Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! still has secrets to share, 29 years later

Nearly 30 years after Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! launched on the Nintendo Entertainment System, gamers are still discovering secrets inside it.

As Redditor midwesternhousewives discovered, there is a visual cue among the spectators in the second Piston Honda fight, which tells the player when to throw a punch that knocks Honda out with one blow. A one-punch KO of Honda has been known for years, though gamers were left to guess exactly when that window is open during his special attack. Now it’s clear; just watch the bearded guy on the front row, about seven over from the left.

Another user in the Reddit thread describing the tip-off notes that “the bearded man did not flinch or move a single pixel until I reached the second fights with piston Honda and bald bull.”

The same spectator provides the same tip-off during Bald Bull’s notorious charge attack in his second fight, which also can be stopped with one punch. When beardy ducks. blast Bull with a body blow, and its bedtime for Baldy.

In the first Bald Bull bout, a camera flash signals the time to throw the punch; that was revealed in 2009 by the late Satoru Iwata in one of the Nintendo president’s roundtables with Punch-Out!!’s creators.

Polygon Backstory is a podcast celebrating conversations about the games we play. This week we talk with Train Jam organizer Adriel Wallick.