Check out the full gallery at The Fwoosh for detail shots of each classic Punch-Out!! character, including shots of some characters with alternate heads—like the bug-eyed, gut-punched Bald Bull—and Glass Joe is his natural, KO-ed state.

You know, I think we're all set on Halo action figures, toy industry. How about something more Punch-Out!!-ey in the future?

CC24: Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! by Fugazi [The Fwoosh - thanks, Dan!]

I'm not sure why I chortled at this. Maybe it's because I know that lightning-flash punch is coming. Maybe it's because anything is funnier with a censored bleep in it.

Mike Tyson's Paparazzi Punch-Out [YouTube, thanks Stephen B]

The same is true for the other goods Club Nintendo gave away to Gold and Silver members, with reports from Kotakuland of Mario hats and Animal Crossing calendars making their way to serious Nintendo fans this week. I haven't received my download ticket for Doc Louis' Punch-Out!! (yet), but we've heard some reports that attempts to grab a download code have met with a technical uppercut.

Who out there has had lucking downloading the game from WiiWare?

On his Flickr stream, KodyKoala describes his Guts-Dozer as kit-bashed from the parts of a "Mech Hulk Top" and a "GI Joe vehicle that I used to have as a kid." I think that's the "Wolverine," the missile launcher that Cover Girl used to drive. Once again, I can't remember the formula for circumference of a circle, but I can recall that. And that's probably why I write about video games now.

As for HRH Hippo, I thought that 200-pounds-of-suet physique looked familiar. "I used a BLOB build [from the X-Men continuity] figure as the base, and unfortunately I had to make the legs not movable to make it look right."

Custom Guts-Dozer figure by Donald "KodyKoala" Kennedy [TinyCartridge via Go Nintendo]

Me? I'm going for Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!, somewhat reluctantly. I dig physical goods, but what am I going to do with a plush Mario hat? I don't have a pet to humiliate with it, so that's right out. I also have no space to store such things. So a digital downloading I will go!

Of course, Gold members—who we look down upon, naturally—can still get their Animal Crossing themed calendar (*giggle*) if that's all they could muster up in a year. Oh, you'll still have fun with it, Golds!

Anyway, don't forget!!

Club Nintendo

Wada-san, who came aboard Nintendo right around the time the Punch-Out!!! port for the NES was being created, spills two interesting details. The first is that he created Mario as the game's referee without permission. It was just accepted.

Satoru Iwata: You could get away with a lot then. (laughs)
Shigeru Miyamoto: We didn't have an approval system when using Mario images back then and it went right past my check. (laughs)
Wada: That's why it is a slightly strange looking Mario.

The second tidbit - it sounds like he's describing a protip/easter egg that no one's known, for 22 years.

Wada: This is a great opportunity, so I have something I'd like to say. In Punch-Out!!, the game gives you a lot of hints about effective timing of punches. There is a big boxer called Bald Bull in the NES version as well and a light flashes to the right in the audience when he charges. If you punch when it flashes you will land a body blow.
Tanabe: What? Really?
Wada: No one has known about that for about 22 years…
Everyone: (laughter)
Wada: I was wondering when I would have a chance to tell people that.
Iwata: You've been holding that information for 22 years since the release. (laughs)
Wada: Now that I had the chance. (laughs) There are a lot of hidden elements in the NES version.

I do know the first time you face Bald Bull in that game, you take him out with a one-punch body blow during his charge. In fact, it's the only way to stop his charging. But I never timed it to any crowd camera flashes. Weird.

The rest of the discussion is a great read on the development of the franchise, and other early 1980s games at Nintendo.

Iwata Asks: Punch-Out!!! [Wii.com]

Next Level Games' gameplay lead Bryce Holliday tells the Official Nitnendo Magazine UK that the developer would "love to make a sequel." And here's where they'd start.

"Cooperative, competitive multiplayer support or create-a-boss mode would be places to start," says Holliday, "but we'd need to come up with a new 'hook' like the motion controllers gave us in this iteration."

Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe recently told Kotaku that the company is "not planning a sequel where simply the fighters are replaced." If fans demand a Super Punch-Out!! for the Wii it would be approached in a "totally new, different way."

As long as it's not a prequel starring a young Doc Louis and his early infatuation with chocolate bars, we're all for it. No prequels. No Baby Mac to fight. Please.

Punch-Out!! Dev: "I Would Love To Make A Sequel" [ONM]

"Nintendo's tradition is that the hero or central character never vocally speaks," the game's producer, Nintendo's Kensuke Tanabe, told Kotaku over e-mail. The player's fighter, Little Mac, does keep quiet, as Link, Samus and Mario mostly have before him. "We also followed this tradition for the title."

Nintendo developers have previously stated that they keep their heroes silent so as not to spoil players' own imagined sense of what the characters sound like. But on rare occasion supporting casts have gotten chatty. Little Mac's trainer and opponents talk out loud. In 2007, Metroid Prime 3, another Tanabe-produced game, used recorded speech. And back in 1997, the supporting casts in Nintendo's Star Fox 64 birthed some of the gaming's better-known one-liners (Fox spoke as well, a little).

The developers said that Punch-Out's voice work was included to give its non-playable characters more flair. "We recorded speech to express each character's origins and characteristics, and to make Doc Louis have a larger personality and greater impact on gameplay," Tanabe said. "I believe having fighters' voices during matches is very effective in making the experience more immersive."

The game's developers at Canadian development studio Next Level Games echoed Tanabe's comments. Plus, Next Level producer Bryce Holliday said, there's a nice dynamic to the quiet hero in combat against massive, talkative foes: "Since we used the original camera view from over the shoulder and kept the feeling that the game is about overcoming your fears and knocking out your bullies, it makes sense for Little Mac to talk very little. He is more avatar than character, giving fans an opportunity to put a little of themselves into his character."

Even Nintendo will break its characters' tradition of silence when the moment's right. Link, you can keep quiet for now. But, Doc Louis, keep on carrying on.

Punch-Out on the Wii was a collaboration between Nintendo's Japan home office and Canadian studio Next Level Games. Developers in both locations recently fielded Kotaku's questions over e-mail. Their answers gave rare insight into how these kinds of collaborations work.

And, as a bonus, the developers explained why players didn't get to punch Princess Peach or Super Mario in the mouth with Little Mac's gloved fist.

As much as Nintendo wanted Punch-Out, like its other games, to reach new gamers, this was a title the company also wanted to reach the old-school Nintendo fan. "We firmly believed we could not betray our traditional fans' expectations," the game's Nintendo producers Kensue Tanabe told Kotaku over e-mail. " We consulted with Next Level Games and decided to follow the overall design of the NES title in every aspect of the new one. Characters were designed to look almost the same, and we also asked NLG to design them to be beaten with the same tactics of the NES version. This is also when we first decided to adopt the "classic" control scheme of holding the Wii Remote sideways." (Read Kotaku's Punch-Out!! review.)

The interview helped reveal a bit of who-does-what, the division of labor and ideas that can often be a mystery in collaborative projects. This game's development team spanned the globe, connecting Japan-based Tanabe and Nintendo with Canada's Next Level Games. Choosing the game's roster, for example, was a collaboration. Tanabe said Next Level wanted to go with mostly fighters from the NES version of Punch-Out. Next Level proposed the others, including Aran Ryan, who Next Level's Punch-Out gameplay lead, Bryce Holliday, described as the game's "resident hooligan."

Credit for the inclusion of a certain famous Nintendo character as an opponent, however, came from an executive at Nintendo of America, with support from Next Level. Tanabe revealed to Kotaku that he had a different idea for who to include from Nintendo's library of icons: "Princess Peach, but the thought of punching women out made me give up my idea."

Holliday said that Next Level dropped plans to include some other Nintendo icons in the game "to help solidify the WVBA world and its characters rather than simply borrow from existing Nintendo IP." WVBA is the fictional boxing league in the game. He added: "nobody would want to punch Mario." (Mario didn't even make it into the game as the referee this time — as he did in the NES version — because, Tanabe said: " We estimated that if Mario appeared within the toon-shaded 3D atmosphere of the game, it would not be a suitable match.")

Tanabe credited Next Level with pitching the game's graphical style. According to Holliday, Nintendo was supportive, generous in the amount of time it gave the Canadian team to test the look and hand-craft the game's animations.

Throughout their interview, Tanabe and Punch-Out's developers at Next Level Games came back to discussing the new game's Title Defense mode. This mode moved beyond making Punch-Out a nostalgia title by pitting Little Mac against new and re-mixed versions of his classic opponents in a series of rematches that pick up where the first game's finishing moment of winning the top championship would have ended. Beyond giving something for experienced players to dig into after they beat a mostly familiar roster in mostly familiar ways, the new Title Defense, according to Nintendo's Tanabe, helped meet modern expectations for game size. "The volume of content in video games has grown significantly since the NES days," he said. "I'm sure a NES-sized game could never satisfy players today."

Next Level producer Ken Yeeloy echoed his colleagues' comments and added that the Title Defense mode helped add color to already-colorful personalities. "It … fit it with the idea of giving the characters more background and story to them," he said. " Since their personalities are such a focus in the game, learning from their previous fight with Little Mac and becoming better made sense and we felt users would appreciate that."

Before the Title Defense part of Punch-Out begins — beyond just its first several fights — the new Punch-Out reveals itself to be a crushingly hard game. Tanabe said that he believed the zeal of new gamers might compel them to overcome that challenge. His unflinching take at that question might seem un-Nintendo given the easiness of many recent games from the company designed for a broader audience. Compare, for example, the level of difficulty in New Super Mario Bros. to its tougher predecessors. Next Level's Holliday said that his team simply tried to create something that was easy to pick up but a challenge to master: "Games are about choice and we believed at the beginning of the project we wanted to give any user of any skill level a great opportunity to enjoy what we loved as kids. Every circuit provides a distinct challenge. A new player who beats King Hippo gets a sense of accomplishment, while those who've played the original will choose to grind it out with the puzzles in the Title Defense World Circuit. Losing in this game can actually be enjoyable because it gives you the clues to the design of the puzzles and will hopefully let you get a little further every time you play."

The difficulty level took some tuning, but an even more formidable challenge, it turns out, may have been figuring out how to make this game work for two players." Unlike other fighting games, Punch-Out!! did not provide an easy template to realize multiplayer gameplay," Tanabe said. "As players are always viewing over the shoulder of their fighter. It made the situation more challenging that we could not manage the distance between fighters unlike other side-view fighting titles. I think it was the realization of idea of Giga Mac at Next Level Games and the specification of stunning the opponent when punches are dodged which helped implement this new style gameplay in Punch-Out!!, which is unique to Wii and has a lot of possibility."

The developers were expectedly coy about the future of the Punch-Out series. They agreed that whatever could come next would have to, in Holliday's words, be "fresh and new." Said Tanabe: " We are not planning a sequel where simply the fighters are replaced. If we get so many requests for Little Mac and other fighters to come back, we will make another game in a totally new, different way. But of course, Doc Louis must also be there!"

This is what it looks like. An awful lot like the Wii-imagined Punch-Out!!, obviously, but with the ability to box Little Mac's trainer Doc Louis. You'll also have the opportunity to be gently touched by Doc, as seen in the other screen shot Nintendo released today.

Looks amazingly comforting, doesn't it?

I'm still on the fence about which of the three items I'll choose, but leaning heavily toward Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!. I'm all set on hats, thanks.

Killzone Leads Infamous For Biggest 2009 PS3 Original: The PlayStation 3 push for original first-party games gave the world Killzone 2 in February, which managed 323,000 units sold in its first two days of sales. Infamous, the next big PS3 original, which was on sale for four days during the latest sales reporting period, sold 176,000.

UFC Pummels Punch-Out: Great reviews and an aggressive web marketing campaign from Nintendo didn't help the Wii edition of Punch-Out compete in the same league with THQ's PS3/Xbox 360 UFC: Undisputed. The cartoony boxing game managed about 150k in sales, while UFC cracked a million, despite the games being released within a day of each other.

A Rare Wii Third-Party Fast-Starter: Usually, third-party games on the Wii don't start strong. There are exceptions. For example, launched in 2006, Red Steel reached a million units sold on the Wii in about six months. Guitar Hero III sold more than 200,000 on the Wii in its first month of sales in late 2007. But most third-party Wii games have crept softly out of the gate while the likes of Wii Fit and Wii Play garnered more glory. Not this month! Enter EA Sports Active, making one of the best debuts of a third-party game on the Wii with about 346,000 units sold.

Notable new releases that failed to make the overall software top 10 (selling under 109,000 units in the U.S.): Battlestations Pacific (May 12), Bionic Commando (May 19), Boom Blox Bash Party (May 19), Terminator Salvation (May 19), Personal Trainer Walking (May 25)

May 2009 U.S. Video Game Hardware Sales - NPD-PD version
Daily averages based on the May NPD date range: 5/3/09-5/30/09

Nintendo DS - 22,625 units/day (down 15,894)
Wii - 10,339 units/day (down 2,254)
Xbox 360 - 6,250 units/day (down 231)
PS3 - 4,679 units/day (up 25)
PS2 - 4,179 units/day (down 2,191)
PSP - 3,586 units/day (down 710)

(Find out more about the Kotaku-patented NPD-PD stat)

"We are treating game openings like movie openings if they're cool," he told Kotaku. "Video games are interesting, I think it's something a lot of people do now.

"It's entertaining and it gets your mind off things like my life sucks, or I have to pay the bills. It's almost like meditation for me."

And Fallon's not just tapping into a hobby that he thinks he viewers might find interesting, he's a life-long gamer himself.

"I'm 34, so I think I grew up in that generation where video games were always a part of my life," he said. "Getting an Atari 2600 was a huge deal for me, I think I had that before I had cable."

The next big thing for Fallon was Nintendo and Super Mario Bros. an experience that made him a stalwart fan of Nintendo and their consoles. Nowadays he owns all of the gaming systems, including a modded PSP that he rarely touches and an iPhone, but rarely has the time to play on them.

He says that they have all of the consoles at the studio, but people rarely have the time to use them and when he's home he tends to spend his down time with his wife.

Fallon says he just landed a copy of Ghostbusters, but asked me how it was because he hadn't had a chance yet to check it out. (I haven't either.)

Growing up, Fallon said he never really stopped playing games. When he was at Saturday Night Live he was one of the people who helped get pieces on video gaming into the weekly show.

"I shared my office with Horatio (Sanz) and we had an Xbox," he said. "You're up so late at Saturday Night Live, it's kind of like a dorm vibe."

And out of that came several funny skits.

On Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, the crew doesn't really have time to play games, but Fallon still thinks incorporating gaming into the show is important.

Fallon played Punch Out!!! on the Wii on his show earlier in the year, and last week sent a correspondent to E3, SNL's Jason Sudeikis. Tonight he will have Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda on to talk about Project Natal, something Fallon had heard about but hasn't seen.

He said he didn't want to know much about the system before tonight's show so that he could see what someone new to the idea can do with it.

And Fallon isn't gun shy about having game developers and producers on his show either. He recently invited Double Fine's Tim Schafer to come on the show with Jack Black to talk about their collaboration on Brutal Legend.

That flies in the face of the argument that game developers may not be as entertaining on a talk show as a musician or an actor.

"I think it's all about how interested you are in talking to these people," Fallon said. "There are some really famous celebrities out there that aren't that exciting.

Tsunoda says he happy to see video games getting so much time on Fallon's show.

"I am really excited to be able to show him the Project Natal technology and how it works," Tsunoda told Kotaku. "We have been working on this project for so long in secret, it's awesome to finally be able to show it off. Hopefully, we can bring that same spirit of fun we had during E3 to the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show."

And what about showing the people at home what the bottom of an avatar's shoe looks like?

"That was something totally improvised," Tsunoda said. "I'm not even sure what possessed me to do that at the time. I'm sure something just as fun will happen tonight on the show."

You can catch Fallon and Tsunoda on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC tonight.

Punch-Out!! - more footage of that secret character [Go Nintendo]

Why? Because, as you can see, while from a distance the shorts look rather fetching...

Upon closer inspection, they become...less fetching...

Doesn't matter how much you like Punch-Out, no game is worth junk cancer.

[Higgy @ NeoGAF, via Go Nintendo]

It's the original game all over again, with a colorful cast of boxers both old and new, with the player stepping into the familiar shoes of Little Mac, the definitive, scrawny underdog amidst a field filled with bigger-than-life opponents. Aside from the game's gorgeous new look, Punch-Out!! also updates the game with support for Wii motion controls and the ever-popular Balance Board accessory.

It looks like a winner, and smells like a winner, but the show's not over until the game goes several rounds with the assembled video game critics. Can Little Mac go the distance?

The Onion A.V. Club
Nintendo has a better track record than most at re-creating old games according to new standards. Mario, Metroid, and The Legend Of Zelda all enjoyed iconic rebirths in 3D. With Punch-Out!!, however, Nintendo skipped the redesign process in favor of glossing up the established formula. The remake adds unavoidable (and optional) motion controls, but otherwise is surprisingly similar to the last version of the game, which appeared on the Super Nintendo in 1994.

GameTrailers
The (character) list is small considering the stable of characters the series has debuted over the years, and though you do get classics like Bald Bull and King Hippo, the selections are a little curious. Aran Ryan isn't exactly a poster boy for the franchise, yet he was included while fan favorites like Dragon Chan were overlooked. With the lone new character, Disco Kid, it's pretty easy to see which segment of the market they're reaching for. There have already been over 30 characters in the series to date, so 14 is definitely a disappointing number.

IGN
The game controls in a variety of ways: either with the nunchuk or without. Using the nunchuk turns on motion controls: punching is handled via thrusting the left or right hand while dodging, blocking, ducking and changing high and low hits is all mapped to the analog stick. When you earn Star Punches by hitting the opponent at strategic moments you can activate these special moves with a tap on a button. You can choose to use the Wii Fit balance board to dodge and duck by leaning or thrusting downwards, but the less said about this option, the better. I will say that it's nice that the developers made it easy to disable it after you've enabled it, because it's just a control device that doesn't work for the quick responses that Punch-Out requires.

Wired
Punch-Out!! also offers a limited two-player mode. Each player takes the part of the main character, Little Mac, and the screen is split in two so each person views the game from behind their character. Once a player lands enough punches, he turns into the monstrous Giga Mac (above), and the contest becomes asymmetrical: The juiced-up player is throwing big, showy punches, and the smaller player is attempting to dodge them and counterattack. It's a clever way to add multiplayer to a single-player experience, but it's not an especially engaging mode.

1UP (Note that Metacritic translates 1UP's A+ as a 100)
So, yeah. Not only is Punch Out!! worth the 50 bucks, but lands on a very short list of Wii games I feel that way about. Even better, while Punch Out!! makes for an entertaining enough solitary experience, the back-seat driving aspect makes it positively shine as a party game. There's nothing quite like having a few friends over, passing the controller around, shouting advice, and just generally bonding over some hilarious, bloodless violence.

Kotaku
Punch-Out!! for the Wii is an amazing success. The gameplay is solid, with a suite of modes and options that reflect modern day expectations. A holographic practice mode and the option to restart matches ensure that the game's difficulty is kept in check somewhat, letting players fail on their own merits, not due to technical limitations that require things like 10-digit codes to save player progress. The other modern-day design concession, a two-player mode that pits Little Mac against Little Mac, is probably the least welcome option, as it adds little to the tight Punch-Out!! experience, especially for anyone hardcore enough to play through every single-player aspect of the game. Minor quibbles aside, Punch-Out!! comes highly recommended-if you think you're up to the challenge. And not one of them called it a TKO! I'm so proud.

Enter the Punch-Out!! compatible Slam Man, the boxing dummy designed for a workout that's been modified in the DIY way to work with an NES emulator. In theory, a cool concept, one that would have potentially interested me in looking for free Slam Mans on Craigslist. In reality however, it's a little less elegant than one might think, as the Slam Man has been modified with actual arcade buttons and switches for each control input that Little Mac is capable of.

The theory version may not be possible. But I'm guessing that there's some enterprising third party peripheral maker willing to throw its hat in the ring. Anyone? Mad Catz? Hello?

The Punchout Interactive Interface Improved [Instructables via MAKE]

Punch-Out!! for the Wii pits Bronx-born pugilistic protagonist Little Mac and his trainer Doc Louis against a bizarre cast of characters that often out-power and outweigh our hero. That includes the return of quirky characters like the voluminous King Hippo, the mystical Great Tiger, and frail French fighter and perennial punching bag Glass Joe. The Wii version packs thirteen contenders, most of whom are plucked from the original game, with one brand new original character in the flamboyant Disco Kid.

The Next Level Games-developed Punch-Out!! also includes obligatory motion control, with options for Wii Remote and Nunchuk-style boxing, Wii Balance Board support, and simplified, old-school NES-style controls for players who actually want to beat the game.

Should Wii owners throw down some cash for Punch-Out!!, or should they simply throw in the towel?

Loved
Beautiful, Old-School Gameplay Refined: The Wii version isn't simply a remake of the NES or arcade games that also bear the Punch-Out!! name, it's an exploration of the gameplay mechanics that worked so well in the originals. Little Mac's opponents give audio and visual cues to indicate their trademark attacks are incoming, with the player having to learn when to dodge, block and duck—or preempt attacks to secure stars for powerful punches—all with split second timing, just like they used to. But each enemy's arsenal of punches, headbutts and elbows has expanded, as has Little Mac's typically shallow well of strategy.

Brilliant Puzzle Solving: The Punch-Out!! formula, more puzzle-based than sporting, is simple, but the amount of depth that developer Next Level Games has added to a returning cast impresses. Players, like myself, conditioned to dodge left for almost every attack, will be forced to adjust. And they'll be forced to root out new opportunities to land punches against once-familiar foes. Each contender is unique, some outlandishly so, as characters like the bobbing and weaving Aran Ryan and Great Tiger add variety to the lot of stand-and-swing challengers.

Title Defense: The Minor, Major and World Circuit won't pose much of a challenge to the old-school Punch-Out!! fan who TKOed Mike Tyson back in the day. It's quite possible to blow through those thirteen fighters in just a few hours. But when Little Mac is forced to defend his World Circuit championship belt in Title Defense mode, things get interesting. And they get brutally hard. When Glass Joe seeks revenge, you'll likely be amazed at how challenging he is the second time around. Punch-Out!! resets your expectations in the second half, sometimes to the point of controller-tossing frustration, but shows how brilliant this re-imagining really is. Good luck with Bald Bull II. He's a nightmare.

Control Options: The timing is spot on, as are the old-school controls, making it hard to accuse anything but your own reflexes for causing you to fail. If you really want to, you can play with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk, swinging your way to victory. For extra novelty, you can stand on a Wii Balance Board to dodge. Just don't expect to use the motion control scheme during Title Defense or Exhibition modes. But the type of player who would actually tolerate these control options probably has little interest in ever beating Mr. Sandman the first time around anyway.

Achievements: When all is said and done, with the World Circuit's has-beens defeated twice over, there's still plenty to do in Punch-Out!!, thanks to the game's Exhibition mode. It's the game's equivalent of Achievements, with more than 80 medals to acquire by unlocking Punch-Out!!'s most heavily guarded gameplay secrets under a set of conditions. Some, like landing every punch against Von Kaiser are easy. Others, like defeating Super Macho Man in the first round with no Star Punches feel impossible. But they're do-able.

Character And Caricature: The original Punch-Out!! featured a cast of contenders bordered on stereotype, a few steps away from culturally insensitive. And that was great. Even greater is that little of this has been changed. In fact, it has been improved upon. Sushi floats around Piston Hondo's head when dazed, with croissants orbiting Glass Joe's noggin while being pummeled. Bear Hugger is extremely Canadian and Disco Kid is... let's just call him flamboyant. Punch-Out!! sense of humor is only marginally softened in certain areas, but remains full of charm. Character specific music nods add nicely to the stereotypes.

Hated
No Classic Controller Support: The game supports simple Wii Remote controls, but not the option to use the more comfortable Classic Controller, with its larger directional pad and buttons. That's disappointing, as is the reliance on the Wii Remote to point for all menu choices, but that helps to explain why Classic Controller support wasn't added.

Some Boxer Cues Feel Cheap: There are certain points in the Title Defense mode where the fun comes to a halt and the rote execution of memorized patterns kicks in. (Let me show you my Soda Popinski notes sometime.) The argument can obviously be made that I was simply not skilled enough to breeze through the expert level matches, but some of the fraction-of-a-second timing and attack guesswork—I'm looking at you Don Flamenco II—might just incredibly piss you off too.

Punch-Out!! for the Wii is an amazing success. The gameplay is solid, with a suite of modes and options that reflect modern day expectations. A holographic practice mode and the option to restart matches ensure that the game's difficulty is kept in check somewhat, letting players fail on their own merits, not due to technical limitations that require things like 10-digit codes to save player progress.

The other modern-day design concession, a two-player mode that pits Little Mac against Little Mac, is probably the least welcome option, as it adds little to the tight Punch-Out!! experience, especially for anyone hardcore enough to play through every single-player aspect of the game. Minor quibbles aside, Punch-Out!! comes highly recommended—if you think you're up to the challenge.

Punch-Out!! was developed by Next Level Games and published by Nintendo for the Wii, released on May 18th. Retails for $49.99 USD. Completed all circuits and Title Defense mode. Tested Head-to-Head and Exhibition modes.

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