zallard1 | Punch Out!! (Wii) - Don Flamenco [0:17.74] (WR) @zallard1 | Uploaded September 2020 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
This has been a tied record ever since a couple months after the game came out back in 2009, but this record always eluded me whenever I would try it. It's always been a really daunting fight to match the TAS on, just based on the sheer amount of punches that you need to have frame perfect in order to match the best possible time...

...except surprisingly, that's not the case at all.

Let's start from the beginning of fight. Buffer a punch to get Don to throw his first attack. From there, I use a different cue for when I counter his punch since the timing is a bit tricky to do frame perfectly. I press duck as soon as I see Don completely still, then buffer a punch out of it. This is just personal preference, as you can totally counter this without the duck.

Now here's the meat of the fight, and easily the most daunting part... the dreaded Don Flamenco infinite. Keeping this infinite going is easy... if that''s your only goal. The problem is if you don't punch Don on the first 2 frames he's vulnerable on each of these, then the in-game clock speeds up DRAMATICALLY. You will lose about a second for every one of these windows that you're late on; it's *that* bad.

This loop always confused me when I tried to get good at it, for two reasons. For one, multiple people had tied this record despite the high number of punches that would presumably need to be frame perfect. Secondly, the timing of the loop always felt inconsistent in terms of spacing to me, and I couldn't put my finger on why. For years it was like this... so I decided to look into it now that I have that ability.

Here's the big takeaway from what I've found: Don Flamenco's loop will *ALWAYS* get you the same exact time whether or not you hit the first or second frame of the window for EVERY PUNCH in the loop!

You can literally hit the 2nd frame of all 14 of his loop punches and get the exact same time as if you hit the first frame of all 14 of the loop punches. Not only that, but the frame window doesn't shift around to accommodate the differences from when you hit any previous punch's window. It's honestly one of the weirdest things I've seen this game do so far, and this game has some *weird* things it does lol.

So anyways, the loop finally made sense to me, but that still doesn't make it that much easier; it's still really difficult to hit 14 2-frame punches in a row, as well as the 3 other frame perfect punches in order to get the TAS/WR time. My best advice is to time the punches to the same tempo as Don's footsteps landing on the floor. This part is all about rhythm; there's really no way around it.

Once you get his health low enough, you can buffer the star for a knockdown. Because Don was stuck in the loop for at least 7 punches on the previous knockdown (as well as Mac being at full health), the game will make any subsequent star punch that hits Don just completely KO him and end the fight.

For phase 2, you need to counter the first attack he throws out and throw a star punch to KO him... except you have to delay your star punch ever so slightly. If you buffer the star punch, then the clock will go at full speed instead of the slow loop speed.

My, admittedly, weird solution to this (as well as the counter punch which I'm normally bad at) is to completely have different visual cues for phase 2. I don't even look at Don once in the entire phase; I'm only looking at the health bar & Don's portrait. I buffer right punch & left punch as soon as his health level reaches the right side of "U" in the word ROUND, and throw the star punch as soon as Don's portrait is done shaking (which happens any time he's punched). This works really well for me, so if you have trouble with doing those two inputs frame perfectly, this might be an approach to try!

Anyways, thanks for watching!