Nintendo's Punch-Out!! Is 40 Years Old 1
Image: Nintendo

Nintendo's coin-op boxing title Punch-Out!! is now 40 years old – it was released in arcades on February 17th, 1984.

One of the last arcade titles to be released by the company before it focused its energy on home consoles, the game made quite an impact at the time of release thanks to its large, cartoon-like opponents and twin-screen configuration; one display was placed on top of the other, with the uppermost screen showing data such as high scores and elapsed time.

In the same year, Nintendo released Super Punch-Out!!, which added new techniques and characters.

Created by Genyo Takeda and Makoto Wada, Punch-Out!! was never directly ported to any home system in the '80s, although 1987's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on the NES is thematically similar. This was followed by Super Punch-Out!! in 1994 on the SNES (not to be confused with the arcade version of the same name).

The franchise was rebooted in 2009 with Punch-Out!! on the Wii, released in the same year as the WiiWare title Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!, which was a Platinum reward for Club Nintendo members.

Since then, Punch-Out!! hasn't seen any new entries, although both it and its arcade sequel have been released as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives range on Switch.

[source twitter.com]