 The Game Boy Advance is essentially just a beefed up portable Super Nintendo, so sure there's tons of remakes and reissues of stuff like Mario World and Link to the Past. But what I didn't know is that it had so many games that were essentially callbacks to other Super Nintendo games. Take Konami Crazy Racers, which I looked at a couple weeks ago. It's pretty much just a Mario Kart game, but with Konami characters. Sure it has its own wrinkles, like all the different kinds of weapons, and the controls are geared more toward regular racing than kart style racing. But hey, it's a combat kart racer with nearly the exact same viewing angle as Mario Kart. Similar to that, here's Wade Hickston's Counter Punch. Does this look familiar? I don't know who came up with this comparison first, but someone out there said of this game, it's like early 2000s Cartoon Network got a hold of Super Punch Out, and that is dead on accurate. Visually you've got the same viewing angle, and the character you fight as is transparent so you can get a proper view of the comical looking opponent you're fighting, whether it's Rocco McScrubb, just a regular old bar flunky, Sweetness, who's pretty much mid 2000s Snoop Dogg, Jobu, an understudy of Dalsum I guess, Gus Incubus, a devil that lives on a volcano, Mimi Lee, a teenage raver complete with glow sticks, Killer Gorilla, a killer gorilla, H. Don, the game's final boss who is freaking impossible to beat, and your own doppelganger Evil Wade. And yeah, it's the title suggests you play as Wade Hickston, who's just a regular old guy trying to get his car fixed. And that small detail there is what sets this game apart from other boxing games and from most other sports games for that matter, because Wade Hickston's counter punch is story driven while maintaining an open-ended quality. This game starts out with Wade's car breaking down in the middle of some random town. This dude agrees to fix it for him, so in the meantime, Wade starts wandering around falling ass backwards into trouble, which naturally leads to impromptu boxing matches. He's gotta get money to fix his car anyway, so what the hey, this is a good enough way to earn money. You start out against Rocco McScrubb, and while he's tougher than guys like Glass Joe or Gabby J, he's still easy enough to bring down. At that point, the game opens up and you can visit a number of different places and fight most of the characters I listed earlier in whatever order you'd like. Some will require a couple victories to be unlocked, but for the most part here, you can blaze your own trail, which is kinda cool. And before each fight, you've got some humorous dialogue and some story to detail Wade's quest. And as you can see, the art direction here is fantastic, from the color usage to the pixel art itself. This game really looks great in every facet, and the music isn't too bad either. As for the fights themselves, the controls are about the same as the punch out games, and it's the same structure as well, where you dodge a punch and then stun your opponent, which opens them up to further damage. To drive the similarities even further, there's even dialogue scenes in between rounds. Now, some attacks are easy to dodge, but the further you progress, you'll find some really tough patterns that you gotta deal with. And aged on, the final boss is ridiculous. Man, what is it with boxing games and impossible final bosses? I should also note quickly that the L button here throws a left hook and the R button throws a right uppercut, so that's something a little different as well. Once you win some fights and get some prize money, you can also buy special techniques. There's three different places you can buy them from, and you have to buy each technique in order. For instance, there's the $50 rapid fire, where you hold A and B, and then press left or right on the D pad when your health is full to unleash a flurry of punches. After that, there's piston punch for $75 and jackhammer for $100, all executed using the same controls, just doing more damage. The other stores have the same kind of structure, just with different controls to execute the moves. It's a really nice addition to the game for sure. You can also pay for a companion who will blatantly interfere in your match, just press select to bring them in. You can also pay the referee to slow down the count when you're down, which is pretty funny. There's just tons of great little things like that, that add a lot of personality to a game that's already chock full of it. I should mention that there's also a challenge mode here that acts as kind of a side quest thing. You'll get messages on your beeper, hey remember those, telling you to show up somewhere to complete a specific challenge, like for example, one challenge is to win a fight by dodging instead of blocking, another challenge has you try and get a knockdown in less than 20 seconds, it's kind of cool. So yeah, Wade Hickston's counter punch is fantastic, and if you've already played Super Punch-Out to death, then you gotta pick this one up. It's a very similar gameplay and strategy, but with a couple extra wrinkles that really add to the game. There's also minor stuff here too, like Wade's outline doubling as his health meter, that's a nice touch. And I also like that there's no real penalty for losing a match. It counts against your overall record obviously, but you can just get right back in there and fight again, or you can choose to fight someone else. My only real problem with this game is that there's just not enough of it, but what is here is fantastic. It may not have the depth in fighting like Super Punch-Out does, but the amount of personality here is hilarious. You gotta love sweetness's backhand slap. This game is well worth checking out any way you can. I don't want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.