Moving straight from the first Punch-Out to this game was certainly an interesting experience. Super Punch-Out is very much based on the same formula as its predecessor with much of the same elements, but with the nice addition of letting you duck to dodge attacks. It also makes a very welcome change of having the timer be much more forgiving (I didn't get timed out a single time in this game whereas I did quite a few times in the previous game), which seems to have been adopted by every other Punch-Out game going forward. The difficulty felt about equal with its predecessor to me, both games had one opponent that gave me way more problems than others. For comparison, it only took me two defeats to beat the champion of the previous game (Mr. Sandman) but it took me nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes worth of retries to beat the champ of this game (Super Macho Man). He was also the only opponent I felt I had to abuse the save state feature on, like how the previous game's problem opponent I had to keep using the save state for was Pizza Pasta (the semifinal opponent of the previous game). Also, this game loops endlessly just like its predecessor, so I just decided to end my playthrough after beating Super Macho Man and earning the champion belt...then losing to the Bear Hugger rematch. Ouch.

As far as the overall game feel of Super Punch-Out, I think it gets closer to the modern games. Unlike the previous game, which I felt mostly motivated the player to be very aggressive, this game wants players to be more opportunistic; just like the NES, SNES, and Wii games, just constantly throwing out punches will result in most of it being blocked unless you land some punches that interrupt their attacks (much easier to get away with on the first two boxers - Bear Hugger and Dragon Chan - than the others). I'm not sure if I just got more used to the arcade Punch-Out style after playing the first game, but dodging felt much more smooth to me this time around and the delay on missing punches was not nearly as punishing to me. The inclusion of ducking is a nice way to spice things up a little, but unfortunately I think that this mechanic influenced the design of the boxers too much. My fights against Bear Hugger, Super Macho Man, and especially Dragon Chan all felt very gimmicky since I was just waiting on them to use their attacks that you need to duck under (and the attack you need to duck under for all those opponents are also their strongest moves, go figure). That makes three out of five boxers that all have their strongest attacks as something you duck under to avoid and then punish for big damage. On the plus side, it did make the fights against Vodka Drunkenski and Great Tiger really stand out since ducking isn't practically required (unlike Super Macho Man) or a way to make mincemeat out of them.

Oh, one minor nitpick I have that seems to only be a feature of this Arcade Archives rerelease is that the audio is...very weird. Watching Zallard1 play through this game made me realize I'm not alone on that, I think this release uses the Japanese voices or something since there were a few times I could not understand what the announcer was saying or he said something in a heavy accent...or even the name was completely different from their actual name (he calls Super Macho Man "Super Body Build"). There may have been a setting to change this that I just didn't see, but if that's true its pretty odd considering that the announcer sounded just fine in the previous game.

Overall I think this is a pretty solid game. It does fix some problems with the original game, but this game does still feel pretty archaic (I wouldn't expect an arcade game to be as smooth as a modern game though) and I don't think it fixed enough to be given more stars than the original. Nonetheless, I'm happy to say I have now played every Punch-Out game.