The game was revealed in 2008 at the Nintendo Media Summit, where a fifteen second trailer was shown. It was later announced that it was being developed by Next Level Games which had worked with Nintendo on games such as "Super Mario Strikers". Nintendo wished to make a new game similar to the original "Punch-Out!!" for the NES, so they asked the studio to design the game to be exactly like it and the characters to look like the original games.