Ethnography in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

I played Punch-Out!! today for the first time in years. For any ignoranuses out there, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! is probably the best boxing video game of all time, and it first occurred on the Nintendo 15-20 years ago. You play as a scrapping young-and-undersized boxer named Mac, and you fight against characters who individually represent each of America's major national enemies. The pathetic Glass Joe, for example, represents France, as the game tells you. The fiendish Von Kaiser emerges as your next opponent, to a couple of midi-fied bars from "Ride of the Valkyries." Guess which nation the mustached Von Kaiser represents? That's exactly right; it's Poland.

One of the games worst and largest (physically) aggressors is the oafish Turk, Bald Bull. "MAC! WATCH OUT FOR HIS BULL CHARGE!" the coach warns you between rounds. The Bull Charge is relatively easy to stop with a carefully timed gut-punch, but the second time around...fuggedabodit. So devastating. Oh, the brutality of the Bull Charge! The human price! Will Turkey ever learn?

One of the most dead-on of all the stereotypes in the game is found in the Indian, Great Tiger. Great Tiger uses Hindu magic to vanish right before your eyes! He re-appears to punch you. He has a rapid circling move that becomes very trying on Mac's second meeting with this Indian warrior (by the way, Great Tiger appears to be a regular Indian [read: person from India], not an American Indian [read: Native American].).

Soda Popinsky, an obviously drunk, off-balance Russian fighter who constantly hoists a bottle of "soda" [read: 100-proof Russian vodka] to his lips, is another example of Punch-Out!!'s careful ethnography.

The cleverest and handsomest of all Mac's opponents is Piston Honda, who hails from Tokyo, Japan. His graceful swings and agile movements are hard not to appreciate, even when you're alternately punching him in the gut and jaw. Why the Japanese game designers working in Japan would make the Japanese character the handsomest, best-built, hottest, most graceful character in the game is a mystery that could be solved only by a Buddhist monk (or possibly an extremely clever fortune cookie fortune).

Let's not forget King Hippo, the lovable-but-loutish Pacific Islander (possibly Samoan) who is so fat that he can't get up once you've knocked him down.

Why aren't today's games so open about their ethnic stereotyping? As Punch-Out!! teaches us, cartoonish stereotypes and ethnically-inspired midi music are hilarious.

The ultimate message of the game: Look out, good old US of A--the nations of the world are trying to punch you out using predictable, rhythmic swings, each of which can be avoided with a simple dodge or block. Our only options, ultimately, are to counter-punch or be punched-out. Good thing we have a reset button and an infinite number of tries. And precious pass-codes to save our progress.