This submission is meant to be an improvement over
https://tasvideos.org/5522M , which beat all 14 fighters in Difficult? Punch-Out!! in 13:28.58 of in-game time and 18:04.20 of real time. This submission features in-game time improvements in 4 of the 14 fights, and finishes with a time of 13:23.62. Note that this TAS prioritizes in-game time over real time, meaning the TAS is optimized to be as fast as possible in terms of real time while still getting the fastest (known) possible in-game time on each of the fights. Difficult? Punch-Out!! is a romhack of Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream, despite the fact that the final boss in this romhack is Mike Tyson (who is featured as the final boss in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!). The romhack can be found here:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4476 .
Here are the times for each of the 14 fights:
Glass Joe - 47.48 (was 47.61)
- The improvement on this fight comes from saving a punch by rerouting Phase 1 so that I knock Joe down with a star punch instead of a face punch, erasing the need to punch him an extra time to end the phase with 2 stars. This only ends up saving a couple frames as I have to wait for Joe to throw a jab and intercept it with a left gut punch in order for the phase to properly work out.
- The fight demonstrated in this TAS finishes on the 3rd frame of the .48 decimal. However, by replacing the left gut punch intercept towards the end of the fight with a right gut punch thrown 2 frames earlier and by replacing the right gut punch at the very start of a fight with a left gut punch, 2 frames can saved, allowing the fight to finish on the 1st frame of the .48 decimal. This doesn't actually change the in-game decimal, and as you're only able to progress from the blue screen after each fight every 8 frames, which essentially results in an 8-framerule (this 8-framerule also applies for the start of each fight, but that's not really relevant at the moment), no real time is saved either. The reason the fight included in this TAS finishes on the 3rd frame is because I'd only found this 2 frame timesave after submitting this TAS, and it seems rather pointless to have to get the submission file replaced for a "timesave" that doesn't even save any time.
Von Kaiser - 34.48 (was 34.61)
- This improvement was pretty simple. During the star punch that causes Kaiser's 2nd knockdown, I hold up to raise his guard. This makes Kaiser start the next phase with his guard up, which allows me to land a gut punch, which is a couple frames faster than the face punch that was used in the previous TAS.
Piston Honda 1 - 39.61
Don Flamenco 1 - 14.00
King Hippo - 53.48
Great Tiger - 36.97
Bald Bull 1 - 56.61
- This fight didn't end up having any improvement, but it's tantalizing close. The fight shown in this TAS finishes on the 3rd frame of the .61 decimal, but 2 frames can be saved by knocking Bull down with a gut punch instead of a face punch for his 1st knockdown, meaning this fight is actually only a single frame away from being a .48. A face punch was used as it doesn't lose any in-game time in this instance but saves around half a second of real time due to the shorter knockdown animation. In Phase 2 of the fight, I'm forced to duck Bull's uppercut suboptimally. Attempting to duck any earlier will result in the input failing, as Little Mac is still performing his previous action, which is face punching Bull to obtain a star. Annoyingly, this face punch had to be delayed by 1 frame as he'd otherwise block. This means that if someone can figure out how to manipulate Bull's guard so that the face punch can be buffered, Bull's uppercut can be optimally ducked, saving the 1 frame necessary to finish this fight with a time of 56.48.
Piston Honda 2 - 43.61 (was 43.82)
- Instead of ducking both of Honda 2's jabs at the end of Phase 1, I perform a left quick dodge then a duck, which doesn't lose any time in this specific scenario. Note that a duck is still generally faster in most other cases, as Little Mac's last invincibility frame is 1 frame closer to his first actionable frame during a duck compared to a left quick dodge. But since the length of a left quick dodge from start to finish is 10 frames shorter than a duck, I'm able to raise Honda 2's guard prior to the left quick dodge, and his guard stays up until after he finishes throwing his 2 jabs. This allows me to knock Honda 2 down with an Inverse Max Damage Star Punch rather than a Regular Max Damage Star Punch. Those terms sounds pretty complicated but it essentially means that I'm able to keep Honda 2's guard up for the start of Phase 2 without losing any time. With Honda 2's guard up, I'm able to initiate Phase 2 with a face punch instead of a gut punch, which is actually a bit faster given that the punch obtains a star. This was enough to bump the decimal down to a .61.
Soda Popinski - 27.97
- While the decimal for this fight remains unchanged, I managed to find 2 frames of improvement through a minor reroute that replaces a punch with a straight jab cancel. The Soda fight in the previous submission finishes on the 3rd frame of .97, while the fight in this submission finishes on the 1st. This unfortunately doesn't save any real time either, due to the 8-framerule that occurs after each fight.
Bald Bull 2 - 1:11.00
Don Flamenco 2 - 54.97
Mr. Sandman - 2:40.48
- This was yet another fight where I managed to save a couple frames (technically 1 single frame in this fight), but it didn't end up being enough to bump it down to a lower decimal. Phase 1 in my TAS ends with the clock at 1:41, whereas the clock has ticked over to 1:42 in the previous TAS. On a positive note though, I did end up managing to improve this fight in terms of real time. Knocking Sandman down with a face punch at the end of Phase 3 loses 1 frame of in-game time, but the shorter knockdown animation saves 4 framerules worth of real time. It's also possible to do this at the end of Phase 1 to save another 4 framerules, but in that instance, it will lose 3 frames, which will bump the final decimal for this fight up to a .61. Since this TAS prioritizes in-game time, a gut punch was used instead.
Super Macho Man - 42.99 (was 47.48)
- This fight is where the bulk of the improvement is. By delaying my 2nd Max Damage Star Punch in Phases 2 and 3 by a couple frames, I'm able to intercept Macho's minispin punch, rather than ducking them like the previous TAS does. In order to do this, I must begin each phase already having 2 stars in the bank, as I don't have enough time to get a star then land 2 Max Damage Star Punches before Macho begins his minispin. The old TAS enters Phase 2 with only 1 star, so I had to reroute Phase 1 to get an extra star, which ended up losing a second. In order to end up with a time of 42.99 rather than 43.00, I had to lose some real time at the end of Phase 1 by knocking Macho down with a misdirected left gut punch instead of a face punch, which has a longer knockdown animation but is 1 frame faster in in-game time.
- The biggest challenge when TASing this fight for me was actually manipulating Macho to get up on the count of 2 after his first knockdown. For a reason I'm not 100% certain on, the initial Phase 1 knockdown frame did not align with the RNG value well enough to enable me to manipulate Macho to get up on the count of 2. To get around this, I changed the uppercut cancel in the middle of Phase 1 to use a right gut punch instead of a left. This would normally lose 1 frame, but Macho performs his superspin punch right afterwards, where clockrounding takes effect. Clockrounding refers to the fact that the clock is immediately rounded to the start of the next second at the start of Macho's superspin punch, which essentially acts as yet another framerule. This still "loses" 1 frame of real time, but due to the 8-framerule at the end of each fight (it's actually 16 frames at the end of the Macho fight, I'm not exactly sure why), it doesn't actually lose anything. This 1 frame of "lost" time ended up delaying the Phase 1 knockdown by 1 frame of real time, which affected the knockdown time enough to allow me to successfully manipulate Macho to get up on the count of 2.
Mike Tyson - 1:59.97
Final Time - 13:23.62 (was 13:28.58)
I'd also like to credit DJ_Incendration, who made the previous TAS of this romhack. Any fights that haven't been obsoleted were initially TASed by him, and many of the obsoleted fights are just minor improvements to his work.
eien86: A nice improvement over
[5522] NES Difficult? Punch-Out!! by DJ_Incendration in 18:04.20. The question of co-authorship was raised but, since no inputs were copied from the previous movie, it falls entirely on the author's discretion whether or not the previous movie's author should be credited as co-author in this one. Accepting to Standard
