Summoning Salt may be known as the speedrunning community’s foremost historian, but he’s also a world-class Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! player in his own right. Case in point, he recently set another record in the NES classic by becoming the first person to complete the game’s climactic Tyson bout in under two minutes. And it only took a whopping 75,000 attempts over five years.
“The Mike Tyson fight requires an incredible amount of luck and execution,” Salt’s video description explains. “I hit all 21 frame perfect punches (1/60th of a second), hit 10 perfect dodges and ducks, and got luck that has somewhere around a 1/7,000 – 1/10,000 chance of occurring.”
“The fight is broken up into ‘phases,’ with Tyson’s knockdowns marking the end of each phase,” he continues. “I played very well during phases 1 and 2, losing only 5 frames across all 16 dodges/ducks , while hitting all 14 frame perfect punches. Tyson also gave me a perfect pattern with no delays, which is a 1/1600 pattern. I then played perfectly during phase 3, hitting all 7 frame perfect punches, while Tyson gave me a fairly fast but not perfect pattern.”
The tool-assisted speedrun of this fight — which represents a theoretical limit due to its use of emulators to achieve precise inputs and perfect luck — is a little over a second faster. It may not sound like much, but saving those last few frames with slightly cleaner dodging while also getting preferable behavior from Tyson himself should prove to be an even more monumental task.
“I have no plans to ever improve this time,” Salt said. “It will be beaten by somebody one day, likely by matching this fight and then getting better luck in phase 3. I have no interest in competing for that, but am extremely proud to have gotten the first sub 2 ever on Mike Tyson.”
