Decades later, a new Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! Easter Egg has been found

You might think that gamers have combed through every secret and available strategy in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (aka simply Punch-Out!!) since its original release on the NES in 1987. You'd be wrong, though. Just this weekend, word first started to spread of a previously unnoticed background Easter Egg that can help players with the split-second timing needed for some crucial knockout punches.

The three-minute video explanation from YouTuber midwesternhousewives lays out the specifics, but in short, the newly discovered secret hinges on a bearded man on the bottom row of the on-screen audience, near the left side of the screen. If you watch his face closely during the first fight with Piston Honda and the second fight with Bald Bull, this one audience member will duck slightly at the precise moment you can throw an instant, body blow knockout punch.

While the general timing for those one-hit knockouts have been well-known for decades, this is the first time anyone has publicized the existence of this specific timing clue. The animation timing could theoretically be a coincidence, but since the man doesn't seem to react at any other point in the game—and ducks consistently whenever the knockout opportunity presents itself—it seem highly unlikely.

The Punch-Out!! makers at Nintendo have revealed and hinted at similar background Easter Eggs in the past. In a 2009 Iwata Asks interview, Nintendo developers Makoto Wada and Kensuke Tanabe discussed the game's secrets with the late Satoru Iwata.

Wada: This is a great opportunity, so I have something I'd like to say. In Punch-Out!!, the game gives you a lot of hints about effective timing of punches. There is a big boxer called Bald Bull in the NES version as well and a light flashes to the right in the audience when he charges [in his first fight]. If you punch when it flashes you will land a body blow.

Tanabe: What? Really?

Wada: No one has known about that for about 22 years…

Everyone: (laughter)

Wada: I was wondering when I would have a chance to tell people that.

Iwata: You've been holding that information for 22 years since the release. (laughs)

Wada: Now that I had the chance. (laughs) There are a lot of hidden elements in the NES version.

With this new discovery, and Wada's suggestive words from that old interview, many in the gaming community are on the hunt for other potential Punch-Out!! secrets that have been lurking in plain sight for decades. Between this and the recently discovered debug code in old Mortal Kombat arcade cabinets, we're starting to think there may be unplumbed depths in practically all of our favorite gaming classics. Hey, pass me that R.C. Pro-Am cartridge... I have some research to do.