Glass Joe - Concept and Creation

Concept and Creation

Glass Joe is a 38 year old French boxer hailing from Paris. Before the match against Glass Joe, his record is shown to be one win and 99 losses. He is the player's first and weakest opponent in every Punch-Out!! game that he appears in, and is notably skinnier than the series' protagonist, Little Mac. His mediocrity has been attributed to poor blocking and reaction time. He possesses several negative stereotypes of French people, including cowardice and weakness, which are demonstrated by his quote "Make it quick... I want to retire" in the NES Punch-Out!!

The character was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto for the original Punch-Out!! arcade game. The name "Glass Joe" was conceived by Genyo Takeda as a play on the fact that the character has a glass jaw, which signifies his inability to take a head blow. Glass Joe's appearance was later revised by Makoto Wada for the NES Punch-Out!!, and by Eddie Viser for the Wii game of the same name. The character is voiced by Christian Bernard in the Wii game, and much of his dialogue in between matches consists of counting to ten in French. Next Level Games, the developer of the Wii game, introduced cutscenes to depict Glass Joe as a fashionable Frenchman. They associated him with "fancy coffee" and French foods such as baguettes and croissants. They also showed him in front of the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, both Parisian landmarks.