Why Does No One Play Punch-Out!! High Score?

I think it hurts people's brains to see splits in points instead of minutes and seconds

Scoring on console has always been plauged by infinite scoring patterns and such, so most people have disregarded it rightly so. It's mostly arcade games without infinites that have some remaining scoring scene. And at the end of the day, there's no real competition for scoring almost any console game. Like you yourself said, people are going to play arcade games and shmups for that.

sleep can wait, punch-out is more important p.s. petition for pap to make the tyson vid

great video Pap, thanks for including me. Great love letter to the category. If this doesn't get them in the door, I don't know what to tell you...

The thing that really surprises me is the lack of IL high score. Between the luck demands and the degree of mastery each fight requires to truly squeeze every point out of it, it seems like it would be both the perfect bridge into the larger SS run and a fascinating competition on its own.

Actually surprised it took this long for a high score video, I was waiting for it for a long time!

The high score strategies for this game absolutely fascinated me when I've got a taste of them from your previous videos on it. Didn't realise it was so niche among the community!

I don't play this game myself so take this with a grain of salt, but the most standout thing to me is just how it involves dragging out fights as long as possible. It reminds me of 2D fighting games, in particular how zoners (a character archetype based on keeping distance and preventing the opponent from approaching) are generally less popular than rushdown characters that focus more on aggression and fast-paced gameplay. It's not that zoners are inherently less interesting to play, or allow less room for strategy, it's just that the style of slowing things down and playing responsively doesn't appeal to as many people compared to rushing people down and enforcing strong offense on their own terms. I think something similar might apply here.

Great video to have in my feed. I was hoping to hear The Electric Underground (Mark) get a mention, but you channeled some of his energy when you discussed strategy and implications. Mark from TEU is a channel almost exclusively focused on shumps which is a genre which is very gameplay dense, score focused (once you get good enough) but simultaneously incompatible with speedruns. A lot of that genre is growing on console first now so we've had plenty of hits in the last few years like Gunvein and Hyper Demon. Speedrunning can definitely be tacked onto any type of game, but it is a bit of a crapshoot if they won't get patched in an unappealing way, have an uninteresting speedrun for those engaging with it or whatever else. Scoring can be designed poorly of course and doesn't necessarily suit every game, but having an ending isn't exclusion criteria. If anything, being able to try and practice again in 30 minutes while disallowing milking for score is why they have such lasting appeal with those who get into them.

Hmmmm. Nice vid Pap! Darthling has been trying to talk me into running hs. It is a fresh take on mtpo competition. Ima have to look into this ;)

This video really resonated with me. I've never played Punch Out in my life, and probably never will, but the way you pitched the High Score run mirrors the way I try to convince my friends to play TCGs with me in very esoteric and time consuming ways. I can really relate to that feeling that others do not have that same obsessive drive to delve deeper into the rules and mechanics, right up to their absolute limits, whether that be out of disinterest or fear of ruining the appeal of the game. Thanks for making this video, even if I have a completely different set of interests and life experiences, I feel we are kindred spirits.

Time for another awesome video before I go sleep, heck yeah.

Great video as always! I've loved watching the tutorials you made High Score for the knowledge, but I haven't had time to finish learning all the strats to start runs. This is on my to-do list for the summer, after promising a group of people for a while I would do this. I've been nudging people to give this a try for a while. The run lets people showcase game knowledge, while having a nice amount of problem solving that is missing from the speedrun strats.

Arcade games were played for high score as opposed to speed not just because they were often endless, but also because they lacked an in-game timer. Speedrunning is old; but all the early speedrun games were games that had in-game time. Timing with LiveSplit and retiming from recordings is so ubiquitous now that it's easy to forget old-school speedrunning was almost universally IGT, there was no LiveSplit, and only a minority of games (those with in-game replay files, like Doom and Quake) had recordings. (Some people pointed cameras at their screens, but it wasn't typical and even those who did would run out of tapes.) MTPO being a popular game with an in-game timer allowed it to develop a thriving speedrun scene long before for example SMB... which meant all the strategies were being developed and shared by and for speedrunners. And speedrunners, as the name suggests, tend to run the game for speed. Nothing wrong with exceptions like Pap, and high score does look like a deep and very skilled run.

Alright great video but with the category ranking you missed a very important point about the tyson challenge, the tyson challenge is a great way to tell what your overall tyson consistency is, especially for new runners like me, because during ILs if you mess up there is no punishment you just reset but during the tyson challenge once it starts have to keep going no matter what and a few missed punches can be quite punishing

Oooh sinister1 is on the list.

i was looking for this video the other day...

I don't run punch-out but all these points really ring true with a game I run, The House Of The Dead: Overkill. The way to play for high score and speed are diametrically opposed, it's a whole new skill set you need for both, which makes it a whole new expirience, basically getting to learn a game you love twice

Great video. I toyed with Punch Out high score in 2017, and started working on strats for the three Minor Circuit fights; I still have a document on my hard drive from back then called "mPap HS advice chat" that's just a cut and paste of a ton of knowledge that Pap had dropped in my chat during a stream. I had some notion of eventually piecing together a full single segment high score run, but then I got distracted and stuck with speedrunning Zelda 1 for the next seven years and counting ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Been loving your content homie :