What's poppin' ? For those of you who have been keeping track of me ( which would only be a few of you ) I haven't been able to post in a because I've been busy prepping for finals at school so I've taken time out of my schedule to do a quick entry in the Boss Files. Since my current gen consoles have been going through the Frankenstein process of being brought back to life, I jacked my friend's SNES and all of his games (actually he outright asked me if I wanted them and I said yes) which have given me the time to streamline pure uncut nostalgia to my eyeballs as well as play some true gems I missed out on the first time around such as Earthbound. But the subject of this entry being Super Punch-Out!! I'm gonna talked about the latest pain in my ass.


I've heard that the Punch-Out!! Series was known for being notoriously difficult, so I gave it a shot. After making a punching bag out of Gabby Jay and Bear Hugger, I battled the formidable Piston Hurricane, who’s basically Piston Honda in terms of his move set. After breaking his virtual jaw, I was on my way to the title bout. When I got there I basically shat myself in fear for one reason...


Boss: Bald Bull


I've heard of Bald Bull mostly from gamers who had enough courage to play and beat the original Punch-Out on the NES (which I'm playing through on friend's Virtual Console and am stuck on Great Tiger and his god damned Mirage Dance attack), and the exaggerated stories of his difficulty pretty much ( with the help of the internet) pushed him into Gaming Urban Legend territory, and when something like that happens, I tend to be highly skeptical. When I actually got to the fight, let's just say I was seeing two of everything for a good 10 minutes.

Being a pro boxer can be tough sometimes as indicated b Bald Bull's history. After getting his ass handed to him by Little Mac, he was dropped all the way back to the Minor Circuit, but was still good enough to be crowned the Champion. When I first fought him, I was paralyzed. I couldn't think straight because the fear I was skeptical of had washed over me like the tides coming in. That time I was basically just trying to survive and hopefully win by decision. His punches and uppercuts were bad alone, but what was truly horrific was the Bull Charge. Its essentially his ace in the hole for when fights have either dragged on for too long or to just put you out of your misery.

I'm almost kind of ashamed that I'm afraid of a video game character whose name doesn't rhyme with Pyramid Head. But I realized that his reputation was well earned. I trained and came back for a rematch that kinda went like this


An artist's kickass depiction of my epic rematch with Bald Bull

After learning his patterns there was noting for me to be afraid of. I also know how to stop his Bull Charge dead in its tracks. just a simple punch to the gut on his third hop. WTF!!! Why didn't anyone tell me this! Granted, I found out about the Bull Charge's Achilles' Heel after I barely beat him and it would have been a helluva lot less satisfying if I wussed out and went to GameFAQS for answers. This was a battle that was whatever the gaming equivalent of David and Goliath was. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, more like the match between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston (Liked the boxing reference?) The bull had his payback coming for a while now and now I close with this



P.S Thank you for allowing me to waste your time.