37 years after the release of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, one speedrunner has finally managed to beat the game’s titular final boss in two minutes flat, and it could be ages before we see another run like this.
That speedrunner is Summoning Salt, and if you have any interest in the scene you’ve probably seen at least one or two of his extensive YouTube documentaries about the speedrunning community. Summoning Salt holds world records in several categories of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, including both full game runs and individual fights against Tyson himself. In fact, Summoning Salt has held the Tyson fight record since 2017.
In 2020, Summoning Salt became the first person to beat Tyson in under two minutes and one second, with a time of 2:00.97. It took three years to improve that time to a 2:00.61. Now, seven months later, Summoning Salt has done it again, taking the record to 2:00.00 flat. He knew it before the decimals were even counted, too. “Get out of my face, man,” he said during the record attempt, which you can see archived below. “That’s a world record. That is a world record. Oh my fucking god.”
In the description of that video, Summoning Salt says that “since taking the record under 2:01 in July 2020, I estimate I’ve done more than 40,000 Tyson attempts. Only 9 of those attempts ended at 2:00, and this was the fastest one by far.” A big part of the reason these records are so hard to come by is that these fights are heavily dependent on luck, and the pattern Summoning Salt got here had only a one in 6000 chance of occurring.
There’s still room to improve, too, as Summoning Salt says “this fight was only 3 frames away from being a 1:59. A sub 2 Tyson fight would be the most legendary achievement in Punch-Out history by far. You’d need to match this execution while getting roughly ~1/12,000 luck. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it, but I’m going to try.” Despite just a three frame difference, he thinks “it could be many years before that time is a reality.”
The best NES games host some of the greatest speedrunning scenes, too – Super Mario Bros speedrunners are just 12 frames away from literal perfection.
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