Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

aka: Punch-Out!!, Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
Moby ID: 10305
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Description official descriptions

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is one of the most popular and biggest selling video games of all time. Step into the ring as Little Mac, a 17-year-old fighter from the Bronx, ranked number three in the minor circuit. Your goal is to work your way up through the rankings so that you can challenge Mike Tyson, Kid Dynamite, in a dream fight.

But the road to the championship is long and hard. You'll have to work your way up through the minor, major, and world circuits by winning 14 bouts against some very tough opponents.

The rules of the World Video Boxing Association govern your bouts. Each match is three three-minute rounds long. Any boxer knocked down for a 10 count is Knocked Out (KO). If a boxer goes down three times, he'll find himself a Technical Knock Out (TKO). If both boxers make it to the end of the third round, the ref determines the winner.

Once you're in the ring you'll have to beat your opponent with smart fighting. Use left and right punches, as well as uppercuts to knock your opponent to the mat. Dodge your opponent's blows with some fancy footwork. Dazzle them with your brilliance and you'll be the World Video Boxing Association Champion. On the other hand, you might find yourself down for the count.

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Credits (NES version)

13 People

Producer
Supervisor
  • Nintendo of America
Director
Game Designer
Character Design
Music Composer
Electrical Engineer
Programmer
Secretary

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 31 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 103 ratings with 6 reviews)

The Most Entertaining Boxing Game Ever Made.

The Good
I'll start this review by stating that I am simply not a sports game fan. That aside, this still remains one of my favorite NES games of all time. This holds to Nintendo's ability to make an entertaining game back in their glory days.

Mike Tyson's career behavior not withstanding, the game offers a colorful selection of characters with personality, instead of two palette-swapped fighters blandly pounding away at each other. Each character was different, fully animated and entertaining. Same went for all of the little nods to the company, from the amusing Mario cameo, to Doc's advising Little Mac to join the Nintendo Fun Club (Pre-Nintendo Power). Even Little Mac himself had a bit of spirit to him, which kept him from being the generic boxer found in the arcade.

The music was simple, and as unforgettable as it might have been, it stays with you, same as the majority of classic themes from those old 8-bit games. The sounds are basic, with bleeps for laughter and grunts, but again, it works.

Gameplay is where it excels. The game is simply FUN. Never before or since has there been a boxing game as entertaining to me as Punch-Out!! The gameplay is rock solid, and even when you learn all the strategies and secrets, it's still fun to blow through over and over again. It's one of those classics that simply remains at its heart a great game, and never loses what made it special in the first place.

The Bad
Every boxer is different. And while the early ones are easy, the later ones can get cheap. Especially when they unrelentingly pound on you, or take you down in one hit (Mike Tyson).

And while battery save games were still finding their way from novel to mainstream, I have never been a password fan. The passwords in Punch-Out!! are not as bad as some games that came out, but it was still a tedious process to put in codes when you were ready to go.

Regardless of its issues, there's not enough to really bring this game down.

The Bottom Line
Punch-Out!!, like Kid Icarus, is a franchise that screams for an update. It got a SNES sequel, and Little Mac has recently made an appearance in Electronic Arts' Fight Night Round 2, but the series either needs a Game Boy Advance, conversion, a fighter appearance in the next Smash Bros. game, or an all new title on the next system.

Regular Punch-Out!! is just fine. But Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - For all the hype and controversy it got back in the day, it remains a true classic.

NES · by Guy Chapman (1748) · 2005

"Let's keep it clean! Now come out boxing!"

The Good
It is so hard to write about a game I'm so fond of. I guess usually it is easier to speak about things we like, but I don't know, it is as if the game has so much good things that I don't know how to start... or maybe I'm just blind by the love I have for it, heh.

Well, about the graphics. This game is just beautiful! Remember the lack of color that most NES titles used to have? Remember when you compared the same game on NES and on other similar platforms and thought: well, the NES version is a bit colorless, a bit "tasteless"? Well, this game came out just for the NES, but you need no comparison to see how beautiful it is. Maybe because there's not much else to show besides a ring, two fighters, a referee and a crowd. Nonetheless, the game looks so colorful, the characters are so well designed, that I'm not exaggerating when I say this game is among the most beautiful games that came out for the NES. Even Mike Tyson looks really like Mike Tyson (and they didn't use a digitized image)!

The characters are also unforgettable. I mean, if you played it enough to go a bit far in the game, you'll surely remember them: Glass Joe (the French guy who teaches you how to fight), Von Kaiser (the German guy with a mustache and really tight pants), Piston Honda (the scary Japanese guy), King Hippo (with his ever falling pants), Don Flamenco (the dancing narcissistic guy), Great Tiger (the Indian magician), Bald Bull (and his bull charge), Soda Popinski (the drunk Russian), Mr. Sandman (that guy really gives you nightmares) and Super Macho Man (the freak with dancing breast muscles). Ok, maybe you didn't go that far, 'cause this isn't an easy game (we'll talk about that latter), but you surely will remember the characters you fought. Every one of them has his single punches and special moves, every one has his tips and flaws. They sometimes share features, but they're truly unique. Not to mention your coach, Doc Louis (the perfect retired boxer), the referee (none other than Mario) and Little Mac, your own character.

The gameplay is also perfect. I really like when developers try to take everything that they can from a controller. You use all the directions in the d-pad in a very intuitive way, dodging, blocking, punching your opponents face' and abdomen. Also, you have to alternate right and left punches (A and B buttons) so you can "lock" your opponent on a series of punches. You will even forget that nor your character neither you opponent move around the ring. Learning your opponents moves is really fun, and if you get them right, you'll be mastering the game in no time.

The sound is pretty good also. There's only one tune for the battle, but it's a really nice tune. As said in other review, the training cutscene tune, played when you become champion of a league, is unforgettable.

And I'd like to point out the fact that Mike Tyson in this game is really a cool thing! Back then, Mike wasn't yet what he's now, he was just the greatest boxer in the world. Having him on a game was a really cool thing, at least for me, at my 11. It is just ironic that the title screen said "let's keep it clean" and you remember the whole bitten ear stuff.

The Bad
Humm, that's a tough one. Actually, maybe this game is a bit too hard close to the end. Mr. Sandman is a really tough guy, and I can count on my fingers how many times I've beat him. The same goes to Super Macho Man, who I recall being a bit easier, but not that I've beat him many times also. Of course, I never beat Mike Tyson, and just getting there was sort of finishing the game...

The Bottom Line
This is a classic. This game taught me to like boxing games (I loved to play a lot of them afterwards). How to describe it? Simply the best boxing game on the NES, even if it isn't close to the real thing (actually, maybe none sports game can be).

NES · by chirinea (47504) · 2006

Mario is the referee, what else do you need

The Good
Any sense of realism is quickly abandoned the second you beat Glass Joe and you are set up against the most stereotypical German ever, followed by a guy from Japan who can only speak in words like "Honda" "Kamikaze" and a few car brands. I don't like realism, so it's funny to see a game throw it overboard like this and sailing away on the S.S. Sillyness (why isn't sillyness a word?!?). The stereotypes just keep flying at you and the game reaches it's top when you have to fight against an Arabian magician.

The controls are really fluent and fast with only the special ability been bound to the start button (why in the world would you choose start for this?), aside from that one stupid choice you will easily learn how to dodge and attack while fighting Glass Joe (no tutorial needed). It feels pretty awesome to successfully dodge somebody and then give them the uppercut and the best thing is that you don't need any weird combo moves to pull such a thing off.

The graphics absolutely blow my mind every time I see them, seriously just play Super Mario Bros. for a few minutes and then switch to this game, it looks like you just jumped eight bits forward. Characters look awesome, there is a crowd in the back and it has a cut-scene where Little Mac jogs through New York City and you can see the statue of liberty on the background. That is just amazing, I can't even begin to imagine how they managed to fit this on a NES-cartridge.

The Bad
Opponents never stay the down, they always climb back to their feet and the only way I ever beat them was through TKO (taking them down three times in just one round). It doesn't bother me too much since I still made it to the magician guy and almost beyond, but it just feels off that somebody still stands up within ten seconds after he got punched down eight times in just a few minutes. It gets a little problematic when fighting the characters who require a special tactic because you can't really take them down fast enough most of the time.

The Bottom Line
Punch-Out!! is a funny game with a lot of character to it, realism is keelhauled several seconds in, the graphics are breathtaking and the gameplay works perfect, so I don't know who wouldn't enjoy this game. The only people I can't recommend this game to are the ones who are looking for something casual and easy to play because this game tends to be very hard and requires multiple sessions in order to get past certain parts. If you can handle a little challenge, then this game is definitely worth checking out.

NES · by Asinine (957) · 2011

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cutscene

In between each tournament, Little Mac jogs through New York while his trainer Doc Louis leads him on a bike. This harmless scene became one of the biggest internet sensations, at the same level of Zero Wing's All Your Base, when a SomethingAwful.com user added the caption "Nigga stole my bike!" in one of their weekly photoshop contests. The picture soon spread and became a hype, in spite of the racist undercurrent. One of the end results, a YTMND showing the animation, along with a voiced song, can be found in the related links section.

NES version differences

When the 3-year licensing deal with Mike Tysonwas up, Nintendo decided not to renew it as Tyson was no longer world champion. The character was redesigned and named "Mr. Dream" and the game was re-released as simply Punch-Out!!. Not all passwords from the old version were compatible with the new one.

Technical issues

The "Little Mac" storyline was a product of technical issues that developers were confronted with in bringing the game to the NES. The arcade games featured a see-through character to allow the player adequate view of their opponent. This method would not work on the NES, therefore the idea of a tiny main character (Little Mac) was adopted in successful effort to provide a clear and full view of the opposing boxer.

Version differences

Originally, the arcade version of Punch Out! featured a Russian character named "Vodka Drunkenski." In the NES version his name was changed to "Soda Popinski." Although it seems clear that the primary motivation for this change was Nintendo's censorship guidelines (one of which forbids liquor references), it's also possible that the name was changed at least partially motivated by a desire to tone down the character's image as a stereotypical Russian drunk.

Awards

  • EGM
    • February 2006 (Issue #200) - named #44 out of 200 of the "Greatest Games of Their Time"* Game Informer Magazine
    • August 2001 (Issue 100) - voted #14 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll

Information also contributed by Big John WV, CaptainCanuck, D Michael, PCGamer77, and Sciere

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Related Sites +

  • Nigga stole my bike!
    A YTMND showing an animation of the famous "Nigga stole my bike!" phenomenon based on a scene from this game, along with a voiced song.
  • Video review of NES accessories (WARNING: Laguage)
    The Angry Video Game Nerd, James Rolfe, reviews some NES accessories and some associated games, including the U-Force and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on NES.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 10305
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by RKL.

Nintendo 3DS added by Lance Boyle. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Wii added by Sciere. Arcade added by Pseudo_Intellectual.

Additional contributors: Shoddyan, Sciere, Alaka, LepricahnsGold, Thomas Helsing, Harmony♡.

Game added September 10, 2003. Last modified February 1, 2024.