Albeit an old, nearly forgotten one...
Source:
Planet GameCube
Quote:Little Mac joins the Fight Night line-up, plus you can play Super Punch-Out!
Hot off the heels of the exclusive inclusion of Mario, Peach, and Luigi in NBA Street V3, Electronic Arts has announced another exclusive collaboration with Nintendo. Little Mac, the start of the Punch Out! series will be included as a playable character in EA's upcoming Fight Night Round 2. The Super Nintendo classic game Super Punch Out! will also be included in this new Fight Night. Below is the official press release.
EA SPORTS FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 2 PACKS THE ULTIMATE PUNCH WITH THE INCLUSION OF THE CLASSIC NINTENDO BOXING VIDEO GAME, SUPER PUNCH-OUT!!
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – January 25, 2005 – Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Nintendo announced today that the popular boxing title, Super Punch-Out!!™ for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, will be included exclusively in the Nintendo GameCube™ version of EA SPORTS™ Fight Night Round 2. Shipping on March 1, 2005 under the EA SPORTS™ brand, the newest addition in the award-winning EA SPORTS Fight Night series is making its debut on the Nintendo GameCube bundled with an added bonus only available for Nintendo GameCube fans.
“We grew up as fans of the Punch-Out!! series that delivered hands-down, the best boxing gaming experience of its time,” said Kudo Tsunoda, executive producer, EA Chicago. “Now we’re offering Nintendo GameCube gamers double the boxing excitement with one of the best sports titles of the past as well as the most realistic and knuckle-clenching boxing game of today with Super Punch-Out!! and EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 2. This is the ultimate match-up.”
The sequel to the best selling boxing title of 2004 will introduce Nintendo GameCube players to the most innovative and realistic boxing video game on the market via EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 2 as well as bring a sense of nostalgia to gamers as they step into the ring with Super Punch-Out!!. Players will also be able to unlock Little Mac from Super Punch-Out!! to duke it out with more than 30 real world boxers featured in EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 2.
“The Punch-Out!! series defined boxing video games,” says George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications. “We have a new contender in the ring that’s changing the face of boxing games. What better way to introduce our Nintendo gamers to EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 2 than allowing gamers to experience two boxing franchises that have had the most impact in this sports genre from the beginning of boxing games to now.”
EA SPORTS Fight Night Round 2 introduces exciting new features to the series including the EA SPORTS™ Haymaker, EA SPORTS™ Cutman, a unique create-a-player option and an extensive career mode. The game packs in more fearsome punches and total boxer control so that players can truly dominate the fight inside and outside of the ring.
![[Image: 233018953.jpg]](http://www.planetgamecube.com/media/233018953.jpg)
See? It can be cool when it's all in context. I might even rent this just for that little extra.
Okay, why the hell isn't he in SSB?
Maybe in the next SSB. Along with Pit. And Captain Olimar. And Tom Nook.
I think what he means is that Little Mac, of all Nintendo's characters, was the one who MOST deserved to be in a FIGHTING game :D.
Okay, here's a question, what on Earth did EA do to get Nintendo to fork over all their mascots like this?
I'm trying to decide if this is a really good idea, or a really bad. At least in this case it makes sense though.
Punch-Out was very popular and supposedly a pretty good game, so how could this be bad?
Sure, I don't care about boxing and won't be buying (or playing) the game. But it still seems like a good move.
Bad in the sense that it's another step in what seems to be Nintendo's new plan of putting their characters into EVERYTHING. I just can't help but feel that it might backfire on them.
How so? Little Mac has not exactly been overused in the past decade...
It can't get any worse than it already is. GC owners don't buy third-party games, so this is Nintendo's way of trying to get them to take notice. And it's already working! Most of you guys didn't even know what NBA Street was until we heard about those Mario characters being added to it. And it's a good b-ball series, one that GC owners completely ignore. DJ even thought that it was probably just a crappy game. Oy.
NBA Street good... even if it is it is the kind of game I'd probably never even pick up off the shelf... I can't think of many themes I could dislike more than hip-hop 'street culture' as the theme... though I'm not exactly enamored of boxing either. :)
But I'm obviously not the person to go to for sports games given that I haven't bought one in seven or eight years and that one is one that I later sold. :)
Yeah damn those "hip-hoppers" with their baggy jeans and urban slang.
NFL Street and FIFA Street look equally stupid... except that they don't even have the excuse of kind of fitting the theme.
We better keep that black culture as far away from us as possible. Wouldn't want to turn into criminals ourselves, right?
The bad side I can see from this rampant stuff is EA giving Nintendo a bad reputation by pumping out horrible games with Nintendo's characters in them. Little Mac in a boxing game is fine ONLY if the boxing game ends up fun.
Allow me to remind you of the last time Nintendo did this. Anyone remember the cd-i exclusive Mario and Zelda games? I thought so...
I mean, these games could very well end up good, but this is EA, so it's sorta a coin toss between "total trash" and "hey this is pretty fun".
It depends on who's developing it.
Quote:We better keep that black culture as far away from us as possible. Wouldn't want to turn into criminals ourselves, right?
I didn't say that... a lot of rap does certainly seem to reinforce stereotypes that are not good for black society, but that's more 'that stuff is bad for everyone' than 'keep it away from me'. As for other kinds of rap music, my dislike is that's just my opinion.
Quote:The bad side I can see from this rampant stuff is EA giving Nintendo a bad reputation by pumping out horrible games with Nintendo's characters in them. Little Mac in a boxing game is fine ONLY if the boxing game ends up fun.
I believe that both NBA Street and Fight Night got good reviews. I don't think Nintendo would liscence into a game they knew was going to be awful... well, other than the CD-i Zelda games. :)
Quote:I didn't say that... a lot of rap does certainly seem to reinforce stereotypes that are not good for black society, but that's more 'that stuff is bad for everyone' than 'keep it away from me'. As for other kinds of rap music, my dislike is that's just my opinion.
That is gangsta rap. Hip hop is not all gangsta rap. Gangsta rap is 50 cent, Ludacris, and other crappy artists. I personally object to those rappers who glamorize drugs and crime. I hate that stuff more than anyone else here, believe me. But gangsta rap does not equal hip hop or black culture. Think of it as country music to white music (that Toby Keith sure likes to sing about dropping bombs on "towel heads"), if more of it were like Toby Keith's garbage and if it were more popular. Unfortunately most people equate black culture and hip hop with gangsta rap and can never tell the difference. I for one love plenty of hip hop (not really much of the popular stuff though) and can tell that difference.
Indeed, it seems the review sites anyway seem to like the games, and I may just try them out if I see them, but I really want to know what the thought process was behind Nintendo doing this. If Nintendo really did sit down with the developers, see a quality game being made, and then offered the mascots to them, then I will take back what I said. In that case Nintendo is maintaining their integrity over this, and their name won't be sullied in the least by GOOD games with their characters.
If, however, Nintendo's goal was simply to keep EA making games for the Gamecube and did this entirely to ensure people kept buying GCN versions of EA's games, then I must say Nintendo made a bad move. Now, don't get me wrong, Nintendo getting involed with 3rd parties is great in and of itself, but if they only care about keeping the 3rd parties and gave their liscense over without checking for quality in the games they would be put in, then they hurt themselves. Let's say these games end up terrible, or if not that, just average. Nintendo's characters will only sell those games so much and EA will again see their sales slipping despite the franchise additions. Then what? Nintendo ends up worse off than before, that's what.
So this could be very good IF Nintendo works with EA to make sure all the games with Nintendo's characters are good, and they should really shoot for the games to be AAA actually. This could be bad if the games are bad.
Well, that's the way I see it, but then again I've never taken a marketting class in my life... It's possible there's something I'm missing about this... And again, I don't know the details behind Nintendo making this deal anyway.
Quote:That is gangsta rap. Hip hop is not all gangsta rap. Gangsta rap is 50 cent, Ludacris, and other crappy artists. I personally object to those rappers who glamorize drugs and crime. I hate that stuff more than anyone else here, believe me. But gangsta rap does not equal hip hop or black culture. Think of it as country music to white music (that Toby Keith sure likes to sing about dropping bombs on "towel heads"), if more of it were like Toby Keith's garbage and if it were more popular. Unfortunately most people equate black culture and hip hop with gangsta rap and can never tell the difference. I for one love plenty of hip hop (not really much of the popular stuff though) and can tell that difference.
I'm sure you're right about rap, but it seems like the 'harder' stuff gets to be a bigger and bigger proportion of it over time... and I just don't like the style of music no matter what the lyrics are.
Oh, and I can't stand country music either. :)
DJ: Nintendo's motivation: sell more units. Don't be as far behind sales on other consoles. And do it without one iota of support for online gaming. That's not an easy proposition, but this is one way to get partway.
I don't think that it has anything to do with keeping EA making gamecube games... they will as long as they sell. Yeah, if sales go down EA probably would reduce its support for Cube and Nintendo certainly wants to not have that happen, but I guess they just found EA as their first good American third party who wanted to do this... they've been doing this with Japanese third parties for some years now of course. But the motivation is simple... Nintendo wants to sell more units and get more attention to be paid to Gamecube games.
Also a good explanation... Hmm...