I can’t believe it! After all the phone calls, the headaches, and a few calls to Bat­man and Sher­lock Holmes, my Wii has made it safely home. It feels like Christ­mas in July around the ol’ Wat­son house. We haven’t even fin­ished open­ing all of Bret’s Wii games that he got under the tree last year. He and I have played Mario Super Slug­gers (which is great!), Gui­ness World Records, and more.

Partly in honor of our Wii’s home­com­ing, partly out of want­ing to “pound” UPS for there bum­bling ways, but mostly out of a self­ish need to relive my child­hood… I bought Punch-Out for the Wii. I can’t even imag­ine how many hours I wasted on this game as a child. Now, com­pletely revis­ited for mod­ern times, my son can get as frus­trated as I was while try­ing to find the “secret tricks” to defeat­ing these characters.

We put this game into our freshly repaired and returned Wii together and it was like I was a kid again. Yes, all of my old adver­saries were there! Glass Joe, King Hippo, Soda Popin­ski, Bald Bull, and more were on hand to chal­lenge my child as they had chal­lenged me. Between each bout, Doc had his cryp­tic “words of wis­dom” on how to beat each oppo­nent. Of course they were faith­fully mixed in amongst his announc­ing his love of choco­late and beg­ging us to join the “Nin­tendo Fun… er, um… Club Nintendo”.

It is fun to watch Bret get so exas­per­ated try­ing to fig­ure out the “spe­cial trick” needed to beat each new con­tender. Just like Dad. Then I get to come in and finally show him a thing or two about how its done… Old school. Punch-Out is a wel­come addi­tion to our game library. It really is like an old friend com­ing to visit after many years. And best of all, after game after game of Bret humil­i­at­ing me in Mario Super Slug­gers, I can throw this game in and get some small mea­sure of revenge.