Punch Out!! in May

Nintendo of America will release Punch Out!! for the Wii on May 18, according to an announcement by the company this morning. The Punch-Out!! series has been dormant since the release of Super Punch-Out!! (SNES) in 1994, so fans of that popular game have reason to celebrate. Not too many details have been revealed other than the promise of all of the fun of the beloved classic NES. Using the Wii Remote, players battle as iconic hero Little Mac, fighting their way through a cast of new and familiar boxing opponents in bid to win the WVBA (World Video Boxing Association) Championship Belt.

Nintendo also announced that Excitebots: Trick Racing, an arcade racing game based on the classic Excite Bike franchise, will be released for Wii on April 20; a remake of the GameCube game, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, will hit shelves on May 4.

Nintendo Presser: The Rest of the Story

Obviously, the big news out of Nintendo’s press event in Tokyo this morning had to be the unveiling of the new Nintendo DSi handheld, but that was far from the only news coming from the Big N’s conference today.

After starting off with the big DSi news, Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata talked about a new deal reached with McDonald’s restaurants in Japan for expanded DS download kiosks, now dubbed “Nintendo Zone”, followed up by news on the upcoming Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Dragon Quest IX DS titles. Iwata then addressed an issue that’s plagued Wii owners since launch: insufficient storage space for downloads. Rather than whip out the long rumored Wii hard drive, though, Iwata announced that starting in Spring 2009, Wii owners will be able to download content from the Wii Shop Channel directly to SD cards installed in the console.

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