Rocky, Nintendo and the Impossible Challenge: The Untold Story of Punch-Out!!

The origin of inspiration and the first arcade game

In 1976, the most important film in the history of humanity, Rocky, was released. The great Sylvester Stallone played a humble but feisty boxer on his path to glory, culminating in a title fight against the spectacular Apollo Creed. The film taught us two great lessons: you can face any obstacle in life by grabbing punches for 15 uninterrupted rounds. There's no better color for a tracksuit than pink. Back in 1983, when they were already on Rocky 3, some guys at Nintendo said, "Since boxing is such a cool and trendy sport, we have to make our own Rocky." So they got to work and released an arcade boxing game that was a commercial success. Although the game had many colorful characters and worked on two screens at once, its real success came This was because this boxing game didn't follow the rules of boxing. Instead, each fight in the game was completely different. Each opponent had various attacks and patterns that had to be memorized to dodge them. Counterattacks and try to emerge victorious were one of the first examples of a game that consisted of pure boss battles, providing a fairly high level of challenge that tested the player's reflexes. Due to its popularity, Nintendo released a sequel for arcades in 1984, but it wasn't until it decided to bring the game to the Nintendo console three years later that it earned a place in the Olympus of video games as one of the best and most difficult games in the history of that version. That's why we'll talk about it today. In this video, I'll tell you the incredible story of Pancho Out.

Game Development and Technical Trivia

By the way, have you noticed the referee in the Punch Out? Genius Tequida, producer of Out There Cake, directed the NES version because the NES hardware and software weren't as powerful as those of arcade systems. Shakira and her team realized it would be impossible for the cut to faithfully emulate the Alcade graphics. Instead of making the main boxer transparent so he could see his opponents, they dedicated themselves to working on the boxer's design, resulting in a short boxer. This way, opponents could be seen without any problems, unlike the arcade version. This game, designed for the NES, is characterized by background music, animated cutscenes, a password system to save progressions, and various scenarios.

Origin of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! and gameplay

When it was released, the founder and former president of Nintendo of America, Minor Arakawa, attended a boxing match with Mike Tyson. While watching the fight, Arakawa was inspired to use the athlete's name and likeness in the NES version of Punch Out. In its NES version, the final opponent was Mike Tyson, although over time they had to change the name to Mister Dream due to licensing issues. Punch Out is a very simple game to play but very difficult in difficulty since the Little Man, the game's protagonist, fights in a boxing ring with boxers heavier than him. All you have to do is attack, dodge, and counterattack your opponents. As you advance, the game becomes more difficult, so you must learn your opponents' movements and have high-impact reflexes to dodge or Counterattack our opponents in each fight. We must fight over three rounds, and you can defeat the enemy by KO or triple KO.

Well, gentlemen, this was my review of this great game I was able to play today. Here comes the surprise. I was able to play it thanks to this page I found: https://www.retrogames.cz/index.php, which contains all the games from our childhood. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.