28 Years Later, Super Punch-Out!!'s 2-Player Mode Has Been Discovered (arstechnica.com) 25
Hmmmmmm shares a report from Ars Technica: While Punch-Out!! has been one of Nintendo's most beloved "fighting" series since its 1984 debut in arcades, it has rarely featured something common in the genre: a two-player mode. On Monday, however, that changed. The resulting discovery has been hiding in plain sight on the series' Super Nintendo edition for nearly 30 years. Should you own 1994's Super Punch-Out!! in any capacity -- an original SNES cartridge, a dumped ROM parsed by an emulator, on the Super Nintendo Classic Edition, or even as part of the paid Nintendo Switch Online collection of retro games -- you can immediately access the feature, no hacking or ROM editing required. All you need is a pair of gamepads.
[T]oday's Super Punch-Out!! discovery revolves around a simple series of button combinations, which require nothing more than a second controller. The two-player mode is hidden behind an additional, previously undiscovered menu, which lets solo players skip directly to any of the game's boxing combatants. It's essentially a "level select" menu, which many classic games featured for internal testing, and speedrunners could arguably use it to practice against specific opponents more quickly.
This menu can be accessed by holding the R and Y buttons on player two's controller at the "press start" screen, then pressing Start or A with player one's controller. Do this, and a new menu appears, displaying all 16 boxers' profile icons. Pick any of these icons to engage in a one-off fight; once it's over, you're dumped back to the same boxer-select menu. In this menu, friends can access a two-player fight if player two holds their B and Y buttons down until the match starts. You won't hear a sound effect or any other indication that it worked. Instead, the match will begin with the second player controlling the "boss" boxer at the top of the screen. Combine the "ABXY" array of buttons with "up" and "down" on the D-pad to pull off every single basic and advanced attack. All credit goes to the coder responsible for the new @new_cheats_news account on Twitter, notes Ars.
[T]oday's Super Punch-Out!! discovery revolves around a simple series of button combinations, which require nothing more than a second controller. The two-player mode is hidden behind an additional, previously undiscovered menu, which lets solo players skip directly to any of the game's boxing combatants. It's essentially a "level select" menu, which many classic games featured for internal testing, and speedrunners could arguably use it to practice against specific opponents more quickly.
This menu can be accessed by holding the R and Y buttons on player two's controller at the "press start" screen, then pressing Start or A with player one's controller. Do this, and a new menu appears, displaying all 16 boxers' profile icons. Pick any of these icons to engage in a one-off fight; once it's over, you're dumped back to the same boxer-select menu. In this menu, friends can access a two-player fight if player two holds their B and Y buttons down until the match starts. You won't hear a sound effect or any other indication that it worked. Instead, the match will begin with the second player controlling the "boss" boxer at the top of the screen. Combine the "ABXY" array of buttons with "up" and "down" on the D-pad to pull off every single basic and advanced attack. All credit goes to the coder responsible for the new @new_cheats_news account on Twitter, notes Ars.
Re: That's Not New (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
"That's not new."
It's new for BeauHD, he's 12.
Misleading phrase 'hiding in plain sight' (Score:3)
How can this be termed 'hiding in plain sight' - the steps involved are random key ombinations along with additional gamepad.
Re:Misleading phrase 'hiding in plain sight' (Score:5, Funny)
"Hiding in plain hindsight", maybe? :)
Re:Misleading phrase 'hiding in plain sight' (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised it wasn't found earlier as Super Punch Out is one of those games that has been studied in some detail. The original Punch Out has been disassembled and documented, and is now fully understood. Same with the original Mario Bros.
The motivation is often speedrunning. By understanding the game logic and the nature of any random events, it becomes possible to optimize gameplay for speed.
While looking around the code it's not uncommon for those kinds of hidden features, debug modes and unused assets to be discovered.
Re: (Score:2)
Sethbling laughs at this. He installed a hex editor and memory viewer into Super Mario World using nothing more than controller button presses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Misleading phrase 'hiding in plain sight' (Score:4, Funny)
NEVER! (Score:4, Funny)
Pressing TWO buttons to acces a hidden feature took 28 years to find! pfffft, they'll NEVER find my code, not in a million years! its up up down down left right left right b a start! They'll NEVER find that!
Re: (Score:2)
Just because we use cheats doesn't mean we're not smart
I don't see what anyone can see in anyone else
But you
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of cool actually (Score:2, Flamebait)
Now you can play as one of sixteen different bad racial stereotypes against your friends!
Re:Kind of cool actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the 80's - when being butthurt wasn't a hobby.
Except from jumping our BMX bikes.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL
They're so bad though. And they didn't even try to fix it for the Wii followup. In fact they made the Irish guy even worse. It's not just an 80s thing, it's a Punch Out thing.
Re: (Score:3)
No doubt. The 80's were a gold mine for bad racial stereotypes. Even for Caucasians. Nobody escaped the 80's wrath.
Arguably? (Score:3)
It's essentially a "level select" menu, which many classic games featured for internal testing, and speedrunners could arguably use it to practice against specific opponents more quickly.
Arguably? Really? What exactly is the argument *against* speedrunners being able to use it that way?
I can see how some fanatics might consider such focused practice a kind of low-grade cheating, but that's an argument about whether it *should* be used, not whether it *could*.
Re: (Score:2)
Serious speed runners use save state to achieve these features.
If they practice on emultators it's right there in the software. And on consoles, there are various powerpack available to obtain a similar features. People have developed hacked roms to provide training features that get deployed on modified cartridges.
For instance, the world of SMB1 is crazy with the amount of tooling available for practicing.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, sure, there are other ways to achieve the same ends, but that in no way reduces the effectiveness of this method. (Though it's worth mentioning that this method greatly predates the existence of those emulators as it could be used when the game was first released, which makes emulators the alternative method - at least for games where the feature was discovered)
They don't say it "arguably makes it possible to..." (to which existing alternatives are indeed a strong counter-argument), they say "could ar
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry to offend your oh-so-delicate sensibilities.
But there is a large and fundamental difference between claiming
"this can't be done"
And
"doing this is a waste of time"
That's not pedantry, that's the difference of "you can't fall off this cliff" and "it would be really stupid of you to fall off this cliff".
In case you missed it, one of those implies you can try to walk off the edge without any danger of falling.
agree (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)