Earlier this month, Nintendo fans were surprised and disappointed to hear reports that the company’s Punch-Out!! series was on indefinite hiatus. Reporter Imran Khan recently shared a story about an interaction he had with a developer at Next Level Games, the studio behind the version of Punch-Out!! released on Wii in 2009. Khan noted that this person confided that “there was significantly more backlash against the characters” than expected. The Punch-Out!! series had some outdated stereotypes in the past, which the developers had been trying to avoid with the reboot. As Khan’s story went, those changes didn’t go far enough, “so everyone just kind of furrowed their brow and called it done.”
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However, the story doesn’t end there. Reporters at Time Extension reached out to multiple sources at Next Level Games to see if there was any legitimacy to those claims. While the developers requested to remain anonymous, each one claimed that there was no controversy surrounding the game’s fighters.
“I don’t recall any negative feedback from the public around stereotypes after launch nor have I seen anything since so I don’t believe that is a valid reason to prevent another version being made,” said one source at Next Level Games.
Another source also seemed to debunk the controversy, stating that “the only major controversy I recall was the Sailor Moon manga issue.” That particular controversy relates to the fact that Piston Hondo can be seen reading a Sailor Moon manga at one point in the game. The brief moment was not approved by Bandai Namco beforehand, and reportedly cost Nintendo a significant amount of money. While that controversy is well known, it seems nothing negative reached the team or Nintendo in terms of the characters or any stereotypes. Instead, the two companies had a lot of internal discussions “in regards to avoiding or perpetuating cultural stereotypes.”
In Imran Khan’s original post, he did note that “this could just be the perspective of one person and no one else.” From all of these comments from Next Level Games staffers, it seems that’s very much the case. While Next Level Games has not worked on a Punch-Out!! game since, the studio has been busy working on other Nintendo franchises, such as Luigi’s Mansion and Mario Strikers.
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For Punch-Out!! fans, this should be something of a relief. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the boxing series will be getting a new game in the near future, but it could leave the door open for a potential remaster. After all, a remaster of Donkey Kong Country Returns is set to arrive on Nintendo Switch next week, and we did get a remaster of Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories last year. Nintendo is clearly willing to dig into its Wii catalog, so it’s possible Punch-Out!! could get a similar treatment at some point. In fact, the game made our list last year of Nintendo Switch remasters we’re still waiting to see. Hopefully the game’s lack of availability on modern platforms gets rectified one of these days!
Did you play Punch-Out!! on Wii? Would you like to see a remaster of the game on Nintendo Switch? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter atย @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky atย @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram atย @Dachampgaming!
