Nintendo's Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! is an iconic game of legendary proportions. It's notorious for being extremely hard and uncompromisingly difficult. The hardship comes in the form of the game's ridiculously challenging AI, but one speedrunner defied the odds by beating the game blindfolded.
The 25-minute speedrun was posted up on mPap's YouTube channel after he did the initial run on Twitch, joining a few elite other gamers who have attempted to beat games with a blindfold on.
It wasn't a solo effort, though. Streamer mPap needed quite a bit of help in the form of different strategies cooked up by other streamers such as Jack Wedge, Sinister1, Zallard1, Summoningsalt, Davep4948, and PowerPak. They all helped mPap develop the techniques he needed in order to memorize the patterns of the AI and then execute the strategies required in order to advance through the game... blindfolded.
It starts with Glass Joe getting knocked out in just under 50 seconds. The strategy is simply to knock out Joe with repeated strikes until he falls.
The second fight against Von Kaiser goes much the same way, only this time mPap waits for the sound that indicates Von Kaiser will be revving up for special punch. This allows mPap to use a power punch and knock out Von Kaiser.
This technique is repeated in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! when mPap reaches Piston Honda and knocks him out three minutes into the run.
After a short cinematic there's another fight against Don Flamenco, which he manages to complete by the 4:30 mark.
For King Hippo, things didn't go over perfectly. In fact, King Hippo managed to get in two hits in on mPap, taking down half his life before eating the canvas for the 10 count. He has a much easier time with Great Tiger, the Indian boxer. Taking him out in very little time before moving on to the Bald Bull.
Surprisingly, he doesn't seem to have much trouble taking out Bald Bull, dodging each of his attacks and launching powerful counterattacks in order to finish him off before the eight-minute mark in his speedrun.
By the second set of tournament fights, things pick up in difficulty, but mPap keeps to his strategy, managing to counterattack and knock out his opponents with precision strikes.
It's a really impressive set of fights. I don't think something like this would be possible with today's fighters such as EA Sports UFC or Capcom's Street Fighter games. Nevertheless, these sort of speedruns keep many of these older games in operation and popular within the gaming community due to the fact that they're constantly finding new ways to make them exciting or interesting. In this case, mPap managed to blindfold himself and beat the NES version of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! in record time. I imagine now other gamers are going to be racing to beat his score... blindfolded.
