One of the things we’ve made known on the Nintendo Entertainment Podcast is that while The Big N has crushed it with its gaming lineup on the Switch, there were plenty of franchises that they haven’t tapped into for one reason or another. One such franchise is Punch-Out, the classic boxing title from the SNES era that eventually got a Wii reboot back in 2009. The game was solid, as I can personally attest to, and really tested your arm strength. While it may not have been the biggest seller, it did seem like this was Nintendo’s chance to bring Little Mac back to prominence.
However, since then, it’s been radio silence, and now, we might know why. Over on Resetera, Imran Han, an insider with Venture Beat and Kinda Funny Games, noted that he talked to someone who worked with the dev team, and they said that there was serious backlash to what was in the Wii title and that Nintendo might not continue the series because of what happened:
“I got someone from, let’s say a studio close to Punch-Out, drunk at a bar once and asked about a new one. The story I was told, and bear in mind this could just be the perspective of one person and no one else, was that there was significantly more backlash against the characters of the Wii game than they expected. And this team spent a lot of time assuring Nintendo that they weren’t leaning into bad stereotypes that would get called out this time, so everyone just kind of furrowed their brow and called it done. Especially since other games from that team had much, much higher sales potential.”
To be fair, the game DOES have stereotypical looks of certain boxers, which is something that would anger many people in modern times. However, this also gives the team an opportunity to redo everything (save for Little Mac) from the start and see how things go. Hopefully, this isn’t the last time we see this franchise.
