Million Dollar Abby: I

More East Coast content, and Abby, is great but I'm not really sure I'm all that thrilled about more Punch Out...especially the same gimmick with Punch Out. Would rather see something like Random PC game come back :|

@jgzilk: thats a very shallow reading of my comment that I interpret as being intentional on your part, but just in case not it is their sensitivity to stuff like that that is relatable to me, among many other things of course. Like when I played that game, that was something I noticed that sort of dated it and it stood out to me as a little gross, so that they see the same thing I do is why I dude. If racial caricatures didn't bother them I'm not sure I'd be here. I think acknowledging stuff like that in gaming is important because if you don't acknowledge it and say 'hey this is kind of off' you are sort of normalizing it.

End of statement.

I'm really wondering where this anti-Abby vibe is coming from.

When I first played punch out I was definitely worse than Abby, like much worse(still am). In my view, she did really well, like kind of amazing for her first time ever playing, and on stream and stuff. No matter how good you think you are, playing in front of thousands of people is quite different and she was still doing very well.

Honestly, you could make the same criticism of any of them playing certain games. There are games that all of them are bad at. Probably the best recent example is PUBG, but I love watching those streams because they are so funny. So even when Vinny would do something silly or accidentally shoot Dan, it was awesome because it was them. If they were all straight-laced and perfect but had no personality it would be way worse.

If I had to guess, I would say this is coming from a place of jealousy or something that's the only thing that really makes sense.

I believe "I'll keep my mouth shut unless you specifically ask for help" is how Freddie Roach cornered Pacquiao.

BEST TITLE

This was a lot of fun! Very much looking forward to the next episode...

...of "Fight or Shite?"

I love this idea for a series.

Disgusting.

I for one, will not stand idly by while America's athletes get hopped up on nose tork!

PS: Good job, Abby!

watched this, loved it made me think about this again. Hope someone enjoys this as much as I do.

Yeah, I love a lot of what this guy does. Too bad he's not done anything for about half a year now.

Congrats to whomever in chat suggested this title change?

Great series!

"One of my favourite video games of all time" whats the count for this 103?

Hey, I'm 38. That's shits not funny.

This is definitely tangential at best, but this series made me realize I'd love to see someone on the site power through a full run of Thumper. Anyone else feel similarly?

rising up to the challenge of our tiger

What makes this self indulgent? How is this any different than other content they produce?

Yeah, I'm on the same page as all of you. NES Punch-Out!! holds up better than most NES games, but it's still an NES game that liberally recycles content and most of those rematches don't do anything new or interesting and are instead just more cheap bullshit.

The Wii Punch-Out!! is really well designed and has much better hints when an opponent has a weird trick to be aware of, and the rematches are basically whole new fights with different visuals and tricks to figure out. It's such a better game than the NES one, and I think this is the only episode of NES Punch-Out!! that Abby is going to have much fun with. Bald Bull I is the first pretty difficult fight of the game, and most fights thereafter are a pretty stiff challenge or just have some arbitrarily cheap bullshit.

Dan was playing on an actual Nintendo though. Abby is playing on the NES classic

@shaunk: I don't like to call it out but too many feature ideas feel like an indulgence solely for Dan. At least Alex and Abby feel like they show up to be entertaining where as Dan is just there to entertain himself by making random banter with no semblance of what he wants this feature to be beyond yet another video podcast about what a big Nintendo fan he is. Meanwhile as soon as he steps out of his comfort zone with something like Yakuza it's the whine and cheese hour. Don't get me started on EX-Corps.

That was a great finish! Go Abby go!

@mezmero: Agree 100%. I got 20 minutes in and stopped because I just can't listen to Dan 'coaching' how to play a game. It's just not fun. This is following in the long line of games Dan wants other people to play to show how great they are.

@mezmero said:

I agree in so far as just about every Dan video series idea is based around playing a game that Dan has nostalgia for that he played between the ages of 5 and 17, approximately. No other staff member really makes up video features solely on this basis (the closest is Jeff, who tends to do videos or streams-from-home centered around games closer to his childhood and teen years, but even then it's a much wider variety of games than Dan fixates on, and Jeff plays games he likes and dislikes just to show them off).

So I agree that even though Dan often finds ways to make the videos interesting (Steal My Sunshine yes, this Punch-Out series no), I'm getting a little tired of every Dan premium video idea largely being a series where Dan can just cheerlead about how great the game is the entire video. It feels self-indulgent in the extreme, and one of the reasons that Steal My Sunshine is less grating is because of how objectively poor parts of it are in a way that even Dan can't deny. He literally fell through the middle of a solid platform in Sunshine. It's been nice to have a series that has shattered Dan's rose-tinted glasses, for once.

If Abby and Alex are having fun with this Punch-Out feature then I guess keep at it, but it feels pretty unnecessary when the site has already done a "successfully beat Punch-Out" video feature.

This was worth it just for the "IT'S WORKING! AAAHHHH!"

The site absolutely has not done a "beat Punch-Out" feature. They filmed a video of Dan beating Tyson. That's not beating the game. This is far more interesting to me than Steal my Sunshine because I want to see someone do a full playthrough of Punch-Out because I think it's an interesting game that's fun to watch.

uh, ok?

Sounds like you just don't like Dan as a person.

Complaining about "Dan" content is silly. How many great features has he brought us since joining this site? Could you imagine it without him? They've all mostly been great.

@xeirus: Seemed pretty clear from my post that maybe I just don't like him as an entertainer. Apologies if that wasn't apparent. As a person he seems like a dude I'd probably get along with in real life though I've never met him so who knows.

Dan is responsible for almost every new feature that has come in the past 2-3 years. I think he's an excellent entertainer and gave this site the energy it desperately needed after Ryan passed away.

This site should be kissing Dan's ass for bringing all his ideas and energy.

WOW the name alone is sooo damn good! I'm already loving this :D :D

This video made me realize that Furi is basically a new Punch-Out.

abby is baby with the first two characters switching places
just noticed that now

This entire thing is worth it just for the last three minutes.

"I'm a horse, here me gallop!"

We hear you Abby.

I love how Alex's tips are always exactly what you need to to.

@ybbaaabby Is this feature ever coming back for a round 2?

First they canceled Blue Bombin' now they cancel this.

What's next, canceling Vinnyvania before reaching the DS games???

@jackelbeaver: Its back! Woot woot

So I'm late to this one, @danryckert but still I want to provide the one thing about the ethnic stereotype thing, particularly on the Wii version.

It's... not that bad.

I mean, it's... broad and stuff, but it's not punching down or anything, and it's broadly cultural a lot more than it's, you know, racial. And they make some surprising stretches to keep it cool, too. For instance, as far as I can tell, they don't just use native speakers from all the represented countries to voice them in their native languages, but the text is well written in all the languages. At least in the ones I speak there's no wonkiness.

They didn't need to do that. Capcom sure has hell didn't do that in the Street Fighter games, or even the more recent Resident Evil games. There are even fun flourishes here and there and native-language wordplay that makes me think some of the jokes and puns were written by native speakers, too. If I had to guess, I bet the massive, world-class Nintendo localization team had quite a say in this one at the ground level.

And you know what? None of it is subtitled to English either. I massively appreciated that, weirdly enough. It's like the game was saying "Hey, we know this character is a broad stereotype, but this joke? Yeah, this one is for you, not for them". I thought that was a charming, fun way to work around some franchise conventions that could have gone very wrong in a contemporary setting.

So kudos to Next Level Games on that one. US players may feel a bit self-conscious about it, but from one of the represented countries I'm happy to report that nope, these guys did their homework and it's all respectful and fun as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing Dan get so into it that he starts moving his head back and forth when Mac is about to get hit is just the best. It's like when you're a kid playing games and lean your head over to try to look past the sides of the screen.