After you fight each boxer it opens up an exhibition mode for that particular boxer.  So say you fight Glass Joe and you whomp his ass and you’re feeling good about your self cause you beat the snot out of a boxer that has a 1-99 record (that’s 1 win and 99 losses) what do you do now?  Move on to Von Kaiser?  Nope you go to the exibition mode and you will find three challenges for Glass Joe.  One is you have to knock him down three times…then let him win by Decision.  The second one is to find his one punch knockdown.  The last one is you have to beat Glass Joe with out ducking, dodging or blocking (a lot harder than it seems).  So yeah…each boxer has this mode…so it adds another thing to do once you beat the game the first time around.

Another thing that Nintendo did for Punch-Out!! is that once you do win the first time around you get to defend your title!  You fight all the same boxers but they are different somehow.  I have yet to beat the game so I cannot say as to what or how they are different…this is just what the Nintendo site says.  Once you beat the title defense mode…there is yet another mode called Last Stand.  No clue what that is…but…you do get to fight Donkey Kong.  =)  I assume that you once again get to fight all the boxers again and based on the name I’m gonna guess you start at half health and you have already been knocked down twice.  We’ll see.

The actual game play however is pretty cool.  I love how they did the boxers and how they kept with the theme of Punch-Outs!! of the past.  The one thing they did change is in the past as you progressed the boxers basically got faster and had cool gimmicks.  With the Wii version yes the boxers get faster but they also don’t throw all their punches at the same speed.  What does this mean?  Well take Super Macho Man for instance…he has 5 punches.  Two upper cuts, one hook and two different spin moves.  The two uppercuts (depending on which side they come from) will come at you at different speeds so if you’re used to just dodging as soon as they move…you’re in for a big surprise when you go up against Super Macho Man and some other boxers that do the same thing.  As for the controls…man I was totally excited about being able to actually box with the wiimote and nunchuk in hand.  When I tried it it seemed clumsy and awkward.  The only other option (unfortunatlly) is to turn the wiimote sideways and use it like a controller.  While this method is much more accurate…the wiimote wasn’t designed to be used like this.  The direction controler isn’t flat…it sorta curves up at the ends and after an hour of ducking, dodging and jabbing your thumb gets a bit raw.  It’s also a bit on the small side so I found myself ducking when I should be punching or dodging when I should be ducking.  The last thing about the wiimote is that it was designe to be held vertically not horizontally so it’s just awakward in that sense.  All in all though it’s not TOO bad…but I wish I could use the classic controller or even the wavebird.

Even with the short comings with the controller…I am still having a lot of fun playing it and I look forward to the other two fight modes…they sound pretty challenging.

Quote of the day!

“There are many ways to climb a mountian Mac but there’s only one way to swim across a river.”

–Doc Louis (Little Mac’s Trainer in Punch-Out!!)

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