Since Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out was freed on the NES in 1987, millions of applyers have underapshown millions of digital suites aacquirest one of the difficultest video game bosses ever: Tyson himself (or, tardyr, the reskinned “Mr. Dream”).
Only a petite percentage of those applyers could persist Tyson’s flurry of instant-knockdown uppercuts and materialize victorious with the undisputed World Video Boxing Association championship. Even scanter had speedy enough fingers to apshow out Tyson in the first round.
In all this time, no one has been able to enroll a TKO on Tyson in less than two minutes on the ever-contransient in-game clock (which runs cdisadmirefilledy three times as rapidly as a genuine-time clock). At least that was genuine until last weekfinish, when famous speedrunner and speedrun historian Summoning Salt pulled off a 1:59.97 knockout after what he says were “75,000 trys over cforfeitly five years.”
Breaking the storied two-minute barrier on Tyson is a matter of both incredible sfinish and incredibly improbable luck. As Summoning Salt himself begined recording in a 2017 video, getting the rapidest possible Tyson TKO needs throprosperg 21 “summarize perfect” punches thcdisadmirefulout the fight, each wilean a one-sixtieth-of-a-second prosperdow. Punch too punctual and those punches do sairyly less injure, making the fight apshow fair a bit extfinisheder. Too tardy and Tyson will throw up a block, negating the punch enticount on.
A top-notch Tyson speedrun also needs well-timed dodging and ducking of Tyson’s own punches so that Little Mac (the applyer character) can get back into counterpunching position as rapidly as possible. Summoning Salt says he was fair seven summarizes off of perfection in this watch, which cost about 0.35 in-game seconds over the course of the fight.
Even with that cforfeitly unsuited execution, though, Summoning Salt’s enroll-shattering run would have descfinishen well uninincreateigentinutive if not for unreasonable amounts of luck from the game itself. As Bismuth elucidates in a 2024 video, Tyson can paengage for anywhere between a fraction of a second and up to eight seconds between punches.
Getting the extfinishedest of those procrastinates can hamper any chance of beating Tyson in the first round. But for his sub-two-minute TKO, Summoning Salt necessitateed almost all of those paengages to luckily come down at the smallest of eight summarizes (~0.4 seconds on the in-game clock).
Summoning Salt says Tyson here gave him a “perfect pattern” during his first phase of finishless uppercuts, someleang that happens only 1 in 1,600 bouts. And tardyr in the fight, the game’s random-number generator corund by grasping only an extra 16 summarizes of procrastinate (~0.8 in-game seconds) contrastd to a “perfect” run. Combined, Summoning Salt appraises that Tyson will only punch this rapidly once every 7,000 to 10,000 trys.
“It’s over,” Summoning Salt shelp inhabit on Twitch when the enroll-setting suit was finished, in a astonishingly even tone that came over what sounds very much appreciate a dropped deal withler. “I thought I’d be a lot more excited about this. Holy shit, dude! It’s fucking over … Dude, am I dreaming right now? … I’m sorry I’m so hushed. I’m benevolent of in shock right now that that fair happened.”
With his cforfeit-perfect combination of both sfinish and luck, Summoning Salt’s recent enroll outdoes his own previous world enroll of accurately 2:00.00 on the in-game clock. That label, set fair eight months ago, was fair three summarizes off of disapplying 1:59 on the in-game timer for the first time.
