zallard1 | The Big Dance-Off (TAS) @zallard1 | Uploaded March 2022 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
**Occasional flickering from my boxer & frequent camera motion warning**
When you finally reach the end of the World Circuit and face off against the champion, only to realize partway through that this is no boxing match... this is a dance competition... and you're facing off against the very best...
When I was checking stuff for my SPO Super Machoman youtube description (which can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=tb-dTAbaBSc), I was reminded of back when I was preparing for AGDQ 2014's blindfolded Super Punch-Out run, which involved a fair bit of extra blindfolded practice onsite. The big Super Metroid race was happening that Friday, which was the same day as the Punch-Out block, which meant Super Nintendos were on short supply, since those runners were constantly practicing to get ready.
I did have the fortunate opportunity to play on one semi-neglected Super Nintendo that no one else wanted to practice on for whatever reason, which was owned by PJ (@TheSuperSNES), who is a pretty well known speedrunner and good friend of mine. This Super Nintendo had a chunk of plastic missing from the front, as well as had strong discoloring like some Super Nintendos do, plus was substantially heavier than other Super Nintendos.
I'm going into detail about this SNES because the owner of this console has a bit of a reputation with extraordinarily bad luck, which sounds silly and maybe comes off as a bit of an overreaction, but no, you really have no idea unless you've met this man in person, and his Super Nintendo is of no exception.
I was undeterred by it though, because I figured "If I get the worst luck on my practice, I'll be better prepared for my run anyways" which... yes, but also no.
In one of my practice blindfolded runs, I got to Super Machoman, and for me that's a big accomplishment because at that point in time, I had only beaten the game fully one time ever. In this fight, I already missed the dizzy opportunity at the start of the fight, because Macho opened with dancing twice in a row, something that's extremely rare for him to do, but not unheard of.
The fight spiraled out of control quickly, and I desperately tried to brawl through this fight to secure a narrow victory... but then Macho decided to do something I hadn't (and still haven't) seen before, which was him dancing FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, which I panicked about, and started dodging wildly, then immediately followed that up with a spin punch while I was already hard committed to a dodge... which lost me the fight. It's so rare for such a thing to happen, because dances are just uncommon in general to see from Macho, and it especially gets ridiculous and rare when you see multiple in a row.
Remembering this absurd memory had me like "...what if I made a TAS that manipulated as many dances as I possibly could?"
I decided that this was stupid enough to where I really wanted to see it exist, so I bit the bullet and made this. For anyone unfamiliar, this fight was done using slowdown and rewinding to basically put in inputs from a controller done perfectly frame by frame, which makes my character do several things frame perfectly, and I have the ability to manipulate the opponent to have whatever luck events that I want, so long as it's technically possible within the confines of the game itself.
Manipulating Macho to dance is a tedious process, involving pressing random buttons between certain animations until you finally get Macho to bust out a dance. There are certain limits to this, because Macho will only dance when he's idle, and sometimes the game schedules him to throw out certain attacks at certain times, and you can't really force him to never throw any attack in the fight, even with all the luck manipulation in the world.
I got him to dance 108 times in total, with the biggest streak I could manipulate in a row was SEVEN DANCES without anything else coming in between, which is pretty hilarious to see in motion. The odds of 108 dances in a row are 1 in 34,175,792,574,734,561,318,320,347,298,712,833,833,643,272,357,706,444,319,152,665,725,155,515,612,490,248,800,367,393,390,985,216.
This certainly isn't perfect or anything, nor was I really aiming for it, because I'm pretty sure you could manipulate his pattern even more to have more dances, but just didn't care enough to go that far into it, lol. I also decided to manipulate maximum super spin punches (which I found was 8) every time it showed up.
This TAS ends in a loss, because... I mean... you can't outdance Macho. It cannot be done. I promise. His win was totally earned here, and I think once you see this match, you'll agree.
**Occasional flickering from my boxer & frequent camera motion warning**
When you finally reach the end of the World Circuit and face off against the champion, only to realize partway through that this is no boxing match... this is a dance competition... and you're facing off against the very best...
When I was checking stuff for my SPO Super Machoman youtube description (which can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=tb-dTAbaBSc), I was reminded of back when I was preparing for AGDQ 2014's blindfolded Super Punch-Out run, which involved a fair bit of extra blindfolded practice onsite. The big Super Metroid race was happening that Friday, which was the same day as the Punch-Out block, which meant Super Nintendos were on short supply, since those runners were constantly practicing to get ready.
I did have the fortunate opportunity to play on one semi-neglected Super Nintendo that no one else wanted to practice on for whatever reason, which was owned by PJ (@TheSuperSNES), who is a pretty well known speedrunner and good friend of mine. This Super Nintendo had a chunk of plastic missing from the front, as well as had strong discoloring like some Super Nintendos do, plus was substantially heavier than other Super Nintendos.
I'm going into detail about this SNES because the owner of this console has a bit of a reputation with extraordinarily bad luck, which sounds silly and maybe comes off as a bit of an overreaction, but no, you really have no idea unless you've met this man in person, and his Super Nintendo is of no exception.
I was undeterred by it though, because I figured "If I get the worst luck on my practice, I'll be better prepared for my run anyways" which... yes, but also no.
In one of my practice blindfolded runs, I got to Super Machoman, and for me that's a big accomplishment because at that point in time, I had only beaten the game fully one time ever. In this fight, I already missed the dizzy opportunity at the start of the fight, because Macho opened with dancing twice in a row, something that's extremely rare for him to do, but not unheard of.
The fight spiraled out of control quickly, and I desperately tried to brawl through this fight to secure a narrow victory... but then Macho decided to do something I hadn't (and still haven't) seen before, which was him dancing FIVE TIMES IN A ROW, which I panicked about, and started dodging wildly, then immediately followed that up with a spin punch while I was already hard committed to a dodge... which lost me the fight. It's so rare for such a thing to happen, because dances are just uncommon in general to see from Macho, and it especially gets ridiculous and rare when you see multiple in a row.
Remembering this absurd memory had me like "...what if I made a TAS that manipulated as many dances as I possibly could?"
I decided that this was stupid enough to where I really wanted to see it exist, so I bit the bullet and made this. For anyone unfamiliar, this fight was done using slowdown and rewinding to basically put in inputs from a controller done perfectly frame by frame, which makes my character do several things frame perfectly, and I have the ability to manipulate the opponent to have whatever luck events that I want, so long as it's technically possible within the confines of the game itself.
Manipulating Macho to dance is a tedious process, involving pressing random buttons between certain animations until you finally get Macho to bust out a dance. There are certain limits to this, because Macho will only dance when he's idle, and sometimes the game schedules him to throw out certain attacks at certain times, and you can't really force him to never throw any attack in the fight, even with all the luck manipulation in the world.
I got him to dance 108 times in total, with the biggest streak I could manipulate in a row was SEVEN DANCES without anything else coming in between, which is pretty hilarious to see in motion. The odds of 108 dances in a row are 1 in 34,175,792,574,734,561,318,320,347,298,712,833,833,643,272,357,706,444,319,152,665,725,155,515,612,490,248,800,367,393,390,985,216.
This certainly isn't perfect or anything, nor was I really aiming for it, because I'm pretty sure you could manipulate his pattern even more to have more dances, but just didn't care enough to go that far into it, lol. I also decided to manipulate maximum super spin punches (which I found was 8) every time it showed up.
This TAS ends in a loss, because... I mean... you can't outdance Macho. It cannot be done. I promise. His win was totally earned here, and I think once you see this match, you'll agree.
![Super Punch Out!! - Narcis Prince [00832] (PAL WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/thr9c6EO0hw/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Narcis Prince [00832] (PAL WR)
This run was done on an original PAL Super Nintendo cartridge of Super Punch-Out, as well as an original PAL Super Nintendo 1chip console that was recapped and modded with the Borti RGB amp.
Ive been meaning to get around to the PAL ILs for the longest time, but never found the right time to start. After my stroke, my muscle memory for games have been thrown off a bit, so I figure this is the best time to get these taken care of, because switching between the NTSC and PAL versions of this game is very confusing on the muscle memory anyways. Ill talk more about why Im doing the PAL fights in the description of my next video Ill upload (Gabby Jay), since Id like to spend the rest of this description talking about this fight.
Compared to the NTSC version of this fight, matching this TAS time is far less annoying, but still fairly annoying anyways lol. You have slightly less luck you have to put up with, due to it being impossible to do a triple gutter on PAL, making the strategy and pattern needed completely different.
Narcis can literally end your attempt on the 1st frame of the fight if he dances or walks to the side. Start the fight starts by holding Up for the 1st frame, then letting go and buffering a right gut for the 2nd frame. After that 1st gut punch, follow it up with another right gut punch. Youll then be set up to buffer a quick duck to automatically counter his hook. You can actually adjust to this if you can tell if your first punch is a frame slow, and do a quick dodge instead, which is 1 frame faster than a quick duck, but I had a hard time telling on my janky PAL setup, so I mostly stuck to just doing the quick duck every time.
In addition to the dances I mentioned before, he can also end your attempt before either gut punch by: twirling left or right, side stepping left or right and sliding away side to side. He can ALSO end your attempts during the punches themselves, by randomly block them outright, or doing a random retaliation in response.
Once you counter the hook, you just buffer a left jab while hes stunned. Punching Narcis in the face will make Narcis angry, and when hes angry, hell go to the back of the ring and comes back to throw one of 3 main patterns at you. The first 2 patterns are the one where he throws 2 jabs on your right side, which has 2 variants where hell either follow up with uppercuts or hooks, and we NEED the uppercuts for this strategy to work. The next pattern is 2 jabs on your left side, which will also be a reset, but its worth noting that if you can react and counter the hook frame perfectly and throw a stunned punch, you can get a time of 8.34, which is still really good. The final pattern is the one where he can throw a hook on your left side, then right side, which is also a reset.
After the jab lands, you need to buffer the following in any order that you prefer: 3 tap dodges, 1 low left gut, 1 left jab, and finally, end the sequence with 1 right jab. This jab will hit Narcis on the first frame that hes vulnerable from walking back after getting angry. Once it lands, you need to buffer another right jab, which will land on the first possible frame, then you need to pause as soon as the jab connects. This lets the super meter fill so that you can throw rapid jabs instantly when you unpause. Buffering them has a 6 frame window to repress the A button, otherwise youll be slow and youll lose time once the rapids are finished. With the correct pattern, Narcis can still dodge rapid jabs 2, 3, and 4, but if they all land he goes dizzy! Just do a quick duck into low super for a knockdown!
Phase 2 involves throwing a rapid jab into his jab that he tries to throw. I used a pseudo buffer of a duck into a quick duck, which worked fine for me, but I had two completed 8.34s before getting this one lol. Once the rapid lands, youll need to do a buffer for the final uppercut (I went with right gut, quick dodge, right got, into uppercut). This final uppercut can still kill your run at the very end if you get bad luck with him dodging or blocking, but I thankfully got it this time.
This took 4 days of attempts, with just small half hour bursts here and there. The video quality has an annoying issue during transitions where you can see power supply noise, which sucks but Im not redoing this fight lol. I found the issue so it wont show up for future videos (power supply needs to not be plugged into a power strip with other stuff active). I have the attempt session from power-on in an unlisted video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1MJZ3zDz0
The total odds for this fight come out to 1 in about ~931, which is a decent bit better than NTSCs 1 in 1600. If youd like to see the math & events, itll be in the attempt session YouTube description.
With this fight done, the rest of the PAL ILs should be an absolute cakewalk. Ill do the rest chronologically and upload them every other couple of days.
Total stats:
3.39s: 98
6.75s: 4
Thanks for watching!")
![Super Punch Out!! - Mad Clown [00901] (NTSC WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u1lbpG4Wci4/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Mad Clown [00901] (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=Q1bddZn6DtA
So, the longstanding 905 strategy on Mad Clown that was first published in the Super Punch Out TAS back in 5/29/2007 has been improved 2 times recently. To see that original strategy, you can check out my recent upload of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs6AEtl-HMs
Lixunis was finding strategies for the PAL version of Super Punch Out recently, which actually has several wildly different strategies from the NTSC version, but ended up checking the NTSC version for things recently for full game speedrun stuff. On 3/14/2022, he posted an improvement from 905 to 903 in the Super Punch Out speedrunning discord server.
That strategy involved 6 frame perfect things you needed to time, as well as an extra unstunned jab, which increases the luck needed greatly. However on 4/4/2022, he found *another* improvement that cut it down to 901, but requires *another* frame perfect punch, bringing the total to 7, making this fight the most difficult strategy to execute that this game has to offer.
I had a weirdly hard time matching this tied record, because despite how quickly I hit the 903, I kept messing up phase 2 every time I got there on pace during attempts. The phase 2 counter was the main culprit, as I just didnt have a great cue that worked for me consistently.
Usually you have to resort to feel on punches like this, but I simply wasnt great at getting the feel for that spacing down. I ended up not playing the game for ~2 weeks, but came back to it today and thankfully got it very quickly with no practice.
This fight starts with you pressing nothing for the first frame, and then pressing Up and Y to throw a left jab on the next frame. Follow that up with another buffered left jab, with Mad Clown hopefully standing still without random retaliations and not randomly blocking. From there, Clown will throw a jab on your left side, and youll need to do a delayed left jab to counter it.
Once the jab is countered, youll have to land a right jab on the same frame that Clowns stun ends, which is a very awkward timing. I opted to do a pseudo buffer by timing a quick duck shortly after I visually see Clowns sprite change into his stunned sprite. Then you have to throw a left jab with a *very* small delay, then delay a right jab by 1 frame so Clowns move timer advances just enough to do buffered rapid jabs on Clowns upcoming hook.
Buffering rapid jabs requires pressing A, letting go when you see your character start his super, then repressing it. That rapid jab will hit him out of that hook animation and make him instantly go dizzy. Since rapid jabs made him dizzy, the buffer strategy needs to be different than the one in the 905. Hold left, and dont let go until your character centers himself, then press Left then Up in rapid succession, along with A to throw an uppercut to knock Clown down.
Clown opens phase 2 by either him doing a taunt where hes pointing to his stomach, which means hell retaliate when you attempt to throw a punch, or by standing there. Start by pressing nothing on the first frame the fight starts back up, then press Up + A to throw an uppercut (theres a 3/8 chance he dodges). Once that lands, Clown will do a jab on your right, that you need to counter with a right jab, and then buffer another uppercut for knockdown 2.
If you got this far, then congratulations, because youve basically finished the fight! For phase 3, Mad Clown always opens with Show Time, which involves him throwing really fast jabs. Because of Show Time, you can easily counter his first jab by buffering a right jab as soon as the phase begins, and because of how fast phase 2 was, hell come back with so little health that hell go right back down when the jab lands.
I did this fight offline while watching other streams, so unfortunately theres no live reaction. I did record the full attempt session, which totals to about 11 and a half minutes, so I figured I might as well upload it in its entirety too. You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxNGng8q4DI
Also here are some stats on how many frame perfect phase 1s I got, as well as how each of them failed to net me 901.
Frame perfect phase 1s: 35
Dodged in phase 2: 9
Taunted in phase 2: 10
Too slow in phase 2: 8
Too fast on phase 2 uppercut: 3
Too fast on phase 2 counter: 4
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Splatterhouse (Arcade) - Speed Run [13:37]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uC3B_PTHt_g/hqdefault.jpg "Splatterhouse (Arcade) - Speed Run [13:37]
This was played on an original Splatterhouse arcade PCB on the H.A.S. supergun. My Splatterhouse PCB also now has the EVERTEN stereo expansion board, so the audio is more clear now with separate stereo channels! This run was done on the hardest difficulty, which starts you at 2HP instead of the default 4HP.
This was also recorded through the Datapath E1 capture card via RGB and upscaled to 4k, so this quality is about as crisp as you can possibly get on real hardware. For comparison, you can check out my slower 13:37 run from a while back which was recorded via S-Video to see how much better the recording quality has gotten: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvgl8DadM6M
It is also worth noting that the game is running at a slightly higher framerate than the home release ports out there (JP Wii VC at 59.94 fps, and the Namco Museum version runs at ~60 fps). This board appears to run at about 60.60 frames a second, so this benefits from small time gains compared to those versions.
So stormcrow56k picked this game up for speedrunning recently, and found a couple of new strategies in a few spots. The main optimization he found was for the stage 2 boss, where he found an approach to kill the chair with one punch and one slidekick, however its extremely difficult and inconsistent, so he also found a backup strategy that minimizes time loss if you dont get it, which helps justify going for it.
Beyond the chair kill, theres a really hard strategy that requires good luck on knives such that they cross in the center of the room, as well as a really difficult jump-punch strategy to take out the 2 airborne knives, which requires pressing jump and punch on the same frame to get Rick to carry his punch state into the air and punch twice in the air. Normally when you do a jump, your first attack will always be a jump kick, and any subsequent attack will be a jump punch (unless you hold down for more jump kicks).
The other find that stormcrow found was for the Jennifer boss fight in stage 5. Effectively, you can exchange one of the punches early in the the fight with a very late slide kick for the last attack, which saves you one attack and nets you a tiny bit of time.
As far as the overall run, I didnt get a great stage 3 boss kill just because I missed the jump kick as he jumped forward, which allows him to jump after every couple of shots (he wont jump if his HP is at an odd value, and shotgun blasts deal 2HP of damage).
I also missed the optimal knife kills on the stage 2 boss due to the difficulty of them, but kept the run going just because it still had a small chance of getting a new record. The exact time of this run is a 13:37.357, which beats the old run by almost exactly half a second (old record was an 13:37.856).
Should hopefully be able to beat this soon. The record probably wont stay at a 13:37 for long, so this will likely be the last one this game sees!
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Super Punch Out!! - Narcis Prince [00826]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uXrU6xjn8us/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Narcis Prince [00826]
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=RWRlCMDAGys
Narcis Prince is the most random fight in the game, and is the only one that doesnt have dozens of people tying the TAS because of it. A few people have been able to match it recently during the pandemic, but its a huge range from being a quick one to get, to taking close to a year of consistent effort to get. This fight is the entire reason Ive redone my ILs in RGB quality, to motivate me to improve my time and inch closer to, and eventually match, the record of 820. My PB on this fight was an 828 set in 2014, until I improved it recently to the 826 you see right here.
Ive been grinding mostly just this fight on my Twitch channel, with several stats Ive been tracking, and a running timer during attempts. Ive also been exporting streams of this grind to my alt account on YouTube. You can check out the playlist for that (with more comments) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXiI-lPUXEQ&list=PLt0miTqQ0e4i4dz-YRuBp4TJw-2DfmPiI
Narcis can end your attempt on the 1st frame of the fight if he dances or walks to the side, before you even get to do anything. The fight starts by holding Up for the 1st frame, then letting go and buffering a left gut for the 2nd frame. After that 1st gut punch, follow it up with 2 more left gut punches. You have a 2 frame window to do that guard manipulation, otherwise Narcis will block your 3rd gut punch due to him starting his scheduled hook.
Landing those 3 gut punches is an absolute ordeal. In addition to the dances I mentioned before, he can also end your attempt before *every* gut punch by: twirling left or right, side stepping left or right and sliding away side to side. He can ALSO end your attempts during the punches themselves, by randomly block them outright, or doing a random retaliation in response.
After landing the 3 gut punches, Narcis will throw a hook on your left, which youll need to counter with a low left gut punch. Once you land it, you need to hit Narcis on the final frame of his stun animation from the counterpunch, which thankfully has a buffer that works every time, although its just finicky enough to where you could lose attempts on it once a blue moon. To do it, tap and hold left or right until you see your character start to dodge, then IMMEDIATELY let go of dodge so that your boxer goes through his dodge animation. As soon as your character is about to center himself, then press Up plus Y to throw a jab, which should hit Narcis to where his recoil animation is faster and he instantly becomes angry.
When Narcis is in his angry phase, hell go to the back of the ring (which resets the dizzy meter entirely) and comes back to throw one of 3 main patterns at you. The first (and most common) pattern is the one where he throws 2 jabs on your right side, which is an immediate reset if it happens, because hell block it. The next pattern is 2 jabs on your left side, which will also be a reset. The final pattern is the one where he can throw a hook on your left side, then right side, which is the one we *need* to have a chance.
As soon as the delayed jab lands that makes Narcis angry, you need to buffer a left gut, into a quick duck, then cancel that with another left gut, into right jab, then left jab. Once the left jab lands, you NEED to pause the game to let the super meter catch up; if you dont, then Narcis cant get dizzy. Then you need to buffer rapid jabs, which has a 6 frame window to repress the A button, otherwise youll be too slow and Narcis cant get dizzy. With the good pattern, Narcis can still dodge the initial jab, as well as your 1st and 4th rapid jabs. Once all rapid jabs land, just do a quick duck into low super for a knockdown!
Phase 2 just has you throwing a rapid jab into his jab that he attempts to throw. I do a pseudo buffer where I tap duck, into a quick duck, but I time that 2nd duck exactly when I see my boxer fully centered. Once your rapid jab lands, buffer a quick dodge, into a right jab, low jab, and uppercut. This uppercut is so awful and rare, but if it lands, then youve finished the fight! To put it in perspective, back in 2014, I got this uppercut to land 1 time out of 30+ attempts, which is abysmal luck.
Ill still try to improve this closer to the record periodically, but its a brutal grind. Hoping Ill get some nice improvements sooner rather than later!
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Super Punch Out!! - Nick Bruiser [00749] (PAL WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/u_AJnZir_GE/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Nick Bruiser [00749] (PAL WR)
This run was done on an original Spanish Super Nintendo cartridge of Super Punch-Out, as well as an original PAL Super Nintendo 1chip console that was recapped and modded with the Borti RGB amp.
Here’s the final fight of PAL Super Punch Out, and I’d by lying if I said it was anything other than anticlimactic, lol.
The NTSC version of Nick Bruiser is almost identical to this fight, aside from one small difference in execution. If you’d like to compare that fight to this one, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR1kxwZutr8
NTSC Nick requires you to hit one mandatory frame perfect counter, as well as a couple of buffered inputs to match the 7’52” TAS time. However, would you believe me if I said that the PAL version is even easier?
That’s right, you just have to memorize a couple of buffer strategies and keep rolling the dice until you win, ultimately requiring very little skill to pull off.
The strategy begins just like the NTSC version does, where you simply buffer 2 left jabs. This is the only fight in the entire game where you can simply punch an opponent in the face without needing to worry about guard manipulation, so it makes the inputs for the first attack trivial.
Once you land the 2 jabs, you need to buffer a quick duck into a right jab to perfectly counter Nick’s jab to where his recoil animation is faster than usual (Nick may throw a hook here, which ruins attempts 50% of the time). For the NTSC version, this has to be hit manually, but for this version, that buffer makes it automatically free for the player.
Once you land the jab, you need to buffer a left jab, then do a tap duck which involves holding Down on the dpad until the instant you see your character start to duck, then immediately let go. Once your character is almost centered, buffer B to hit Nick on the final frame of his stun. From this point forward, you need several more luck events to align. From there, just buffer 2 left jabs and he should go dizzy assuming he doesnt block at all. With Nick going into his dizzy animation, just buffer 2 right gut punches into 2 low supers for the knockdown at 5”28.
Phase 2 is trivial, as you just need to buffer 2 consecutive uppercuts. If you get all of the luck, then the 2nd uppercut will land, and Nick will be down for the KO.
It’s extremely easy to execute this strategy in full, but the real deterrent for doing something like this in full game runs is the luck, so let’s take a look at the luck real quick…
Phase 1:
-Nick throws a jab (1/2)
-Nick’s delay for his 2nd attack is 80 frames* (1/4)
-Total Phase 1 odds: (1/2)*(1/4) = (1/8) = 12.5%
*You won’t see if you got the correct delay until the first uppercut of phase 2 lands.
Phase 2:
-Nick throws a jab (1/2)
-Landing an unstunned uppercut (5/8)
-Nick doesn’t get the 24 frame delay for next attack [prevents him blocking 2nd uppercut] (7/8)
-Total Phase 2 odds: (1/2)*(5/8)*(7/8) = 35 / 128 = ~1 / 3.6571 (or ~27.34%)
Total fight odds: (1/8)*(35/128) = 35 / 1,024 = ~1 / 29.2571 (or ~3.4%)
The luck ends up being the 2nd worst odds to complete a strategy in the entire game, with only Narcis being rarer.
The good thing is that the execution is so trivial that it handily makes up for the unfavorable luck requirements to make this one of the easiest records in the entire game.
Phew, and that’s it for the PAL version of Super Punch Out! That was a pretty fun diversion and I’m glad I finally got around to tying these records.
Right now I’m having arm issues (cubital tunnel), so I’ll be taking a break from speedrun attempts for a while, but once it’s better, I’d like to match the Narcis Prince TAS time on the NTSC version to round out my TAS ties in this game in all regions.
After that, I’d probably be more inclined to improve my full game run, as my PB is 6 years old at this point and a lot of new things have been found since I ran it last.
In the meantime while I heal, I’m probably going to start uploading the couple of marathon runs that I’ve done over the years that I haven’t gotten around to yet.
I stopped uploading them at the Calithon run of Double Punch Out in 2017, and there’s still a couple more between that and the 2019 Wii Punch Out run that I haven’t uploaded yet. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and perhaps this is the best time to get that taken care of.
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
![Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense Mr. Sandman [0:38.73] (Non-Headgear WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ulu1jvluVgo/hqdefault.jpg "Punch Out!! (Wii) - Title Defense Mr. Sandman [0:38.73] (Non-Headgear WR)
EDIT: Ive beaten this time with a 34.64 using headgear if you wanna check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spMeNqEKjdk
This is a weird case, because I intentionally did an obsolete strategy on this fight, but theres a decent reason for it. The best known strategy for Title Defense Sandman currently requires the use of the 100 loss headgear, which is used to tank a ton of provoked hits since the timer slows down significantly during these hits. You also cannot use the headgear in exhibition, so you *need* to have a separate 100 loss file and be at TD Sandman in career mode to get *one* shot at completing the fight.
That all just seemed like a pain and it feels weird using a tool thats in the game for players who have trouble progressing in the game for a speedrun. Also, my current new file Ive started since Ive come back to Punch Out Wii has a terrible TD Sandman time and I hate it, so I did the next best strategy that Mysteryman found so the time looks nice in my menu, which is possibly the weakest reason to grind this ever lol.
Given all of that, this strategy was overall really fun to pull off! The challenge is quite high, with a lot of interesting quirks that you need to keep in mind throughout the fight. I gave this strategy literally a single night of learning/attempts to throw down some kind of time on this, and I dont regret a second of it, hahaha.
This fight begins by buffering a hook to make Sandmans first attack come out faster. Then, instead of countering his eye for a star, I punch him in the gut to make him reel to the side. If you do a delayed jab at just the right timing, Sandman will sidestep it and do a hook. If you get him to throw a MY TURN hook, this slows down the timer SUBSTANTIALLY! The side that Mac throws his jab will determine what type of hook Sandman throws, and it alternates every punch that Mac throws with a left right right order usually.
Anyways, with the first gut punch that intercepts his first wink, a delayed left jab is needed to get the first correct hook out of Sandman. For his second wink, throw another delayed gut punch, followed by a delayed *right* jab this time for the My Turn hook. This part here is tricky, and I didnt pull out TAS tools to explore this further, but you need to press up in a specific way so that Mac can throw a blocked punch faster than normal after Sandman hits him the 2nd time. My very janky solution to this was to mash up and punch rapidly to get it to work sometimes. Whenever I do the headgear strategy, Ill definitely have a better explanation for this one!
Once that blocked punch is thrown, throw yet another delayed left jab, take the hook to the face, then counter his quick overhead punch (this window is much tighter than the first fight). Youll have to throw a blocked punch to cancel his Night Night hook, then throw the star after a slight hesitation to cancel his Stand still! attack. This will force him into throwing his quiet hook from the left, which is right before his first Dreamland Express. Counter this for a star, then throw a delayed right hook to force him into one more My turn hook, then duck it, throw a punch to make him reel, then throw a star punch late enough to where the timer doesnt speed up, yet still scores an instant knockdown. A 2:43 is pretty tight, but doable here.
For phase 2, you need to counter his eye this time since your heart count is shot. This eye counter is random, with a 50% chance of being in your favor, so just guess which one you get, and commit fully to it being on your side. Once you get the star, throw it asap to skip his 2nd wink, then counter the 3rd wink, which will 100% be on the first side he started with. Hell immediately go into a second Dreamland Express, oddly enough. Once he start to back up, provoke him with a right hook, then duck the final My turn hook, throw a punch, and do another delayed star punch to hopefully take him down for the second time. I was really close to a 2:31 here, which is a shame I missed it, but I dont feel like grinding this fight super hard to get it.
For phase 3, theres a glitch you can do to punch Sandman as the cutscene starts, which is frame perfect (EDIT: it appears to actually be 2 frames after Mystery double checked it). Its kind of hilarious and serves no purpose, so its just funny frame perfect swag. This phase is just countering 2 winks that always start on the left, and buffer the double star for the TKO.
So, I decided to do this fight because Im taking a detour away from Wii Punch Out for a little bit. Ive promised sinister1 that I would grind Mike Tyson for the fabled phase 3 uppercut, which Ive never attempted before. This was off of an ill timed bet/promise I made, but is kind of funny how it unfolded. Check out sinisters perfectly executed Tyson PB here, along with the lore that goes along with this silly promise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVeE7SdCjiA
Anyways, thank you for watching!")
![Mike Tysons Punch-Out - 2 player 1 controller blindfolded speedrun w/ sinister1 @ AGDQ 2020 [23:39]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/v4HnZ4-_HzI/hqdefault.jpg "Mike Tysons Punch-Out - 2 player 1 controller blindfolded speedrun w/ sinister1 @ AGDQ 2020 [23:39]
This was absolutely ridiculous, and the first time we ever beat the game in this fashion without passwords, let alone a flawless 14-0 with zero knockdowns. I am utterly speechless and I cant thank sinister1 enough for agreeing to attempt this with me.")
![Splatterhouse 2 - Speed Run [15:33]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vYE3vVS0rEU/hqdefault.jpg "Splatterhouse 2 - Speed Run [15:33]
Yet again beat my record, this time by about 1.6 seconds, which is close, but not quite enough to get to a 15:32, since my last run was a high 15:34. Anyways, this run had most of the big stuff hit correctly, with only a handful of minor errors here and there, so were getting real close to a run that Im satisfied with!
Also, this was captured off of an S-Video modded model 1 Sega Genesis with an original cartridge of Splatterhouse 2.")
![Super Punch Out!! - Aran Ryan [00845] (NTSC WR)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vrDmWhUVyOk/hqdefault.jpg "Super Punch Out!! - Aran Ryan [00845] (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=LaLv-oY5f5E
Aran Ryan in this game has a couple of unique qualities to him. Aran takes barely any damage from all of your normal punches, so hes hyper resistant to everything aside from Supers. To illustrate this, all of your normals (left/right jab and left/right body blow) all do only a measly 2 damage each, with Arans full health bar being 80HP total. Compare that to Gabby Jay, where left jab deals 4 damage, right jab deals 5 damage, left gut does 3 damage, and right gut deals 4 damage. Effectively, your damage output on average is cut *in half* compared to Gabby.
However, if you throw a low super at Gabby, it deals 10 damage, and an uppercut landed on Gabby deals 17 damage, which is pretty solid damage. If you land a low super on Aran, it deals *20* damage, and an uppercut deals *23* damage, which is a *massive* increase in damage output, even compared to the weakest boxer in the game!
This fight is designed this way in order to make sure that youre skillful enough to maintain and effectively use your super meter to the fullest. If you are having trouble doing that in general, then youre going to be stuck on this fight until you pass that skill check and are reasonably capable of putting up a good offense with those supers.
Despite Arans ridiculous defense against normal punches, he ends up being a really simple and straightforward fight to get the record on, with barely any randomness, and only really 2 things that you need to time perfectly in order to master this strategy.
Start the fight by holding Up for the first frame of the fight, and then letting go and pressing Y to do a left handed gut punch. From here, buffer another left gut punch, then buffer a right jab into a left jab. Aran will then leap to the left side of the ring, and youll need to time a left jab as quickly as you possibly can. I try to time this jab around when I see the start of Arans leap animation. The dizzy meter is somewhat tight, with you needing to hit this jab within a 4 frame window in order for Aran to successfully go into dizzy status.
Once you land that timed jab, then buffer 2 more left gut punches to send Aran reeling to the side. If youre wanting to do this for a full game run, then I would recommend buffering quick duck into a left gut punch, into a left jab, into a low super. This wastes 1 frame compared to the optimal knockdown, which uses that same technique I mentioned on Mr. Sandman to burn frames in the previous phase. This is because Aran has a similar thing as the Bald Bull IL where he can randomly dodge supers if a one is thrown while hes idle.
Burning that single frame during the dizzy prevents him from dodging your low super at the start of phase 2 when its buffered. If you are specifically going for the world record though and need that single frame, then the buffer strategy you want to do would be a left gut punch, into a right gut punch, into a low super to knock him down. I also use low supers for the knockdowns, since low super happens to be a whopping 84 frames faster than knocking Aran down with an uppercut.
Once Aran gets up, just hold A to buffer a low super to come out on the first frame. If you did the safe buffer in phase 1, youll still have lost that frame, but the super will land 100% of the time. If you went for the buffer thats 1 frame faster, Aran can dodge this roughly 50% of the time. Once the super lands, you can do one of two buffers here depending on what your goals are, because Aran will reel backward and attempt to grab you, but can do 2 different delays before actually committing to it.
If you want to just finish a fight for a full game run, then just do 2 tap ducks (press Down and then let go immediately as soon as you see your character start to duck), then do a quick duck by pressing Down and immediately cancelling it by throwing a low super with the A button. This will net you a time in the 8.7X range typically, and accounts for all types of delays Aran can throw out with his grab.
If you are specifically going for the record on Aran, then the buffer you want to do here is a left jab into a quick duck thats cancelled with a low super. This will ensure that you hit Aran with your low super on the first possible frame if he throws out the fastest delay. If he doesnt, then the fight ends up being a reset.
Anyways, thanks for watching!")
