Ego-Perspektive. Counter Punch glänzt mit tollen Grafiken und zahlreichen Extraschlägen. Nicht nur für hartgesottene Boxfans ein Heidenspaß. Anspielen lohnt sich!

If the Game Boy Advance is known for any one particular thing, it is especially well known for a bevy of classic remakes, many of which have turned out to be close to, if not just as enjoyable as, the originals. One title that has remained elusive, however, is Nintendo's Punch-Out!! franchise. Pick either Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! for the NES or Super Punch-Out!! for the SNES, and either way, you've got an extremely addictive and fun boxing title in your possession. Yet, to this day, Nintendo has not seen fit to bring a port or any sort of remake of either title to the GBA. However, that hasn't stopped Destination Software and Inferno Games from paying homage to these great boxing titles with Wade Hixton's Counter Punch. Counter Punch isn't quite up to the level of Nintendo's classic boxing games, but it is as much of a loving tribute to those titles as you will find in this day and age.

Inferno Games has created an enjoyable game that manages to succeed at creating a Punch-Out!! feel without feeling like a rip-off. My natural inclination as a critic is to compare a game, movie, book, or other popular culture medium to works that already exist. I don’t like doing that, but sometimes a work makes it clear that you should compare it to another work or at least acknowledge the original. Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch is an original work that is a very solid good game on a whole and definitely worth playing for all of the Punch-Out!! fans out there and fans of the genre. At the $19.99 budget price the game is a worthy purchase, even if the length and the controls keep it from greatness.

Who's Wade Hixton? Think of him as Mike Tyson without the psychotic chemical imbalance, but with the gameplay that'll happily remind you of Punch-Out!!

If you rounded up everyone you know who was playing games during the 8-bit era, and asked them to name the best boxing game of all-time, any system, I'm going to guess maybe 95% of the people you ask would repond with "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out" without even thinking. That's how classic the game is. (Do NOT confuse Mike Tyson's Punch-Out with the more recent Mike Tyson's Heavyweight Boxing.) Ever since then everyone's tried to go for realism and all that nonsense, but nothing, NOTHING has come close to the digitized story of Little Mac climbing to the top of the world over Glass Joe and Soda Popinsky.