Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch (GBA)

The Punch-Out!! series has an ingenious approach to its boxing combat that surprisingly hasn’t been copied in too many other games. By watching your opponent’s movements and learning their tells, you learn when to dodge and when to strike to overcome opponents far stronger than you are. While this combat style could certainly see more love in general, it did receive a game that copies that approach right down to it also being a boxing game, Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch embracing the same style of play but oddly enough not bringing over every element that worked so well for Punch-Out!!.

 

Most of the mechanics are there to ensure that its approaching to boxing is still a very solid reflex challenge. During a match, you view the battle from behind Wade Hixton, the enemy featured in a large, easily readable cartoon sprite in front of you that you’ll need to watch and learn from. If you try to strike normally, your opponent will be quick to block or avoid the attack, so you instead need to keep your focus on them, waiting for their attacks and avoiding them so you can attack immediately after. A single well-timed counterattack will stun your foe and let you land a few more hits, and while you will mostly rely on basic punches, you also pack an uppercut that makes for a good way to wrap up your window of opportunity with a stronger hit. If you whiff too many punches though, you’ll be exhausted for a bit as you recover your stamina, further emphasizing the importance of dodge focused play, although you also pack a block that can be used instead to negate enemy attacks.

So far, this battle style is taken straight from Punch-Out!!, but the game both adds and takes away a few elements as it searches for its own identity. In Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch, you play as a simple redneck fellow who is driving about with boxing gloves on as one does when his truck breaks down. While waiting for his repairs, Wade finds himself in a town filled with other boxers, his success against one particularly ornery stranger quickly earning him a reputation and some cash to spend on new abilities. However, Wade’s opponents aren’t the most typical bunch, the eight enemy boxers consisting of strange characters like a gorilla butler, a club owning pimp, and what appears to be an actual demon. Despite this small but diverse set of enemies though, the way you deal with their attacks is almost formulaic. When an enemy gets ready to attack, they’ll dip left or right, the player only needing to dodge accordingly to avoid it. Most of an enemy’s attacks follow this style, only having slight changes in speed but most of the time you’re pretty safe dodging the moment you see the attack wind-up. If you choose to block instead, they don’t even really change up their attack regions much, but the fact they do so at all means it’s usually safe to just dodge instead since blocking is rarely required.

 

The main variation between opponents comes in their special moves. While their strikes are all about knowing which direction it’s coming from, their special abilities come in many different styles, such as one boxer unleashing his pet racoon on you or the raver girl turning out the lights so you have to watch her glowsticks to know where she’s coming from. These special moves pull from a meter that is built up over the course of the match, the opponent getting points for their special meter when they take damage or deal damage to you. An opponent only has the one special move though so after encountering it you can usually keen what you’ll need to do to avoid it the next time they use it, but this element does require you to be a little more intelligent and quick with your reactions than usual during the battles. The speeds of the boxers’ regular strikes vary to ensure you still need to learn your opponents, so the fights are still quick and require skill to overcome, they just aren’t quite as deep as they could be. Some characters do have slight edges though, like Mimi Lee who fights you in a dance club, the flashing lights hard to look at while you need to watch this fast boxer closely. The final boss also packs some changes to the norm, his special undodgeable and quick counterattacks answering any punch that fails to hit its mark.

However, you do pack a few more skills than your basics to help with taking down your opponents. Over the course of the game, you’ll earn cash mostly from completing challenges you receive on your beeper. These can range from trying to win a round against an opponent without blocking, a fairly easy feat since it’s hardly required, to not getting hit at all during a bout, the payout for completing this letting you get your own special moves and options in a match. The special moves are strong options that require you to build up your meter, but if you get hit it will drain instead of build. Flurry punches and super uppercuts are your powerful options good for knocking down opponents or tearing a chunk out of their health bar, but you can also buy more techniques by taking your cash to a back alley to learn to fight dirty. You can punch the enemy in the crotch for a cheap but effective bit of damage, but you can also unlock a parry move that, if timed correctly, can counter most any punch and stun the enemy at the same time. Another useful but more fleeting option has to do with you recruiting helpers for one time assists. You can have the ring girl step in to draw your opponent’s attention, have a mechanic hurl a wrench at them, or get the referee to slow down his count when you’re knocked to the mat, although this doesn’t really help much since, besides when you’ve been worn down beyond saving, you can usually get up before the ten count easily enough. Ultimately, you’re given a lot of options and the beeper challenges add a bit of a twist to the boxing to make up for the generally simple design of your enemy’s attacks, so things even out to a pretty good balance despite not matching its inspiration in its depth.

THE VERDICT: Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch adapts much of what makes Punch-Out!! great to make its own reflex-focused boxing fun and fast, but the boxers you face, despite having some wild designs and interesting special moves, don’t push you as hard as they could have. There’s still plenty of challenge in trying to react to their quick strikes though, and the beeper missions give you more to do than just regular boxing matches to ensure there’s variety to the game’s whole. With some special skills for you to buy and utilize, Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch is still a good time and one that tests your ability to keep up with your quirky foes, but a bit more complexity to the tells and strategies of the enemy boxers would be needed to make it truly great.

 

And so, I give Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch for Game Boy Advance…

A GOOD rating. While the core of the gameplay focuses on the simple interplay between identifying an enemy’s attack and reacting quickly enough to find your openings, this by no means makes it easy. The speed and extra options ensures there’s still enough to a fight to keep it interesting and engaging, but the small batch of competitors you face could do with more attacks or routines to vary up the experience. Some like the gorilla are almost too easy once you’ve figured their few options out, but the process of getting to that point still makes for an exciting bout. The small amount of opponents does really put more of an emphasis on the design of each one, but having the extra options and missions shifts things around just enough to ensure that the boxing remains dynamic and interesting until you’ve taken down the champ.

 

As a tribute to Punch-Out!!, Wade Hixton’s Counter Punch is an effective game that does set itself apart somewhat with a few of its new ideas, but it perhaps strayed a little far from how one should execute such reactive play. Unlockable fighting options and special missions makes this more than just a copy of its inspiration, but a bit more work could have been put into diversifying how battles with the different boxers feel. The reflex challenge still makes the sport strategic enough to sustain the game’s length though, so if you’re hungry for a smart boxing challenge, this Game Boy Advance game’s got the goods and the style to satisfy.