Retro Yearly List #13 [1987: Punch-Out!!]
This franchise never caught my attention enough to try playing its games, and I never did until now, one nice example of why I'm challenging myself with these retro challenges, hence, now I've just discovered a very nice game.
Some people tend to compare this with Dark Souls, not just because of difficulty, but due to the pattern-learning style of gameplay to beat the opponents, others say that it's a puzzle game disguised as a boxing game. I agree with both definitions, it's more than a sports game, this is a "practice makes perfect" type of game, (or "almost perfect").
Every opponent requires different strategies and will have to learn the hard way: trying and failing, tuning your reflexes in the process, you will have to react fast and faster once you reach the final challenges.
It truly gave me a good time to challenge myself, I managed to beat everyone fairly but Tyson, which I saved mid-match to progress, but I'm willing to try him the right way in some time, considering playing this on emulators is far worse than the original hardware due to the input lag.
Overall, the difficulty is fair and the learning curve is fine, the only opponent that got really on my nerves was Super Macho Man, but I managed to learn his secrets as well.
I just think there is a layer of repetition with the opponents, some of them will return for rematches and others have their sprites reused, even on completely different boxers. But overall the game is pretty good and I now understand its popularity, and I'm glad I finally learned to play this properly.
This franchise never caught my attention enough to try playing its games, and I never did until now, one nice example of why I'm challenging myself with these retro challenges, hence, now I've just discovered a very nice game.
Some people tend to compare this with Dark Souls, not just because of difficulty, but due to the pattern-learning style of gameplay to beat the opponents, others say that it's a puzzle game disguised as a boxing game. I agree with both definitions, it's more than a sports game, this is a "practice makes perfect" type of game, (or "almost perfect").
Every opponent requires different strategies and will have to learn the hard way: trying and failing, tuning your reflexes in the process, you will have to react fast and faster once you reach the final challenges.
It truly gave me a good time to challenge myself, I managed to beat everyone fairly but Tyson, which I saved mid-match to progress, but I'm willing to try him the right way in some time, considering playing this on emulators is far worse than the original hardware due to the input lag.
Overall, the difficulty is fair and the learning curve is fine, the only opponent that got really on my nerves was Super Macho Man, but I managed to learn his secrets as well.
I just think there is a layer of repetition with the opponents, some of them will return for rematches and others have their sprites reused, even on completely different boxers. But overall the game is pretty good and I now understand its popularity, and I'm glad I finally learned to play this properly.