
NES classic ‘Punch-Out’ has an Easter egg that went undiscovered for 29 years - ant6n
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2016/04/11/punch-out-has-an-easter-egg-that-went-undiscovered-for-29-years
======
justin_vanw
Well, 'undiscovered' means nobody can find a reference to it on google. My
cousin noticed this around 1989, I very clearly remember him yelling at me
when I did it wrong. He didn't bother to put a dated reference to it on the
internet at the time...

~~~
dandelany
Haha! Yeah, I'd bet money that this has been found by dozens, if not hundreds
of people independently over the years. The entire trick to winning the game
(as my ridiculously-talented ex-roommate once taught me) is to watch carefully
for subtle timing cues and use them to punch at the correct moment - if you do
it right, you can win very consistently. So people have been scouring the
pixels for these kind of cues since the game first came out!

~~~
lillesvin
You can even do it [without
sight]([https://youtu.be/CvzIb53Lcno](https://youtu.be/CvzIb53Lcno)). And
yeah, TAS'ers, speedrunners and others have been analyzing these games bit by
bit (literally) for years. I'd be surprised if this hadn't been found before.

------
ant6n
If anybody remembers "PlayFun" by Tom7
([http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/)),
which learns playing NES games by locally trying to optimize a bunch of
objective functions based on lexicographical ordering of the bytes of the NES
Ram. That system probably would've found the easter egg, because it can look
into the future to find the best moves. Tom7 did try Punch-Out, but his AI-
player lost the game before reaching the bosses mentioned in the easter egg:
[https://youtu.be/YGJHR9Ovszs?t=4m39s](https://youtu.be/YGJHR9Ovszs?t=4m39s)

~~~
mikeash
The easter egg isn't the fact that there's a moment when you can knock out
your opponent with one hit, that was already known. The easter egg is the
small visual cue in the background that indicates when to punch. I assume that
this program would learn when to punch, but if it's running the simulation
forward to figure it out then it would just be doing it because it works, not
because of a visual cue.

------
pc2g4d
So the ducking head tell is supposed to be an Easter egg? Doesn't really fit
the definition in my mind. Or am I misunderstanding?

Hard to believe nobody noticed this in the last ~30 years.

~~~
stormbrew
Yeah, this definitely seems like a wrong use of the word easter egg to me, and
I'm trying hard not to let it bother me.

~~~
a_bonobo
Wikipedia's definition:

>An Easter egg is an intentional inside joke, hidden message, or feature in an
interactive work such as a computer program, video game or DVD menu screen.

The headbobbing, the camera flashing etc. are hidden hints/messages from the
programmer to the player, so I'd say the term fits

~~~
chrismcb
Except it isn't hidden.

~~~
a_bonobo
A non-hidden message would be "PUNCH NOW", not some guy in the background
nodding

------
maerF0x0
Why couldnt someone just reverse engineer the source code? It seems to me
conditional jumps would be a good start and maybe work backwards from things
that look like auto wins.

I doubt the team had the budget or bytes to obfuscate the bytecode.

~~~
eschutte2
I'm not going to look at the code, but this guy's head-bob animation does
occupy a privileged position early in the sprite table:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6821374/Screen%20Shot%20...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6821374/Screen%20Shot%202016-04-13%20at%205.13.44%20PM.png)

Of course if that makes it a hint, then it suggests the sprite right next to
it (the guy on the right side of the audience with glasses) is also some kind
of clue... does anybody know that one?

~~~
eschutte2
Found it... it's a clue for Super Macho Man:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcJneBFV9cI&t=32m33s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcJneBFV9cI&t=32m33s)

------
gburt
I think this is just a coincidence. There's probably co-incident timings that
cause his duck motion to happen at the same time as the punch.

~~~
throwanem
It happens at the same time you need to throw a punch in order to land it on
the boss, not at the same time the boss is about to throw a punch. It's not
periodic, so the idea that the displayed behavior is mere coincidence is
implausible at best.

~~~
Zikes
I think what gburt is trying to say is that the timings for the head-bob and
the boss's vulnerability are probably driven by the same RNG results, and thus
are coincidental rather than intentional. This doesn't imply that they don't
always align 100%, only that the developers may not have put purposeful
thought into their coincidental timings.

~~~
talmand
But these are super punches by the boss that may knock the player out in one
hit, so it isn't a common punch for the boss to use. If I remember correctly,
the timing and number of times the super punch is used is loosely based on how
well you are doing. I remember feeling that if you are winning handily the
super punches come out sooner and more often.

I would suppose an easy test is to go the full round without attacking the
boss and see if that spectator does the head nod at any point other than
during the super punch.

~~~
scott_s
That would not disprove what Zikes is proposing. Zikes (and gburt, and myself)
are saying that it's possible the two actions are _coincidentally_ linked. We
are not arguing they are not linked, just that the fact they are linked does
not necessarily mean they were intentionally linked by the developer. We all
agree on the events in the game, we're talking about intent. The only way to
know would be to ask the developer.

~~~
geoelectric
This doesn't take all that much speculation.

[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/decades-later-a-new-
mi...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/decades-later-a-new-mike-tysons-
punch-out-easter-egg-has-been-found/)

The developers are quoted halfway down the page as having included the timing
cues for opponents intentionally.

We (the gaming community) have known this since 2009 when that interview came
out, so it's kind of amusing that people are making tech-based arguments
trying to debunk a cultural fact they aren't familiar with. It _could_ have
been an unintentional artifact of the PRNG, sure, but it isn't. At the very
least it was intentionally not removed.

If nothing else, those cues probably helped QA quite a bit.

~~~
gburt
I agree now that it is not likely to have been a mere coincidence of RNGs or
timings.

------
ourmandave
In the coin-op arcade Punch Out the opponents eyes flashed yellow just before
they threw a punch (or started a sequence). That's also true in the last Wii
version.

I don't know if there are any tells for when to throw the knock-out blow.

------
jmduke
This reminds me of a couple years back, when an entire sidequest was
discovered in Final Fantasy IX (thirteen years after the fact!):

[http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/28/obscure-final-fantasy-
ix-...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/28/obscure-final-fantasy-ix-sidequest-
uncovered-and-detailed/)

~~~
anonbanker
What's amazing about that is that they brought back the 8^2 curse of
extinction.

In 1993, Squaresoft used to send out ads to people on their mailing lists (I
was one of those people). One of their little mailings included a comment
about a curse in Final Fantasy II for the SNES: if you do an action 64 times,
it will trigger a reboot of your game, and your save file will be lost. They
never told what the action was, but they were admant on the number of times it
needs to be done.

t haven't found this info anywhere. If I'm the only one that knows it, it
makes me sad. Hopefully, more find it.

------
agentgt
Great nostalgia! Sort of reminds me of the incessant photo flashes during the
fight with Mike Tyson when he is about to punch you (speaking of which I never
got to fight white Mike, I only beat the original).

If I recall correctly there are a ton of visual cues in punch-out.

I found Punch-Out and Contra to both be eventually easy games. There is very
little randomness and luckily the controls are very good. I remember taking a
bet in college of beating contra (w/o thirty lives) after not playing.
Replaying was like riding a bike.

Compare this to the ridiculous difficulty of broken games like Top Gun or the
worse game every made AD&D for NES (seriously check out how f@#$ awful that
game is).

~~~
zerohm
I'm pretty sure I heard the phrase, "there's no way you can beat Contra
without the cheat code" in college as well.

~~~
NittLion78
I knew that was garbage when I would use the cheat and would routinely finish
the game with more than 30 lives.

After I realized that, I just stopped using it.

~~~
agentgt
Yeah once you get the Spray Gun or whatever the S gun is called you are pretty
much golden.

Really the challenge is playing at the same time with some one else.

------
rcthompson
So it's just a quick-time event with intentionally the worst UI ever.

------
EA
There's a baseball legend that a MLB team used to light up a certain light
bulb on a sign/scoreboard in their stadium to tip off the pitch their batter
was about to face.

------
gdubs
Punch-Out was really well designed. It was also incredibly hard. I finally
beat it in college, and I still feel proud of that accomplishment.

------
siculars
Who's read "Ready Player One"? Cause that's all I'm seeing here. Also, can't
wait for the movie!

------
pkaler
This is probably just a coincidence.

NTSC runs at a framerate of about 30fps. PAL runs at 25fps. I have not worked
on an 8-bit console. But if I were to, I would probably run a simulation/AI
tick every 6 frames.

By coincidence, some background animation is going to coincide with some
gameplay event.

~~~
hackcasual
60fps and 50fps interlaced respectively. NES games ran at 60fps. There is some
randomness to when Honda's window opens and the background animation always
happens in sync

~~~
jeff_tyrrill
NES games ran at 60fps progressive (240p). This is a mode in which the CRT
does not alter the scanline position each field.

