Punch-Out!! (パンチアウト!! Panchiauto!!), originally released in North America as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, is a boxing sports fighting video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) developed and published by Nintendo in 1987. It is a port of both the Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! arcade games (mostly the latter) with some variations. It has consistently been ranked among the best games released for the NES platform.[citation needed] Mario makes an appearance as the game's referee.
Genyo Takeda, who produced the Punch-Out!! arcade games, directed the NES versions. Because the NES was not as powerful as the arcade hardware, Takeda and his crew realized that it would be impossible for the NES port to faithfully emulate the arcade graphics. Instead of making the playable boxer wire-framed or transparent to see an opponent, they decided to shrink the playable boxer, so that players could easily see opponents over his head. Though the arcade's playable boxer did not have an official name, he was referred to as "Little Mac", because of his small stature and the "Mac" part being a play on the popular McDonald's hamburger, the Big Mac.[citation needed] Other things added to the NES version that the arcade versions lacked were a rough plot, a background music track played during fights, animated cutscenes and a password system for saving progress.
