A Quick Look at Doc Louis’s Punch-Out

Last December, Nintendo of America rolled out their customer loyalty program called Club Nintendo. Whenever you buy any Nintendo products, you can then sign up for a Club Nintendo account and register them for coins. Coins can be exchanged for prizes such as playing cards and posters. However, if you manage to get a certain number of coins in a single Club Nintendo year, like I did, even more exclusive prizes are yours for the choosing. For example, right now select Club Nintendo members are receiving download codes for the demo/expansion to the recent Wii Punch-Out called Doc Louis’s Punch-Out.

True to its name, Doc Louis’s Punch-Out has you play as scrappy young pugilist Little Mac fighting your grizzled, old, black trainer Doc Louis who still has he creepy chocolate bar obsession. The sweet relationship between teacher and student was one of the best surprises in Punch-Out and here that is played up even more during the humorous cutscenes. Nintendo found the perfect voice actor for Doc Louis.

The actual gameplay boils down to three similar modes: easy warm-up, medium training, and difficult sparring. None of that weird multiplayer. The real draw is fighting against a totally new Punch-Out character considering retail Punch-Out only had 14 fighters, 12 of which were repeats. The effort put into Doc is what you would expect from a Punch-Out boxer with tons of well-crafted animation and patterns. As you fight him in the locker room, you’ll even here his unique version of the Punch-Out theme.

Most of the gameplay remains the same but Doc has a few new tricks to show off. Apparantely he invented Mac’s signature star punch and can unleash it if he gets a good hit on you. Even though he is your trainer and tends to help you out during the fight, Doc is hard and for a Punch-Out character that is saying something. Not ducking correctly and getting his by a punch feels even worse when the character actually says, “duck this one” before he hits you.

This freebie runs on the same engine as Punch-Out and plays identically to it. Because of that, this game reminds of how great Punch-Out Wii was. The gameplay is still tight and addictive, the graphics are vibrant and expressive and it manages to be really funny and self-aware. If I can look forward to getting more free things like Doc Louis’s Punch-Out then I am glad to be a member of Club Nintendo.

- Jordan Minor