George Foreman's KO Boxing is a rather boring boxing game released in Europe for the Sega Master System. The game is known for being very easy to beat, simply by stun locking every opponent in the corner. The current run is a significant improvement over the existing publication due to much better strategy and optimization, as well as playing in PAL mode.
Improvements:
- As noted below, PAL is significantly faster then NTSC in this case so PAL mode is used.
- You have some influence on the count after each knockdown, so I minimized it as much as possible.
- By varying your punches, you can extend your combos to the point where almost all the opponent's health is gone in the first knockdown. Using this, I was able to get knockdowns 2 and 3 on the last 3 opponents with a single super punch. I wasn't able to do this on the first opponent. Eventually I ended up with every punch variety knocking him down, I think the punches are just too weak at this point.
Developement of this game.
This game has a notably complex development history. As noted at Sega retro: https://segaretro.org/Heavyweight_Champ_(8-bit) the game was originally released as "Heavyweight Champ" in several regions. It was released as "James 'Buster' Douglas Knockout Boxing" in the US, then also released as "George Foreman's KO Boxing" in Europe and Brazil. The graphics in the original and 'Buster' releases are bland compared to the Foreman version, so going with this one definitely seems like the right choice.
NTSC vs PAL
This game is able to detect which region console it is playing on. It then uses this information to vary how much it does in a frame. As a result, PAL mode is significantly faster then NTSC. The game was also released in Brazil, so 60Hz would technically be allowable, but in this case it is detrimental to use it.
Unfortunately, they made a mistake. It turns out the PAL is actually TOO fast. It inadvertantly misses a trigger to disable audio (by one frame) during loading transitions. This creates very irritiating audio buzzing in some cases. I found this to be so annoying that I considered playing in NTSC just to avoid it, but the game is pretty bad anyway so I decided it wasn't worth having what would be a much longer run.
At first I was skeptical that such a significant error would be overlooked and thought there might be an emulator bug, but Kega Fusion and TwoMBit both agree that this behaviour is correct.
Possible improvements
I think if the RNG of this game was better understood some more time could be saved, but not much. If it were possible to get KO's after the second knockdown that would be a big improvment, but I have not been able to so for any opponent.
ThunderAxe31: Judging.
ThunderAxe31: Setting to delayed, pending investigation of possible improvements.
ThunderAxe31: Resuming judging process.
ThunderAxe31: This run is very optimized. From what I can see, it seems that the opponents can be knocked out only with three knockdowns. Accepting as improvement of the published movie.
fsvgm777: Replaced movie file with one that fixes the PAL flag (and to report the proper time in the process).