Summary
- Four and a half years of defeat after defeat later, Summoning Salt beat Mike Tyson in under two minutes.
- They set the previous Punch-Out world record back in 2020, which they’ve seen replicated 15 times.
- While they believe the new record could also be broken, they’re hanging up the belt for now.
After five years and over 75,000 attempts, famed speedrunning historian Summoning Salt took down Mike Tyson in just under two minutes, setting a new world record. In Punch Out, to be clear, though they wouldn’t be the first YouTuber to beat Tyson in the ring.
Summoning Salt was the first-ever to bring this fight down to just two minutes, in the first place. But that only made them more hungry for the belt, sparking a half-a-decade-long Rocky montage of defeat after defeat where they worked tirelessly to dethrone their own time and reach sub-two minutes. It was a gruelling cocktail of pixel-perfect skill and RNG that finally allowed them to do just that, beating the previous record by 0.03 seconds.
The Mike Tyson fight requires an incredible amount of luck and execution. I hit all 21 frame perfect punches (1/60th of a second), hit ten perfect dodges and ducks, and got luck that has somewhere around a 1/7,000 to 1/10,000 chance of occurring.
Summoning Salt believes that the theoretical limit is 1:58:61 (they did it in 1:59:97), but they’re retiring from the ring to let someone else take up the reins as the Punch-Out world champion. “This will be beaten one day by someone getting better luck at the end of the fight,” Summoning Salt posted on Reddit. “I have no interest in beating it though. I’m just happy to be the first under two minutes.”
How The Time Can Be Taken Down Even Further
According to Summoning Salt, whose fans are already on the ropes waiting for the inevitable two-hour breakdown, there are a few key areas where frames can be saved to bring the time down even further.
As explained in the video’s description, Punch-Out doesn’t tell you the exact time it took you to beat Mike Tyson, only displaying full seconds, so Summoning Salt used a framecounting tool called Omnigamer to figure out the exact decimal. That really puts into perspective just how tight this world record is.
To get to the theoretical limit, Summoning Salt believes that you can save seven frames during difficult ducks, save a further five frames by perfectly timing every dodge (and avoiding every uppercut), and save an enormous 16 frames by “getting perfect luck”. Easy enough, eh?
Summoning Salt doesn’t think this can be done legitimately, and that it will require RNG manipulation to pull off. But after four and a half years, they were able to get below two minutes, while also replicating their previous world record of two minutes a total of 15 times. It’s a hugely impressive feat for this 38-year-old game, and one we’re unlikely to see beaten anytime soon.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
- Released
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October 18, 1987
- ESRB
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e
- Developer(s)
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Nintendo R&D3
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