@Jargon

Actually, I haven't. My first instinct is to always dodge left or right, but the timing makes it difficult. Thanks for the tip...hopefully it works!

@canonj

I'm the same way so it took me a while to figure it out. I think you'll find the fight much easier now.

Well I just beat Mike Tyson. That's right, Mike Tyson. After hours of playing and not feeling like I was making any real progress (it still felt like luck when I made it past the first 90 seconds), I decided to switch to the NES emulator on my Wii and see if the Wii U lag was really making a big difference.

And yes, there's a definite difference. It's very slight, but in such a reflex based game, it changes a lot. Now instead of pretty much guessing on the timing I could actually react in time most of the time to his punches. It still took me lots of tries, but I could tell I was getting better at it and eventually I was able to dodge every punch in the first round. That allowed me to get him down to a sliver going into the second round and I got the TKO.

Feels good! I beat it without using save states except on the title screen to avoid putting in the same password over and over, which I think is a fair use in this day and age. I do wonder how much harder using the Wii U for most of the game made it, because it really feels like it's one of the hardest games I've ever beaten.

Wait I'm too lazy to go back and find out... were you experiencing the lag on the TV, the GamePad, or both?

Oddly enough I think I have more lag on my cousin's TV than I do on the GamePad. Or maybe that isn't so odd? I don't think his TV is very great. It's tough to play precise games on it. I tried to find some kind of gaming mode, but I can't find any. Stuff like RUNNER2 I just end up playing exclusively on the GamePad.

@Jargon

Reading this is a little...discouraging. I'm still stuck at Soda Popinski (although with your help I've been improving), and to know that the game is harder due to lag kills my desire to go on.

Is your Wii hooked up to an HD or SDTV? An SDTV would have zero lag, but if your Wii is connected to an HDTV and still has less lag than the Wii U, that doesn't make any sense since the Wii's 480p output must be upscaled to 1080p, whereas the Wii U is already outputting at 1080p. Unless Nintendo really screwed up the emulation on the Wii U.

@Zero

Gamepad and the TV are exactly in sync. I mean, it didn't feel like there was a lag really, it's just that I couldn't for the life of me dodge Mr. Dream's punches consistently, and as someone who's good at video games, including tons of twitchy old NES games, it was weird that I wasn't improving. And others had complained about lag, so I figured that might have something to do with it. The fact that I beat him on my first set of attempts on Wii probably says something, don't you think?

@canonj

My Wii is hooked up to an HDTV, so there might be a little lag there too, but remember that the Wii U is transmitting video to the gamepad, so that might have something to do with it. Clearly if there's lag it's very small since there was hardly any difference, but there was enough to matter in my playing the game, unless it was all in my head.

Has anyone managed to beat Mr. Dream on the Wii U? I gave him another try yesterday and got pretty close. I know I could do it, I just need to get past the initial section and then cut down on the mistakes. Beating Mike Tyson is probably enough for me, but it'd be nice to feel like I beat this version fully.

I've given up for now. After reading your situation with the lag, I thought to hell with this. I might come back to it some day, though.

I've never actually played this game, I just used to watch my older brother play it. It isn't really my type of game, but it was a fun one to watch, with the strange characters and everything. I don't think he ever actually beat it though, he could get to Mike Tyson but it is kind of a cheap fight. Which makes an eerie amount of sense in hindsight. He played Super Punch-Out!! as well, but, he never really liked that game. He thought the boxers in it were too goofy.

Soda Popinski is driving me crazy. I'm this close to plugging my Wii U into a CRT TV. It's insane the precision that this game requires.