Arms Is The Wii Boxing Game That Never Happened

One of the games due out this spring for the Nintendo Switch is Arms, the one-on-one boxing game from Nintendo for the Switch. It's a crazy new fighting game that the Wii should have received but never did.

The game Arms made a debut during the Nintendo Switch presentation. The official Nintendo channel posted up the three minute trailer featuring a look at the motion-based, fantasy boxing title due for release on the upcoming Switch system in spring of 2017.

The trailer starts with a buff older man and a young school girl facing off against each other. The trailer proceeds to show how the two have their arms transform into elongated, robotic boxing arms. After showing the two beat each other up, we then get to see the game in action on the Nintendo Switch.

Two characters are in an arena and the object is to out-box your opponent. Arms will see a 3D arena being the battleground, allowing for free space movement of both players as they duke it out. The combat allows players to throw left and right punches. While throwing the punches players can manually curve those punches by using the gyro-sensors within the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers. Depending on how the motion of the controller is thrown will determine how the punch is curved.

A lot of gamers were hoping for a game similar to this for the Nintendo Wii back when it launched in 2006, but the closest thing we got was Punch-Out!! It wasn't a bad game but it didn't quite take advantage of the Wii-mote the way we would have assumed.

There isn't just punching and curving of the punches to be had in the Nintendo Switch exclusive. There's also dodging, air-rolls and blocking, too. This adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay. It has the potential to be this generation's Windjammers if the replay values are intact, the characters are interesting and the motion controls are responsive. A lot of the success of Arms will be entirely dependent on whether or not they can nail the input latency down to an nth of a cycle. It's a tall order but a lot of it will boil down to the engineers to make it work.

The game has a very Japanese and very vibrant theme to it. It's very colorful and very fast. It will support split-screen play when playing locally on the Switch, as well as online support for competitive play across the new and improved Nintendo Network.

You can look for Arms to launch in the spring for the Nintendo Switch. It's tough to tell exactly how well the game will do on the market but a lot of it will depend on word of mouth and how well it functions at launch.