[This is going to be a long post, and probably quite boring to some folks, so fair warning]

This is my favorite series of games of all time. I own all of them aside from the Mr. Dream version of Punch-Out (NES) and the irrelevant "Game & Watch" version, which was originally just called "Boxing".

I'll list the games of the series that I own from favorite to least favorite:

Super Punch-Out!! (Arcade): This is simply my favorite game of all time. I first played it in '87 when I was 12 years old, at the local general store in town called Fossa's. I was already pretty good at regular Punch-Out (arcade) at the time, from having played it in '84 when it was a brand new game, at a place across town.

I had an ongoing rivalry on SPO with an older kid named Lawton, who signed his initials as "GOD". I eventually beat his high score (which was quite an event at the time), and he quit playing altogether for a few months. When he started playing again, he got as far as the number two spot, almost as high as my score, but he never beat it because soon after, the game was taken out of there and replaced with something else.

I acquired this machine as a partially stripped Punch-Out cabinet that had been JAMMA-tized and converted to Time Killers (ugh). I bought a Super Punch-Out kit from someone else (the kits were made by Nintendo specifically to convert a Punch-Out machine; "dedicated" Super Punch-Out machines were not known to be made, and if they were, they were simply factory installed SPO kits on PO machines).

The kit includes a special 5-way joystick (rather than the 4-way joystick for PO) which allows you to "duck" by pulling straight up (toward the sky); a new marquee, the ROMs and protection board needed to convert the PO boardset to SPO, supplementary stickers for the side which say "Super", and a small red sticker for the control panel which says "Ducking Pull", as a means of providing instruction for using the new "duck" function of the game.

So after acquiring all of the necessary parts, I finally had the SPO machine that I'd wanted for so long. I used it to set the Twin Galaxies high score record for SPO.

Punch-Out!! (Arcade): This was my favorite game before I played SPO. I have gotten to the point that I can "marathon" this game. It is not as difficult as SPO and as such, the Twin Galaxies record for it is much higher, about 16 million points if I remember right. The scoring rate for the game is about 1 million points per hour, and as such, there is no way I'm going to play the game for 16 hours straight to beat that.

I own this game in boardset form only, but I can swap it into my SPO machine in a matter of seconds. In fact, it is in there right now. Eventually I want to find another PO cabinet so I can play both games without swapping boards.

Super Punch-Out!! (SNES): I was quite pleased with this game when I first played it in the mid-'90s. At the time, I hadn't played either of the arcade versions since '88 and as time went on, it was less likely that I'd ever be able to play them again (I never thought that I'd eventually own the arcade machine). SPO for the SNES was a pretty good substitute. Gone were most of the things which annoyed me about Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (more on that later), and there were even some things that were improvements over the arcade versions, such as more humor, technically better graphics (though the anime style was annoying, and as such, I prefer the arcade graphics), and more opponents. The main fault I found with it was that the guard did not stay where you put it like in the arcade; it always defaulted to down. This was a side-effect of making it work with a D-pad rather than having the arcade's 5-way joystick. They had to use the down direction for ducking, which means it couldn't be used for lowering your guard, which means they had to make the guard always default to "down". What I wouldn't give for an arcade version of this game, hacked to work with the arcade 5-way joystick scheme.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (NES): Initially, MTPO was a huge disappointment for me.

I hated:

• The tiny sprites with downgraded graphics

• The twitchy animation

• The downgraded sound effects

• The slow-as-molasses KO punch

• The ridiculous "star system" for using the KO punch

• The absurd out-of-left-field "heart system" (as if throwing a punch that gets blocked makes you more tired than throwing one that connects)

• The counterintuitive "pull down to block" function (as opposed to the intuitive "where your guard is = where you are blocking" function of the arcade)

• Having to hold up on the D-pad for head punches (rather than the arcade method of it staying where you last left it like it should)

• The highly, highly patterned fighters

• The multiple rounds which can lead to fights that drag on and on, requiring up to 7 knockdowns to make the guy stay down

• The between rounds scenes that you can't simply skip

• The training scenes that you have to watch...

BTW, "Little Mac" is not in the arcade versions. That's an invention for the NES because hardware limitations forced them to make your playable character look like a 3' tall, 35 lb. midget, who is about the same size as one of Bald Bull's legs. There is nothing little about the playable character in the arcade versions. He is full-size and looks like he could actually compete.

However, I got over my initial disappointment with MTPO and I think it is a good game in its own right, especially considering the hardware limitations. It has become one of my favorite NES games.

If Syd Lexia is reading this and any of it looks familiar, it is because I emailed him on the subject a couple of years ago. I obviously disagree with his SPO (SNES) review, but like I told him, I did find it highly entertaining. He has a humorous writing style.

ged1928 wrote:

That was informative, although I (as well as I would guess 95-99% of the other forum members) strongly disagree with your opinion about MTPO. Sure, the facts you point out are all true, but I have always and will always love the game.

It is hard to find someone with no bias either way. I am of course, biased toward the arcade versions because that is what I played (and loved from the start) first. When I tried MTPO in '87, I was expecting a clone of the arcade game. The reason for my expectation was, I had first played Excitebike in the arcade (Nintendo VS. hardware). Then when I played it on the NES for the first time, I was shocked (and pleased) because it was a pixel perfect clone of the arcade version, and all the sounds and game mechanics were identical too. This was the first time I'd ever played a console game that was identical its arcade counterpart, and I was amazed.

But here is what I didn't know at the time. Excitebike was a NES game all along, and the arcade version was adapted from the NES version, rather than the more typical other way around. The arcade VS. hardware was essentially NES hardware, but most of us in the US didn't know that because the arcade VS. machines were released here before the NES was (though it had been available in Japan since '83).

So my first impression of the NES in early '86 was that it was capable of true arcade performance, based on what I saw with Excitebike, and my thinking was that, since Punch-Out was from '84, then a perfect home version should be no problem.

Of course, this was not the case. The arcade hardware that Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out runs on is vastly more powerful than the NES, because unlike Excitebike, they are real arcade games with dedicated, custom hardware (resulting in performance that was considered ahead of its time, no less). For example, the NES uses the 2A03 as its main CPO, while the arcade PO/SPO hardware uses the 2A03 just for one of its sound processors, and has an additional sound chip as well as a Z80A main CPU.

Most people remember PO in the form of MTPO, because while the arcade PO was the best selling/earning arcade game of '84, and was considered by operators to have exceptional staying power, it was also smack dab in the middle of the "video game crash". In fact, most people in this hobby consider Punch-Out to be the final game of the "classic era" of arcade games. On the other hand, the NES was a phenomenon and revitalized the industry, and MTPO, even if it was a shadow of its former self (IMO), was still one of the best games for the already aging system, and it sold very well as a result.

Syd Lexia wrote:

MTPO marked most people's exposure to the Punch-Out series; it certainly marked mine. Hell, I didn't even know that there were arcade versions til about maybe 8 years ago. It wasn't a ubiquitous machine. As the frequenter of several pizza parlors, movie theaters, Chuck E. Cheese's and one roller rink, I never once saw a PO or SPO machine. And since the arcade game and the NES game are so different, people are polarized as to which they prefer. If you played and enjoyed the arcade games first, you like those more. If you played and enjoyed MTPO better, you enjoy that more.

That is all very true, though I should point out that in '84, PO machines were very common. In my small town of about 4,000 people, there were 3 PO machines that I know of. As I mentioned in my previous post, PO was the best selling/earning arcade game of '84, and was considered by operators to have exceptional staying power. In fact, that staying power worked against SPO. Contrary to popular belief, SPO was released in late '84, not '85. That's the same year PO was released (PO was released early in '84). Now from the operators' point of view, there was little incentive to buy the expensive SPO kits when PO was still such a strong earner. The first SPO machine I saw was in '87. So after a couple of years of good earnings with PO, most operators weren't thinking about buying a 2+ year old SPO kit to convert it; they generally went with the newer Playchoice-10 kit which was also for PO cabinets.

Quote:

That being said, the only thing I really dislike about the arcade games is that they are way too short. PO has six opponents, while SPO only has five. Sure the games loop, but it gets boring fighting the same guys over and over.

I see your point, but the way I look at it is, different fighting styles, rather than different characters. For example, Super Macho Man has 3 distinct fighting styles, depending on whether it is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd incarnation of him. The same thing applies to most of the other fighters in the arcade versions. So in the arcade games you still have to keep learning new things to progress, just the same as if you were meeting different opponents for the first time.

Syd Lexia wrote:

Well, the Nintendo VS. series were modified NES ports, not the other way around.

I know, but like I said in my post, I didn't know that at the time, mainly because VS. arcade machines were here in the US before the NES was (though the NES AKA: Famicom was available in Japan for two years prior).

Syd Lexia wrote:

BTW, are you the same person who emailed me like a year ago about Punch-Out? Elements of your story sound familiar.

Yes, it was about 2 years ago. See the last sentence in my first post. I didn't know at the time that you had a forum or I would have posted on the topic here.

Not a problem. My post is pretty long anyway, so it's easy to miss something.

Edit: BTW, here is a picture of my SPO machine:

King wrote:

Sweet Machine. I used to play SPO at 2 places, one was at Rehobeth Beach in Deleware on the boardwalk, and 2, and more often, at this Shady arcade in this strip mall with a Hills dept Store in it. I mean it was the 80's and crack deals next to the machine all the time. The Punch-Out series I think is the most seriously underestimated game series in all of video games by many critics (i.e. see the GamePro shitfest list of 52 important games). If ever there was a game to make for the Wii, and well to remake period, and well, it is Punch-Out.

I see you're from PA. That's the place to be if you want a Punch-Out machine. PA is like Grand Central Station for PO machines. I know of at least 6 people throughout the country with PO machines that originally came from PA, and that is where mine came from as well. Plus I've seen at least a dozen PO machines on eBay from PA sellers, and most of the parts for my machine came from various sellers in PA.

And I know what you mean about the shady arcades. A lot of people aren't aware of that. They imagine something like Chuck E. Cheese, and/or places filled with "nerds" like in The King of Kong. Most of the arcades I went to in the '80s were very shady places, filled with slackers and druggies. They were dark and not very well supervised, which made them ideal for attracting that sort of a crowd.