Better looking, and still a great personality.

ock Band? Tetris? Wii Sports? Punch-out!!? Read the following and try to guess which game is being described (and yes, of course it’s a trick question):

You’re going at a frenetic pace and your wrist is getting sore. You’re pulling off increasingly complex maneuvers, the computer making increasingly tough demands on your ability to recognize patterns and to react quickly; this game keeps you going full tilt and at full attention for hours—in five minute bursts.

You know exactly what to do, but it’s hard to get your hands to do it. And in a few minutes you’ll reach a new section where you won’t know exactly what to do; you’ll have new patterns to memorize. In the meantime, you’re repeating the tough section over and over. And over. Until you get it right. And you’re totally zoned, to the point that you can barely hear that shrill voice calling “dinner!” from some distant part of your house. And you finally get the pattern perfect and feel pretty proud of yourself, but of course, you act like it’s no big deal. Cough. Ok, now is an okay time to hit pause.

I know, I know, the suspense is killing you. Yep, we’re describing all of the games. Good game design is good game design. It’s no coincidence that the best games (of then AND now, I might add) have much in common.

And yep, these same great game mechanics made 1987′s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! one of the most loved games in console gaming history. And yep, we’re talking about the golden age of gaming again (will we never shut up?).

But we’re also talking about Punch-Out!! for the Wii, released this week. I got a hands-on today.

Speaking of Mike Tyson (yes, a Nintendo product carried his name. Ha!)… any else think Nintendo may have hoped that re-releasing the game a few years later with “Mr. Dream”,  and then slowly sauntering away… eyes skyward… hands behind their back… whistling… would make us forget?

In any case, moving past Mike and Mr. Dream on the NES and the talking Punch-out!! machine at Chuck E. Cheese (“Body blow! Body blow!”), the Wii incarnation of the game features the motley crew of opponents from the original games (13 fighters in total) but this time they’re modeled and animated in 3D. There is only one new character (who does a rather satisfying and hilarious face-plant when KO’d). Control-wise, it works with motion-controls and without. And for perhaps the first time in a Wii game, things work equally well either way, I think, because on the motion-control side of things, developers decided that Little Mac’s dodging/ducking and toggling between face and body shots would be handled by the analog stick in tandem with gestures, instead of just gestures. This presumably makes for a simpler and less error-prone gesture input system, compared with Wii Sports Boxing which used more accelerometer axises and frequently misinterpreted what you were trying to tell it). And it worked out great.  Punch by itself does a body shot, and punching while pressing upwards on the stick goes high, just like old times. So, you’ll spend less time getting comfortable with weird controls and more time learning Bald Bull combos. Punch-Out!! Wii is simple to learn and tough to master.

On the topic of combos: oddly, none of the reviews I’ve seen online have mentioned something that I think is a vital selling point for a 50 dollar game— it’s a retro-inspired game but it’s a brand new one as well, because the combos are all new. You don’t beat Bear Hugger with the same combination of hooks, jabs and star-punches that you used 20 years ago… it would be kind of fun but probably anti-climactic if they’d done it this way. Instead the gameplay mechanics are the same, but, this being a new game after all, you get to learn new sequences and timings to beat your old-school opponents… regard it as a sequel, rather than a remake.
It plays very much like the original, has the same core mechanics but carries with it improved depth and variety, and is more game than I ever hoped for.

More cool features in Punch-Out!!:

• A system similar to trophies or achievements on Xbox/PS3, where players unlock more content by doing specific stunt-ish tasks. For example, in exhibition mode against Glass Joe you must a) knock him down three times, but let him win by decision, b) figure out how to knock him down with one punch, and c) win a fight without dodging, blocking or ducking. Trophy hunters and loot collectors will eat this stuff up.

• A two player mode (yes! at last) that starts off in split-screen, but whips over to a creative full-screen interface with little Mac against a less agile but freakishly big and strong “Giga-Mac” when one player lands enough punches to fill a special meter.

Punch-out!! is a classically-built, simple, yet difficult game which will keep you busy for quite a while. It’s just so damned much fun and it’s actually hard, as gaming goes. The hokey but well-depicted “little-guy-rises-to-the-top” story elements and the genuinely funny graphics and animations and perhaps the nostalga factor will draw you in, but the discovery that solving a difficult opponent is satisying, that it isn’t a “relief” or a dissipation of annoyance to pass a level, but rather, it’s just gratifying… this will make you stay.

And, while I tried it out by myself, I just know it’s one of those games that will have you and your friends glued to the TV together, blurting helpful things like “no, try dodge, dodge, LEFT jab!” with too much excitement, like when you were teenagers. Which is both sad and awesome.