We told you a while back that Tecmo Bowl was making its way from the 8-Bit world to the Wii. Well, the hits seem to keep on coming… literally. Today Nintendo announced a whole slew of games and hardware for the Wii. Nintendo fanboys are focusing on the news that they’ll be able to use the console to actually voice chat with their Wii buddies, bringing the “next-gen” machine on par with AOL Instant Messenger. But the bigger news here is the return of the game that got us all into boxing in the first place. Punch-Out!! is coming to the Wii in 2009, though minus the convicted namesake that helped make the game a hit in the first place.

Nintendo is reviving one of its most storied and popular franchises with the first new Punch-Out!! boxing game in 15 years. Players will once again follow the exploits of the up-and-coming challenger, Little Mac, and take on a series of opponents, including favorites from the past like Glass Joe and King Hippo.

Have you ever wanted a Wii so bad? Still, we have to wonder if some of our favorite Little Mac opponents will be cut from the new game, given their, ahem, not so politically correct taglines. Who can forget Piston Honda, the Asian pugilist who threatened us with defeat by shouting “sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nipponichi”? You almost have to wonder how close the programmers were to having Honda replace his “r’s” with “l’s.” And what about Don Flamenco, who, for a 1980’s video game, was pretty flamboyantly gay? “Hey! Mr. Referee Mario I like your hair!” Von Kaiser seems to have wandered into the ring after getting separated from his Panzer group, and Great Tiger was missing was a magic carpet and a pot of chicken curry, for cryin’ out loud.

Nintendo’s Holiday 2008: Wii Speak Channel, Club Nintendo, More Surprises [BusinessWire]
Image [gamekyo.com]