Punch-Out!! (2009) for the Wii is a game I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. You play as Little Mac, a 17 year old upstart fighter from The Bronx, and your goal is to climb the ladder of championship boxing by fighting different contenders, each one having their own unique fighting style. It’s more of a puzzle game than a fighting game, but it’s very fun and well made.

However, there is an asterisk to this whole ordeal: Every single fighter you fight is a walking cultural stereotype.

Among the actual real no joke fighters you face in the title, you have:

• Glass Joe (french), who’s the easiest fighter in the game and can barely take a hit.

• Don Flamenco (spanish), a bull-fighter who walks around with a rose and a bottle of perfume.

• Great Tiger (indian), a turban-wearing, teleporting, magic-wielding fighter who, again, is called great tiger.

• and Soda Popinski (russian), a behemoth of a man who is chugging down bottles of soda pop the entire match and has been noted to have a “drunken slur” by russian speakers.

Seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case of “this game is racist and aged like a bottle of milk left in the sun.” However, I’ve been wondering whether that really is the case, because I’m not sure that these stereotypes are done with ill-intent. For the stereotype that applies to me (Don Flamenco), I thought he was a kickass fighter and a decent comedic representation of spanish culture. So my conondrum arises:

Is Punch-Out!! a harmful representation of cultural stereotypes?

Because I think you can do stereotypes without them being necessarily harmful. Each culture does have its own in-jokes and “default” representation of itself, so it’s clear it can be done, the question is what is required to reach that point. Is it the involvement of someone within the culture? If so, to what degree? All of the fighters speak their local languages, so at the very least the voice actors had to be part. Is having a stereotypical character be a villain necessarily harmful, even if the stereotype isn’t what makes them a villain? There’s an irish character called Aran Ryan who’s a notorious cheat, but atleast as far as I’m aware that’s not an irish stereotype, is it?

And the most fundamental question: Is this just blatantly racist, and the only reason I’m trying to excuse it is because I think the game is fun?

Possibly. I don’t know. But I’m putting it out there, because it’s been turning in my head for months now.