The first time I played it at my cousins house in 1993ish, after we went through the 30 minute ritual of blowing, I thought I wouldn't be satisfied. It was a cheap boxing game. It didn't pretend to be serious and had some gimmicky little protaganist that looked like he never trained or weight lifted in his whole life. Mario was the ref, that I thought was just a likeness that the game maker would get in trouble for later on. All of the villains were ridiculously over the weight class of Little Mac.
Each opponent you had to figure out the one gimmick that would defeat them, like punching an open stomach, jabbing at the right millisecond, punching 100 times in a row, etc. You'd progress through the game or get stuck and call Nintendo for help at $2.99 a minute! My cousin had Nintendo Power, so we were fine. You'd get through the whole game in about an hour if you didn't get knocked out and then boom. The boss appeared.
Mike FN Tyson
Unmistakable
What the hell? Really?! I will admit that I was surprised. I didn't pick up on the clues. I thought they just said it was Mike Tyson's game because he endorsed it or something, kind of like the Jack Nicklaus golf games that probably have Jack Nicklaus now that I think about it, but the graphics were too bad to even matter.
You couldn't do shit against him. I tried blocking, he would just punch through it until your stamina depleted. You could dodge, but had to be a damn computer to time each one right. He'd kill you, I mean knock you out, and your perfect record would go to hell and you'd be kicked back a fight. You'd have to refight them and then get to refight Mike Tyson. You'd lose again, repeat. On the third loss, the whole game would end and you'd have to start over. No saves. A hard reset. You would think someone hit the reset button, no it was just Mike Tyson punching so hard in game it reset the whole thing.
Nintendo threw a bone out a couple years later about timing him blinking or something. It didn't help shit. I blamed myself for a long time really. I was good at Mario and other games, but I felt there were a bunch of people around the world that could win easily and were just soooo much more skilled than I was. This was before a well connected internet. No one I knew had the game, they either had Sonic or Mario.
Now for the deep dive and why I can appreciate it 30 something years later. I'm 38 years old so I don't imagine I played it when I was 4. Why he is my favorite and the greatest villain is because he really hurt you in real life. You really got to feel what a loser you were in real life. You could turn the Nintendo on infinite times and still lose. You could play for 3 decades and still lose. The internet got popular and communities of amateur game researchers, sharing notes, got closer to beating this bastard, but it still didn't work.
It took NEW TECHNOLOGY to finally beat this boss. The emulator boom with save states and instant reload finally gave people the fighting chance to win. By this time he retired from the game. They pulled him out and replaced it with a RICK ROLL, a troll character, Mr Dream.
That's just it though. You still couldn't win. I replayed it on the Nintendo Switch that also has the instant save and load feature. It took me an hour or so to beat him alone. I had to use rewind, a further cheat because it's a faster save and reload. I just about had to save every time I hit the damn guy. Brutal, and it could never happen again. There are too many games for anyone to be patient enough to wait a decade to win a game.
I'll never not be able to think about this picture whenever I see this game.
I never played it myself and that's maybe for the best. I dont' like frustrating games and this sounds frustrating enough.
Also, welcome to Hive! Feel free to shout me out if you need any help.
Congratulations @steveparma! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 50 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP