Punch-Out’s Mike Tyson has been defeated in under two minutes for the first time
Since Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was first released on the NES in 1987, millions of players have undertaken millions more digital matches against one of the hardest video game bosses ever, Tyson himself (or, later, the reskinned “Mr. Dream”). Only a small percentage of those players have been able to survive Tyson’s flurry of instant-knockdown uppercuts and emerge victorious with the undisputed World Video Boxing Association championship. Even fewer have had fast enough fingers to take out Tyson in the first round.
In all that time, no one has been able to register a TKO on Tyson in less than two minutes on the ever-present in-game clock (which runs roughly three times as quickly as a real-time clock). At least, that was true until this weekend, when popular speedrunner and speedrun historian Summoning Salt pulled off a 1:59.97 knockout after what he says was “75,000 attempts over nearly 5 years.”
Incredibly good and incredibly lucky
Breaking the storied 2:00 barrier on Tyson is a matter of both incredible skill and incredibly unlikely luck. As Summoning Salt himself started documenting in a 2017 video, getting the quickest possible Tyson TKO requires throwing 21 “frame perfect” punches throughout the fight, each within a 1/60th of a second window. Too early, and those punches do slightly less damage, making the fight take just a bit longer. Too late, and Tyson will throw up a block, negating the punch entirely.
