Screenshot: Punch-A-Nazi!!

After seven decades under the radar, the hot trend of 2017 is punching Nazis in the face. Yes, that time-honored hobby of the Greatest Generation has made a resurgence, as throughout America masked avengers are soaring in from off screen to land sucker punches on the foppish faces of the neo-Nazi’s troll army. “Alt-right” altar boy Richard Spencer took two to the goddamn kisser on the day of Trump’s inauguration, human shitpost Martin Shkreli got some shit literally posted on him, and Breitbart enfant terrible (French for “mewling pissboy”) Milo Yiannopoulos got a university appearance canceled after demonstrations turned violent. While these three would probably not technically classify themselves as Nazis, they would align themselves with the “alt-right,” the racist, misogynistic, antisemitic assemblage of 4chan-dwelling fuckheads that constitutes the current face of nationalist fascism.

Earlier this week, Cafe released a charming riff on Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! called Pepe’s Punch-Out!!, in which players could choose to engage in a maddening dialogue with the cartoon frog that serves as the “alt-right” mascot, or just punch the shit out of it. Now, Super Deluxe has one-upped this effort with Punch-A-Nazi!!, a rhythm-based game that uses both a computer monitor and the user’s phone as a Wii-like facsimile for a fist. Retro-style recreations of Spencer, Yiannopoulos, and their supreme leader—no, not Steve Bannon—Hitler all present their willing, punchable faces. As a cursor bounces around the bottom of the screen, the player punches their phone in syncopation. A surprising amount of detail goes into the gradual accumulation of wounds across these three proud vendors of misogyny, racism, antisemitism, and fancy clothing, as evidenced by the following:


Actually, that is not too far from how Hitler actually ended up. The only question is: Which major video game studio will capitalize upon 2017’s hottest trend by rendering a punchable hatemonger using state-of-the-art bloom lighting, procedural wound generation, and immersion-enhancing haptic feedback? Time will tell, but the people clamor for it.