Submission #7417: DJ Incendration's NES Punch-Out!! no TKO in 25:38.23

Punch-Out!! No TKO is a hack of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! It has the same opponents, same patterns, very different strategies, since you can't TKO your opponents. However, you have infinite star punches, allowing for ultra-fast knockdowns. This submission improves on my previous submission by 23 seconds real time and 32 seconds or so in game. I decided to submit this only because it's a big improvement to my older TAS. The new times are as follows:

It's faster (in-game time) to knock him down several times, rather than knocking him out at 42.00, as shown here. Also, in phase 1, holding up while each star punch lands (and delaying some) will deal more damage, saving a star punch (and a delay later on.)

I still can't find the pattern for 36.97 TKO on my own, so I had to use a slightly slower strat for phase 1 and a modified strat for phase 3.

Just do the same strat, except don't get a star at the beginning.

Oh boy, this fight was still hard to optimize. Landing a star into his open-mouth punches deals more damage than normal, so I do that where needed. This improvement comes from a slight reordering of stars.

Five star punches will knock him down for the first time. He gets up on 1 twice, so two more stars send him down twice more. I throw 1 more star punch, which he takes, but then he'd start dodging my star punches if I didn't jab, block or dodge, jab (if blocked) and star (either way.) For the next phase, punch, dodge, star, repeat, jab, block, jab, star for the knockdown. When he gets up, punch, dodge, star. Now he goes into punches on his own, a lot faster. Duck his punch, jab, star for the knockdown. Duck, star for KO.

The old strategy I used had the 52.82 strat for phases 1, 2 and 3. However, I found a 3 second improvement to those phases, even though it's eaten back up later on. For phases 4 and 5, I do 55.25 strat, since I don't have 3 stars anymore. For phase 6, throw 3 stars to counter all three of his hooks, dodge his uppercut and throw a star punch. He will get up on the count of 1, so counter his punch with a star punch to send him down again. Here's where he gets up on the count of 9, like Bald Bull 2. Duck his first three punches, following up with a star punch after each one. Dodge his uppercut, and press Start, which will send him down to the mat again. Now, the Bull Charge will happen, since the clock is at the right time to do so. Hit him in the gut at the right time, and send him down in one hit. When he gets up, counter two hooks with two star punches, wait for the rolling jabs, and star him for the knockdown. Star him twice more for the KO!

This is the one fight that uses only star punches to knock out the opponent.

This fight takes advantage of his instant knockdown. Since you only have 8 hearts, some more star punches had to be used.

Uses 1:08.48 strat to start, found a small improvement after that. This was still a pain to optimize.

My goal was to try to get him down in just one cycle each time, and in less time than the previous submission.

Uses all the stars at the beginning, dodging and countering with gut punches where needed. When he goes into the hooks pattern, I duck and throw star punches where faster, or punch, dodge, jab, star punch where faster.

As usual, the normal fastest no CS strat for phases 1, 2 and 3 turned out slower. I found a strat that saved After that, the fight continues from there.

Mike Tyson: 1:31.48

Oh boy, this was still painful to optimize at times, but overall, more fun than the last submission. It is possible to KO everyone except Great Tiger and Bald Bull in the original game, but this hack is a way to KO everyone. Happy April Fools day!

Possible improvements:

Honda 1's other max damage (36.97) strat could have been used for phases 1 and 3, but I couldn't find how to do that, and I'm sure it would desync if I copied inputs from my other TASes, since the RNG cycles are different.

Possible missed optimizations that I don't know of

Special thanks:

I would like to thank McHazard for making the Punch-Out!! TASes, this would not have been possible without his work in developing strategies. Also, thanks go out to my parents, for reading my times, since I'm totally blind. Special thanks go out to the whole Punch-Out!! speedrunning community for helping me to step down from speedrunning and go back to all TASing. I appologize for what happened before, but now it's 2021.

Samsara: I'll be judging this without any knockouts as well. I guess that isn't different from how I usually judge, though, except for that one time. We don't talk about that time.

Samsara: The hack still suffers from the same issues I brought up in last year's submission, namely that the purpose of the no TKO challenge is kinda defeated by the addition of infinite star punches, but the addition of infinite star punches does actually set this hack apart from what a normal no TKO run would look like on the original game. It's an interesting enough tweak and this is a solid enough run that I think we can Playground this.