I've been occasionally messing around with TASing strategies for the newly revealed 2 player debug mode, mostly out of curiosity. There's likely several improvements that others could make over this, but I felt like this might be a decent starting point for others to build onto if they wanted.
For people who might be unfamiliar with what this is all about, a fellow by the name of @new_cheats_news on Twitter found several undiscovered cheat codes for all releases of Super Punch Out!
/ 1556727895778856960
The 1st one is by pressing and holding Y+R with the 2nd controller while 1p presses A or Start on the title screen. This brings you to a secret menu where you can fight any opponent. If you select a character on that hidden menu, then hold B+Y with the 2p controller during the pre-fight text while pressing A or Start, then the 2nd controller lets you control the opponents!
This TAS was made to try answer the question of: "What are the best possible times you can get as player 1 if player 2 happened to throw out whatever attacks that are beneficial for player 1?"
There are quite a few fights that end up being weirdly trivial, while some others end up being either interesting, or really silly. I'll give some descriptions of each.
Gabby: His special attack freezes the clock and has an instant knockdown window at the end, making the fight time stupidly short, and the fight itself ends up being a funny footnote, but not too interesting. There will be a few more fights like this.
Bear: This one's great, because his "taunt" where he runs to the back of the ring freezes the clock. I use this multiple times to land right jabs exactly as he walks in. These punches are slower usually, but since the slow startup of the punch isn't counted on the timer, it ends up being a nice way to deal extra damage. Because of this extra damage, I'm able to KO him without him getting back up for phase 2, saving about 3 frames of in-game time at the cost of several seconds of real time, which is just so ridiculous that I love it.
Piston: This one is similar to Gabby, except Piston does a scripted uppercut after a knockdown no matter what P2 presses, so the fastest way I could cancel it was landing a delayed gut punch for phases 2 and 3.
Bull: This is just a completely comical in-game time of 0'00"11 seconds for the entire fight. Bull charge is just not a good button for P2 to hit, hahaha.
Bob: 3 windmill attacks that freeze the clock = 3 instant knockdowns for a ridiculously short fight.
Dragon: The first knockdown is actually kind of similar to another 3 second knockdown that you can do on the real version of this fight, but since you can swap 2P's guard at will, you can fit in faster jabs while also getting enough gut punches for the early dizzy. Rapid jabs in phase 2 make Dragon dizzy very fast, which makes his phase 2 refill irrelevant.
Muscle: Headbutt has an instant knockdown window lol.
Sandman: I tried a bunch of stuff, but this really bland simple pattern was the best I could find. As a side note, since P2 controls the opponent's guard, you can have him allow as many rapid punches as you want to go through, which comes into play a lot in this weird TAS.
Aran: Pretty similar story to Sandman, however, it's worth keeping in mind that landing a super that isn't rapids will make Aran attempt to get you into a clinch, which is not good for the purposes of this TAS.
Heike: This pattern just barely allows a KO to be possible this early, due to the timer barely being under 8"03 off of a high 4 second phase 1. Rapids on phase 2 are a must, because just like Piston, Heike always throws a hook to start a new phase regardless of buttons pressed.
Clown: The end of the balls rush where Clown flips to chop you has an instant knockdown window, so we get yet another one of these silly fights.
Macho: I tried a handful of tricky things that would get low 6 second times, but this phase 1 blew all of those out of the water. Phase 2 is super similar to the real version of this fight, except we can get a left jab counter, which is faster.
Narcis: Ok so, Narcis has access to the triple jab pattern from when he flashes, which has a very fast startup w/o any flashing, but is still counterable! This happens to be very abusable in this fight, which makes this fight look pretty hilarious.
Hoy: Stick has an instant knockdown, so another quick TKO.
Rick: I actually messed around with this one the most, because refills are critically important here. Phase 1 ends up being really similar to the real fight, because all that damage is absolutely necessary for phases 2 and 3.
Nick: The rush from the back of the ring has an instant knockdown, so 3 = the final quick TKO.
The ending I go to at the end of this video is actually unlockable through another code that @new_cheats_news found which you can see here:
/ 1557458843361333250
Anyways, thanks for watching!