If You Want the Sweet Taste of Victory Mac, It's Through Practice...Not Chocolate

Remember the scene from A Christmas Story when Ralphie finally get's his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and finds his palpable anticipation dissipate when that week's secret message is to "make sure you drink your Ovaltine®"? That's the way I felt about Doc Louis's Punch-Out!! at first; I put a lot of time and money into gratuitous Nintendo product spending and all I got was what amounted to a glorified demo. Not one to usually look a gift horse in the mouth, I took it with a grain of salt and a realization that had I gotten the alternate Mario hat, my children would have surely decimated it and all that it stands for. But once I got into the ring with who I think is the best character in the series, all was quickly forgiven. Ding, ding!

Even though you only spar with Doc in an empty gym, there's this wonderful sense of camaraderie with Mac as he shows him the ropes by secretly becoming an opponent. Hell, he didn't even have to fight, as his colloquialisms are worth the price of admission alone. It boggles my mind that folks find the Punch-Out!! games a second tier series in comparison to say Metroid or Zelda; I think that the pugilists' personalities are as much if not more memorable, even if they don't show up as often. I think I could just fill this entire post with quotes from Doc and it would be entertaining; but I'll stick to using my favorite one for the title.

Duking it out with Doc isn't one of the more challenging matches; I'd stick him somewhere in the middle devision, if that helps you get an understanding. He yells out all of his tells, which makes him sound like a cake walk; but if you aren't focused he will give you the beat down. His coup de grace is that when his health reaches the midway point, he busts out a candy bar and triumphantly let's you know that it's "choctastic" as he regains all of his health. It's definitely worth knocking the treat out of his hand; but I'm not one to spoil what happens next. There are three goes at Doc; an intro, a practice and than actual sparring that changes things up in the same way that the Wii game does when you have to defend your title.

The more I thought on it, the more I realized that Doc Louis's Punch-Out!! should be taken as downloadable content or a deleted scene from the full title. And although I spent an arm and a leg to get the game, I still have a metric ton of points to use at the Club Nintendo store. Hopefully someday they'll realize that we here in the U.S. want some of that super swag that Japan gets so I can use said hoard on it. Until then, I'm content with having Doc pull out his old school leather gloves and showing me why taking him on is so chocolicious