Punch Out!! (Wii) - Soda Popinski [

Wasn't planning on doing a lot of attempts on this fight tonight, but within 30 minutes of attempts, I tied the previous record of 42.78, with the one mistake being obviously the phase 3 star punch before the TKO recovery. I was crushed by this, but I knew my execution was on point, because the part after the TKO recovery was frame perfect... so I kept doing attempts.

A mere 13 minutes later, I finally did it; I matched the TAS time for contender Soda Popinski! This requires hitting all 9 frame perfect inputs in order to match this time, as well as win a random event.

Speaking of which, this is one of two fights in this game that requires a technique called the "TKO Recovery" which, as the name suggests, is when Mac resists being TKO'd and gets back on his feet instead of going down for the expected TKO. This happens completely randomly, estimated to be anywhere from 15-25% on average. This makes optimizing this fight far more difficult than it would otherwise be, considering 75%+ of your attempts won't make it past this point. Champion's mode is used for this fight to skip his rage uppercuts whenever he gets up from a knockdown (this mode gives Mac 1HP, and can only be unlocked by getting at lest 10 victories in Last Stand). It also has Soda throw a jab whenever you get up from a knockdown, which can be countered for a star!

Let's get into the fight. The first thing that's done is a delayed gut punch off of Soda's first jab, which if done correctly, yields a star. If you follow that up with a delayed jab, then throw a star as he's reeling, Soda will be instantly knocked down!

Phase 2 involves taking a knockdown to skip Soda's rage uppercuts, then getting up and countering Soda's jab for a star. Off of this counter, I buffer 2 ducks into alternating punches to hit Soda on the first possible frame as he finishes drinking his soda and walks back in, which weirdly enough, rewards a star. The instant knockdown done in phase 1 works in subsequent phases... but will require an additional star each time it's done (this time requires 2). This particular attack also lets me do a delayed jab to get him into position for the instant knockdown too, since countering his bottle would just make Soda mad and rush in for a sequence of rage uppercuts.

Phase 3 has Mac take his 2nd knockdown, to which Mac gets up and counters Soda's scripted jab. Now, this delayed star punch needs to be timed in a very specific way such that Soda's next attacks gets skipped. If you throw the star punch too early, then Soda will do slow hooks after Mac's next knockdown, which instantly ends the attempt. The visual cue that you've thrown it correctly is if Soda just barely gets completely centered as the star punch lands.

After the star punch, Soda reels to the back of the ring and runs back to Mac to throw more rage uppercuts, which Mac takes. This is where luck comes into play, because that's Mac's 3rd knockdown, meaning we need the lucky TKO recovery. Thankfully in this run I get it!

Once Mac is back up on his feet, counter Soda's scripted jab, and counter Soda's bottle. This will make Soda mad and he'll approach you to do rage uppercuts, however a delayed star punch will hit him if you time it just right, and a double star punch here is just enough to take him out for good.

This record has finally reached its peak for this strategy after 11+ years of it existing. I'm so glad to have been able to take it down after so many years of playing this game. The final tally of statistics for attempts that got to the TKO recovery opportunity chance, vs actual successful recoveries, is 41 to 167, which gives an approximate probability of 24.55% for TKO recoveries for me.

Here are some additional stats on this grind:

Mac knockdown time on failed attempts:
33.99 - 20
33.93 - 6

Completed Soda fights:
42.96 - 3
42.90 - 2
42.89 - 2
42.83 - 1
42.78 - 2
42.72 - 1

Not sure what's next on the list, possibly either Title Defense Soda, or Title Defense King Hippo since I ended up finding the optimal strategies for both of those.

Anyways, thanks for watching!