zallard1 | Punch Out!! (Wii) - King Hippo [0:46.94] (WR) @zallard1 | Uploaded August 2020 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
Been meaning to tie this record for forever, but just never got around to it until now. I've always wanted to check if the old buffer strategy on Hippo's first lunge that we've used in single segment runs happens to be frame perfect or not. Turns out it wastes a bit of time, so I started experimenting with alternate approaches and found a new buffer that happens to be frame perfect. Despite this buffer including a blocked punch, Hippo's move timer still ticks down during the entire animation, meaning that it loses no time thankfully.
With the addition of this new frame perfect buffer, this fight now requires 6 frame perfect inputs in order to match the TAS/WR. The star punch when Hippo jumps back to the center of the ring is a mandatory frame perfect punch in order for him to start his next overhead punch as soon as possible. One frame too late or too early will cause him to just stand there and waste several seconds. Outside of that, I decided to do two pseudo buffer strategies. One for the frame perfect star punch, and for the final counter punch. I basically time the punch as soon as I see Mac fully centered for the star punch. Also, since I felt like my consistency on the last counter wasn't so great as is, so now I time my first punch as he starts his hug animation.
At this point, I have no clue what the next logical fight would be to do in terms of difficulty, so I'll probably be researching buffer strategies to see if I can make the grind for any of the harder records a bit less daunting. If I had to take a guess though, TD Tiger is probably next on the list.
Anyways, enjoy!
Been meaning to tie this record for forever, but just never got around to it until now. I've always wanted to check if the old buffer strategy on Hippo's first lunge that we've used in single segment runs happens to be frame perfect or not. Turns out it wastes a bit of time, so I started experimenting with alternate approaches and found a new buffer that happens to be frame perfect. Despite this buffer including a blocked punch, Hippo's move timer still ticks down during the entire animation, meaning that it loses no time thankfully.
With the addition of this new frame perfect buffer, this fight now requires 6 frame perfect inputs in order to match the TAS/WR. The star punch when Hippo jumps back to the center of the ring is a mandatory frame perfect punch in order for him to start his next overhead punch as soon as possible. One frame too late or too early will cause him to just stand there and waste several seconds. Outside of that, I decided to do two pseudo buffer strategies. One for the frame perfect star punch, and for the final counter punch. I basically time the punch as soon as I see Mac fully centered for the star punch. Also, since I felt like my consistency on the last counter wasn't so great as is, so now I time my first punch as he starts his hug animation.
At this point, I have no clue what the next logical fight would be to do in terms of difficulty, so I'll probably be researching buffer strategies to see if I can make the grind for any of the harder records a bit less daunting. If I had to take a guess though, TD Tiger is probably next on the list.
Anyways, enjoy!
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - King Hippo [0:46.94] (WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1z0djFCUDAU/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - King Hippo [0:46.94] (WR)
Been meaning to tie this record for forever, but just never got around to it until now. Ive always wanted to check if the old buffer strategy on Hippos first lunge that weve used in single segment runs happens to be frame perfect or not. Turns out it wastes a bit of time, so I started experimenting with alternate approaches and found a new buffer that happens to be frame perfect. Despite this buffer including a blocked punch, Hippos move timer still ticks down during the entire animation, meaning that it loses no time thankfully.
With the addition of this new frame perfect buffer, this fight now requires 6 frame perfect inputs in order to match the TAS/WR. The star punch when Hippo jumps back to the center of the ring is a mandatory frame perfect punch in order for him to start his next overhead punch as soon as possible. One frame too late or too early will cause him to just stand there and waste several seconds. Outside of that, I decided to do two pseudo buffer strategies. One for the frame perfect star punch, and for the final counter punch. I basically time the punch as soon as I see Mac fully centered for the star punch. Also, since I felt like my consistency on the last counter wasnt so great as is, so now I time my first punch as he starts his hug animation.
At this point, I have no clue what the next logical fight would be to do in terms of difficulty, so Ill probably be researching buffer strategies to see if I can make the grind for any of the harder records a bit less daunting. If I had to take a guess though, TD Tiger is probably next on the list.
Anyways, enjoy!")
![Punch-Out!! (NES) - Mr. Dream [2:06.00] (Original Resolution)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2jxZsQx2_88/hqdefault.jpg "Punch-Out!! (NES) - Mr. Dream [2:06.00] (Original Resolution)
Punch-Out!! (NES) - Mr. Dream [2:06.00] (Original Resolution)")
![Star Fox 2 - Normal Mode New Game+ Speedrun [11:09]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3twdgSA4R54/hqdefault.jpg "Star Fox 2 - Normal Mode New Game+ Speedrun [11:09]
This run was done on a reproduction cartridge I made from a Stunt Race FX cartridge played on a 1chip Super Nintendo.
So, this is something Ive been meaning to get around to for years, but I wanted the skills to make my own cartridge because some reproductions out there are of dubious quality to me. This run does beat my best run that was performed on a SNES Classic by about 5 seconds, but its hard to tell how much of it is exactly due to platform differences or not.
From some basic tests and observations, the SNES Classic actually seems to be the slowest platform, while playing on a real Super Nintendo seems slightly faster (although some areas lag more).
This game is in a weird limbo state because it was only released on the SNES Classic, and so the leaderboards dont actually allow use of playing on a reproduction cartridge, or emulators, because its faster than its first official release, which kind of sucks for accessibility reasons. Theres also the epilepsy filter, which was exclusive to the SNES Classic and does affect lag frames somewhat.
Fast forward to today, and we actually have a new platform thats legal for Star Fox 2 since its also an official release, which is the Nintendo Switch Online service. I did some testing a while back, and it showed that NSO ran the game way, waaaay faster than on SNES Classic. I theorize that its due to transition screens being arbitrarily faster than they used to be.
Anyways, now my splits have a bunch of golds scattered between the SNES Classic, and real hardware. My theory is that when I start running on NSO, I should be able to get really big golds on every single split. If I can do that, then I feel like playing this on a real Super Nintendo (or an accurate emulator) should be valid, just by virtue of it being slower than the fastest official release of the game anyways. This would be nice because it would improve accessibility for speedrunning this game.
Anyways, this run was pretty similar to my old 11:14 run in 2018. I played decently, but still had Andross teleport on me once, and a mistake on the first core. I wanna say just about every event in both the 11:14 and this 11:09 played really similarly to each other, so I would wager a guess that a real Super Nintendo likely has a 5 second overall advantage over the SNES Classic, which is wild because Meteor definitely lags way more on a Super Nintendo than it does on the SNES Classic. The framerate of a real Super Nintendo is also marginally faster than a SNES Classic though, which also contributes to the time difference as well (60.0988fps vs 60.00fps). Throughout all these recent attempts, I could never come even remotely close to my SNES Classic Meteor gold split.
So that should be it! I think Ill be trying this category on the Nintendo Switch for subsequent runs, but I really wanted to upload this since it just looks much nicer captured through RGB and upscaled than it does on the SNES Classic or Switch, haha.
Thanks for watching!")
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - Bald Bull [0:32.15]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4Im8ZFWZU70/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - Bald Bull [0:32.15]
Alright, so I did about 15 minutes of attempts at this fight again to take a break from Soda, since the luck has been abysmal for him lately, and literally already landed my goal of 32.1X this time, as well as a secondary goal, which Ill talk about shortly.
Pottoww had set the record a while back with an impressive 32.24, and had opted to use 2 buffers to help consistency, but at the cost of a tiny bit of time (0.08 seconds collectively).
I realized after my last fight with Bull, that a really cool goal would be to push Bull to where it would be impossible to match/beat unless you remove one or both of the safety buffers for the first and last punches of the fight. The TAS time for this fight if you were to use both buffers is 32.16, which I just barely beat by 0.01. This fight landed 13 of 15 possible inputs frame perfectly. I missed 1 frame somewhere in phase 1, and 1 frame during the bull charge. This fight is currently 0.07 seconds away from the TAS time of 32.08.
This is quite a difficult strategy to pull off. Several of the counters are mandatorily frame perfect, and the newest adjustment that Mysteryman found saves upwards of half a game second, but requires the addition of 3 precisely timed star punches to take full advantage of that time gain.
Lets get into the fight. I watch the entire cutscene because it sets Bulls first move to come out at the earliest possible time. The first punch I throw is a move cancel to remove the 1st of his 3 rolling jabs (there is a dodge buffer you can use here, but it costs 1 frame, so I opted against using it). I try to use the referee leaving the screen as a visual cue for this (this would be problematic if youre playing the game in a 4:3 aspect ratio).
After cancelling his rolling jab, I duck the second one and stun Bull to land 2 buffered jabs, then throw a slightly delayed jab in order to pick up a star. I do the same for his next rolling jab to pick up a second star, then I do a precise dodge in order to stun him in a specific way.
The amount of punches you get from Bull when you dodge an uppercut depends on exactly how fast you dodged it. You can get anywhere from 4 to 7 stunned punches depending on how quickly you dodged his uppercut. For this strategy to be optimal, you need that number to be 6, so you need to dodge fast, but not *too* fast. After landing 6 stunned punches, you need to throw 2 delayed punches in order too get your 3rd star.
For throwing the 3 star punch, the old strategy would just throw it immediately, but Mysteryman found that if you delay this star for about ~20 frames or so, then the timer will move at a slower pace than it usually does, which overall nets you a couple of frames if done perfectly every time. The cue I use for this is when Bulls head *just* centers itself after getting the star.
After that, buffering a dodge into a right jab into a left jab will counter his hook frame perfectly (this normally is frame perfect anyways). Countering his hook again with a jab wont deal enough damage, so for this second one, you need to counter his hook with a gut punch. The window is frame perfect, but since this punch will knock him down, his extended recoil animation doesnt lose you any time since the clock stops as soon as Bulls HP reaches 0.
When Bull gets up, youll need to throw another frame perfect counter to get a star from his hook, then throw a delayed triple star punch just like the star punch in phase 1. Then Bull will throw an uppercut, to which you will also have to counter for a star (this punch is also frame perfect). Throw that star punch with the same delay as the previous star punch, and he should go down at 2:30 on the clock if you were fast enough.
For the final phase, you can opt to use a buffer strategy thats only 0.02 seconds slower than a frame perfect bull charge by simply chaining dodge into 2 punches, however I decided against that because of my very specific goal in mind with this fight of getting sub 32.16. Instead, I decided to use a pseudo buffer to counter the bull charge manually, which is just throwing 2 punches at the correct starting time. I time this around the moment I first see steam come out of Bulls nose, which will roughly around the area where the counter will hit the earliest possible frame.
This is still very much beatable, but the path will be a little bit more narrow than before. In order to beat this, you need to get at least 14 of 15 possible movements frame perfectly, where the only possible place where you can lose more than 1 frame is if the bull charge counter is at least one of those frames. The only instance where you can beat this while still using one of the safety buffers is if you get the first 14 of 15 inputs frame perfectly, then opt use the bull charge buffer.
Ill probably come back to this fight eventually since its really fun to optimize despite its brutal difficulty, but I feel this is in a pretty good spot for now. Thanks for watching!")
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - Soda Popinski [0:42.83]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4hwlL3f95oY/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - Soda Popinski [0:42.83]
UPDATE: I improved the record to a 42.72! Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj_XFT8ycCY
Its been over a decade since I held the Contender Soda record, so this was a pleasant surprise for me haha. The previous record was set by Kefkamaydie back in 2009 at a 42.84, which was only just recently tied by Nolan414. I barely edged this out by improving my PB by a frame.
So yeah, I was messing around with trying to find a new strategy for Title Defense Soda, but was roadblocked by the TKO recovery being seemingly impossible in the spot needed. I was tinkering with things in emulator, and ended up also messing with regular Soda to see if that would help understand things at all.
Unfortunately, it didnt, but I was still curious on the odds, so I figured I would try attempts in order to collect some stats on the recovery relative to how many times I tap up in the fight, which was one of the main things I noticed that influenced if a recovery would work or not. It was estimated that the odds are about 25%, but I had some interesting streaks where I would get like 12 failures in a row, so some pretty extraordinarily bad luck haha. I figure its not too worth posting the stats separated by number of up presses, but from this set of attempts, I got 15 recoveries out of 63 total attempts, which was slightly below the expected 25% by being ~23.8%.
This is one of two fights in this game that requires a technique called the TKO Recovery which, as the name suggests, is when Mac resists being TKOd and gets back on his feet instead of going down for the expected TKO. This happens completely randomly, estimated to be anywhere from 15-25% on average. This makes optimizing this fight far more difficult than it would otherwise be, considering 75%+ of your attempts wont make it past this point. Champions mode is used for this fight to instantly get knocked down and skip his rage uppercuts whenever he gets up from a knockdown. It also has Soda throw a jab whenever you get up from a knockdown, which can be countered for a star!
Lets get into the fight. The first thing thats done is a delayed gut punch off of Sodas first jab, which if done correctly, yields a star. If you follow that up with a delayed jab, then throw a star as hes reeling, Soda will be instantly knocked down!
Phase 2 involves taking a knockdown to skip Sodas rage uppercuts, then getting up and countering Sodas jab for a star. Off of this counter, I buffer 2 ducks into alternating punches to hit Soda on the first possible frame as he finishes drinking his soda and walks back in, which weirdly enough, rewards a star. The instant knockdown done in phase 1 works in subsequent phases... but will require an additional star each time its done (this time requires 2). This particular attack also lets me do a delayed jab to get him into position for the instant knockdown too, since countering his bottle would just make Soda mad and rush in for a sequence of rage uppercuts.
Phase 3 has Mac take his 2nd knockdown, to which Mac gets up and counters Sodas scripted jab. Now, this delayed star punch needs to be timed in a very specific way such that Sodas next attacks gets skipped. If you throw the star punch too early, then Soda will do slow hooks after Macs next knockdown, which instantly ends the attempt. The visual cue that youve thrown it correctly is if Soda just barely gets completely centered as the star punch lands.
After the star punch, Soda reels to the back of the ring and runs back to Mac to throw more rage uppercuts, which Mac takes. This is where luck comes into play, because thats Macs 3rd knockdown, meaning we need the lucky TKO recovery. Thankfully in this run I get it!
Once Mac is back up on his feet, counter Sodas scripted jab, and counter Sodas bottle. This will make Soda mad and hell approach you to do rage uppercuts, however a delayed star punch will hit him if you time it just right, and a double star punch here is just enough to take him out for good.
This will likely be a short lived record, since there are quite a few active Wii Punch Out runners. Despite this brief run from me, Im still not in a place where Im too keen on going at it relentlessly or anything like that.
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense Disco Kid [0:22.64]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4jegaFsZS9Y/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense Disco Kid [0:22.64]
This fight requires motion controls to gain access to Macs left handed uppercut, which provokes TD Disco into doing a slightly faster pattern. This improvement also happens to tie the WR set by lee_a1x and subsequently tied by PartyAtNolans, and now me. This fight is 1 frame from the TAS, which means its inevitable that someone will pull it off. I dont feel like Ill be the first one to do it considering my infrequent attempts on him, but keep an eye out on the other 2 players I mentioned!
UPDATE: PartyAtNolans (now named Nolan414) just improved this record to 22.58, matching the TAS time. You can check that video out here if youre curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYFHtSCQAjw
So far there are 2 WR strategies in this game that have the odd privilege of needing access to Little Macs lesser known Left Handed Star Punch to provoke specific patterns from the opponents. So far these two fights include TD Von Kaiser, and TD Disco Kid.
Thankfully, TD Disco is a very short fight, however that just means that theres more of a reason to optimize the time even harder than his TD Kaiser counterpart. Ill keep at this fight to attempt to match the TAS time, but due to the nature of doing attempts on him, I will not be consistently doing attempts on him.
Anyways, lets talk about the fight itself. Start by countering his taunt, and doing a delayed gut punch to gather two stars. Throw a right handed star punch by pressing A and moving the Wii Remote forward, then allow him to go naturally into his next attack. Dodge and do a delayed gut punch into a delayed opposite gut punch to gather 2 more stars. This time, throw a *left* handed uppercut by pressing C on the nunchuk and moving the nunchuk forward.
This will provoke Disco to go into his 2 jab pattern afterwards, which you can gather 1 star from by intercepting the first jab before he even gets a chance to throw it out with a gut punch and subsequent delayed gut punch. From there, you can knock him down after blocking his next jab and stunning him with alternating body blow punches; you should have 1 star in reserve.
In phase 2, all you need to do is counter his taunt, do a delayed gut punch, then do a delayed triple star punch into his disco flurry windup and you should get an instant KO!
So yeah, I think Ill throw attempts at this fight extremely occasionally as opposed to grinding just this fight out due to the nature of motion controlled attempts being somewhat taxing to do for extended periods of time.
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Super Punch Out!! - Piston Hurricane [00549] (NTSC WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/56mkj9oIPs0/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Piston Hurricane [00549] (NTSC WR)
This run was done on an original Super Nintendo cartridge of Super Punch-Out, as well as an original Super Nintendo 1chip console that was recapped and modded with the Voultar RGB amp to restore the correct color intensity. For some more in depth information about my general RGB setup, you can check out this pastebin here: https://pastebin.com/TtXx1PQx
Additionally, Ive decided to include a non-stretched version of this fight in an unlisted video. If youd like to learn more about why Im including this too, you can check out the description in the second video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp6gWjFjX94
Piston Hurricane is notoriously the quickest fight not only in this game, but in the entire Punch-Out franchise (excluding PAL Super Punch Out anyways)! Normally, this is a fight that is designed to teach you the importance of blocking high and low for when he attempts to hit you with his Hurricane rush attack consisting of alternating jabs and hooks, however for the speedrun, he gets to show off none of this.
I remember casually getting this guy down in the 7 second range before I knew anything about what other people had done on this fight, just because Piston does not do a great job guarding or dodging repeated low super punches. You dont need to guard manipulate him, or even space these out; hell just take the full damage from all of them lol.
There are two main strategies that you can do to get in the mid 5 second range. Ill start with the easier one that anyone reading this can do, then Ill cover the strategy that you see in this video.
The easy way to do this fight for anyone here whos reading this is to start by manipulating Pistons guard up by holding Up until the first frame of the fight elapses (or 00001 on the timer occurs). If you do this correctly, you will be able to land a left handed gut punch for free. From here, you can follow that up with 2 more buffered gut punches, 3 buffered jabs, and one final buffered gut punch which will easily get Piston dizzy. If you throw a left jab and buffer a dodge, then IMMEDIATELY press the super button as your dodge starts, hell be instantly knocked down! At this point, just holding down the super punch button will instantly knock Piston down a second time for a KO! This strategy when done frame perfectly will get you a 550 on the clock.
However, the strategy in this video is slightly different, and a bit harder to pull off than the previous one. For this one, start by not pressing anything for the first frame of the fight, then for the second frame, hold the input for a left jab. Follow that up with 2 more buffered jabs, then youll need to *delay* a left body blow here. For this strategy to actually get Piston dizzy, you need this delayed punch to either be the earliest frame where he doesnt block, or one frame later than that. If you punch later than that 2 frame window, then this strategy will *not* work at all. After the delayed hit, just buffer another left jab, followed by a left gut punch, and another left jab to get him dizzy. The same jab into quick dodge buffer I mentioned above works just as well here. From here, youre home free to just hold the super punch button and itll just land instantly and KO him lol.
There really isnt anything else to this fight as far as speedrunning goes. I would highly recommend that people who want to try speedrunning this game should start with this fight, because the easy approach I mentioned above is probably just as easy, if not easier than the Gabby Jay strategy Ive posted before. Literally everyone reading this could get an incredibly fast time on Hurricane really quickly, I promise!
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense King Hippo [1:08.09]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5DHRWWwvy5g/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense King Hippo [1:08.09]
Ok so, Mysteryman95 (aka Frame by Frame Animation on yt) TASed this new strategy to see what the theoretical low was, which was 1:08.21 if you did everything frame perfectly... and... I just beat that by 2 frames somehow...
LeeA1 took back the TD Hippo record with a 1:08.33, which I tied shortly after. Later on, I decided to do more attempts, but I needed to rethink a few of my problem spots, namely the taunt star and the star punch that ends the fight. I realized I could use the pineapples as a timing cue to start a different buffer sequence that ends up being way easier for me to time than how I was doing it in the old video!
I also forgot to mention the buffer strategies in the last video description, so Ill do that here! There are 2 buffer strategies that set up 2 frame perfect punches in the fight. Youre able to throw attacks and dodges during the cutscenes where Hippos manhole cover is coming off, and since the sounds are very quiet by comparison to other Punch Out games, its kind of difficult to determine the buffer from watching.
The buffer for the 2nd phase of the manhole cover section is to buffer 5 more alternating gut punches after the punch that takes his tape off, then duck and jab for a free frame perfect counter.
The buffer for the cancel/provoke for the immediate self knockdown after the last bit of tape is punched off is to buffer a SAME SIDE punch as the one that took the tape off (you need to hit punch as Macs arm is coming back, otherwise he will not throw the punch), then do 7 more alternating gut punches from there (8 total at this point), then duck and jab.
The same side punch wastes 4 extra frames compared to usual, which is super useful because unlike the other Punch Out games, all punches are equal to each other in speed, as well as all dodge types are the same with each other, so having ANY variation from that norm opens up so many possibilities for buffers in this game.
Anyways, Ill post part of the previous videos description here to clarify stuff about the strategy itself. The fight is played in Champions Mode, which is an option you can unlock from lasting 10 fights in Macs Last Stand. This mode removes red flashing tells from opponents, and makes any attack that they throw instantly knock you down. This is utilized to minimize game time by manipulating more favorable patterns from opponents in some fights.
Typically, you skip ahead in TD Hippos pattern by 2 attacks with a self knock down in Champions Mode, but if you delay your knockdown by a tiny bit, you can have him skip *3* attacks. Not only that, but inexplicably, TD Hippo will loop back through his pattern *again* without any delay at the end, meaning you can get a comparable amount of hits that the old strategy gets, but with the advantage of cancelling the taunt after the manhole cover even faster than usual.
Im probably going to go back to Bear Hugger and cut the last frame on him (my PB is a 26.76 atm, with the record at 26.70). After that, Ill probably mess with Piston Hondo. My PB on him is currently a 33.94, and Id like to at least get 33.8X before posting anything for him on youtube (that record is 33.76).
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
