A little while back, we noted a story from a well-known insider in Imran Khan, who stated that the Punch-Out series might be “done” at Nintendo for multiple reasons. In the story, as we covered both here and in the Nintendo Entertainment Podcast, the story that Khan gave was that he met with someone from developer Next Level Games, who made the Wii reboot, who stated that it was the controversy over certain characters and stereotypes that would lead to the game series being shelved after release.
However, the crew at Time Extension decided to reach out to some Next Level Games team members themselves and got some answers from some “anonymous sources” at the company. For example, one noted:
“I don’t recall any negative feedback from the public around stereotypes after launch nor have I seen anything since so I don’t believe that is a valid reason to prevent another version being made.”
We noted that on NEP ourselves, and said that IF there was controversy of that nature, that would be all the more reason to do the next entry and then ensure that they DON’T have such stereotypes.
Another one of the sources claimed that Nintendo and the dev team talked at length about the characters and “avoiding or perpetuating cultural stereotypes.” So, if nothing else, the notion of this creating backlash was on their minds. However, it appears that neither side of the equation were “set upon” by fans after the release, so that’s a relief.
This also could mean that Punch-Out may get a return via the Nintendo Switch 2. In fact, Nintendo and Next Level Games might decide to make a new game just to squash these rumors once and for all!
