Star Tech Journal

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A REGULAR MONTHLY FEATURE TECHNICALLY OUTLINING A NEWLY RELEASED GAME
NEW
SYSTEM
PREVIEW
NINTENDO'S
PUNCH-OUT!!
BY SAM CROSS, ELECTRONIC TECHNICIAN,
GODWIN DISTRIBUTING, N. LITTLE ROCK, AR
N
intendo is a company which has
become very atuned to the needs of
customer service. Not only are the phone
techs as helpful as can be expected, they
seem to know the logic boards their company
uses in their games. Maybe this is because
they don't have as many games dumped on
the market as some other companies. The
logic board used in Punch-Out!! is very dif-
ferent from the logic board used in VS. Tennis
because the logic board used in the latter was
designed to be convertible to other programs.
This doesn't seem to be the same with the
Punch-Out!! board. It is more dedicated to this
one application. I am not saying a different
program could not be used on the game. It just
wasn't in the plans to make it convertible.
The game, of course, deals with boxing,
and it has proved to be really successful in the
money earning market. The lower screen is
where the action takes place and the upper
monitor is where information is placed about
the boxers and the strength status of each
boxer. Initial entry for the player occurs before
the start of the game and then the challenger
(the player) is introduced to the first boxer,
whose name is Glass Joe. As can probably be
guessed, Glass Joe is notthat rough, except if
an inexperienced player is boxing him, in
which case he is pretty tough. The player uses
a joystick to control his guard, either to keep it
over his upper body or his lower and uses the
left and right directions of the same joystick to
dodge right or left to avoid blows from his
opponent. This leaves three other buttons -
one which is for left blows and one for right
blows. The last large button is for the knock-
out blow. The knockout blow button is not a
standard button, but a very large palm-type
button which the player hits when he is able to
deliver a knockout blow to his opponent. The
good player knows when to hit this button
because of a status line at the top of the lower
monitor which builds up as the player gets
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