Punch-Out!! No TKO is a hack of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! It has the same opponents, same patterns, very different strategies, since you can't TKO your opponents. However, you have infinite star punches, allowing for ultra-fast knockdowns.
Glass Joe: It's faster (in-game time) to knock him down several times, rather than knock him out at 42.00, as shown here.
Von Kaiser: Since we have infinite star punches, you don't have to get a star; just duck, jab, star for knockdown 1. When he gets up, duck his punch, and star him. Same for phase 3, which will KO him.
Piston Honda 1: I can't find the pattern for 36.97 TKO on my own, had to use 40.25 strat for phase 1 and a modified strat for phase 3.
Don Flamenco 1: Just do the same strat, except don't get a star at the beginning.
King Hippo: Oh boy, this fight was hard to optimize. Landing a star into his open-mouth punches deals more damage than normal, so I do that where needed.
Great Tiger: Five star punches will knock him down for the first time. He gets up on 1 twice, so two more stars send him down twice more. I throw 1 more star punch, which he takes, but then he'd start dodging my star punches if I didn't jab, block or dodge, jab (if blocked) and star (either way.) I do this twice in total for this phase. For the next phase, punch, dodge, star, repeat, jab, block, jab, star for the knockdown. When he gets up, punch, dodge, star. Now he goes into punches on his own, a lot faster. Duck his punch, jab, star for the knockdown. Duck, star for KO.
Bald Bull 1: Uses 52.82 strat for phases 1, 2 and 3. For phases 4 and 5, I do 55.25 strat, since I don't have 3 stars anymore. For phase 6, throw 3 stars to counter all three of his hooks, dodge his uppercut and throw a star punch. He will get up on the count of 1, so counter his punch with a star punch to send him down again. Here's where he gets up on the count of 9, like Bald Bull 2. Duck his first three punches, following up with a star punch after each one. Dodge his uppercut, and press Start, which will send him down to the mat again. Now, the Bull Charge will happen, since the clock is at the right time to do so. Hit him in the gut at the right time, and send him down in one hit. When he gets up, counter two hooks with two star punches, wait for the rolling jabs, and star him for the knockdown. Star him twice more for the KO!
Piston Honda 2: This is the one fight that uses only star punches to knock out the opponent.
Soda Popinski: This fight takes advantage of his instant knockdown. Since you only have 8 hearts, some more star punches had to be used.
Bald Bull 2: Uses 1:08.48 strat to start, then uses only star punches. This was a pain in the butt to optimize.
Don Flamenco 2: My goal was to try to get him down in just one cycle each time.
Sandman: Uses all the stars at the beginning, dodging and countering with gut punches where needed. When he goes into the hooks pattern, I duck and throw star punches where faster, or punch, dodge, jab, star punch where faster.
Super Macho Man: Uses normal fastest no CS strat for phases 1, 2 and 3. After that, the fight continues from there.
Mike Tyson: Mike has an interesting property: if you throw a gut punch after he throws an uppercut, then do a misdirected gut punch, then throw a star punch, Mike will always take the star punch. This is used to our advantage heavily here. As a side note, the TAS ends on the final star punch; I intentionally let him do 2 fake get-ups since I can't do it anywhere else without losing time.
Other comments:
Oh boy, this was painful to optimize at times, but overall, so much fun. It is possible to KO everyone except Great Tiger and Bald Bull in the original game, but this hack is a way to KO everyone. Happy April Fools day!
Possible improvements:
Honda 1's max damage 36.97 strat could have been used for phases 1 and 3, but I couldn't find how to do that, and I'm sure it would desync if I copied inputs from my other TASes, since the RNG cycles are different.
Possible missed optimizations that I don't know of
Special thanks:
I would like to thank McHazard for making the Punch-Out!! TASes, this would not have been possible without his work in developing strategies. Also, thanks go out to my parents, for reading my times, since I'm totally blind. Special thanks go out to the whole Punch-Out!! speedrunning community for helping me to step down from speedrunning and go back to all TASing. I appologize for what happened before, but now it's 2021.
Noxxa: Fixed text formatting.
Samsara: thanks moth but i hope you realize that TKO stands for Text Korrection Officer so you're not actually allowed to do that in this no TKO submission. i'll let it slide this time tho
Samsara: Aw, here it goes.
Samsara: Normally ROM hacks are judged based on audience feedback, but I think it's pretty safe to judge this one right here. The hack is ultimately redundant, it removes TKOs and for some reason makes up for it by giving unlimited star punches, which I feel really takes away from the point of not being able to TKO. As adelikat said in this post, removing the TKOs without adding unlimited stars would lead to more interesting strats while still being completely possible to do, and I believe "removing the TKOs" could be done in the original game by not going for them on any of the opponents. Feel free to correct me on this, I'm not that familiar with Punch-Out so I don't know for sure if it can be done without hacking, but if so, that would definitely be the preferred way of doing this run, and if not, then a version of the hack that doesn't add unlimited star punches would be the preferred one here.
Rejecting for hack choice, but I do feel like a "no TKO" branch is still worth investigating, so don't be discouraged.