A rare pre-Mike Tyson prototype of Nintendo's 1987 NES title, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, has appeared online, giving "a basically unheard of" insight into the early development of a first-party Nintendo game, while stumping historians in the process.
The NES prototype cartridge was shown off yesterday in a video uploaded to the Video Game History Foundation's YouTube channel, where the foundation's founder and director, Frank Cifaldi, stated, "I've never seen anything like this" in his 25-plus years of handling and studying NES prototypes.
In the video, he went on to document some of the bizarre features that made the prototype so interesting, highlighting its mockup label that "adheres to the Nintendo of America house style" from the earliest days of the NES, and the fact that the date seems to be stamped on mask ROMs, rather than the EPROMs typically found in prototyps at the time. As Cifaldi states, the latter is something you only typically see in retail products, raising unanswered questions about why this cartridge was made in the future.
As Cifaldi points out, most NES prototypes are also usually very similar to the finished game, whereas this build seems to have a bunch of noticeable differences from the retail versions we've seen before. For starters, the list of fighters during the intro differs, with Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta being included from the original 1984 arcade game. Piston Hurricane would eventually be replaced in the NES game with Piston Honda, while Pizza Past would be completely missing from the final game.
Soda Popinski from Super Punch Out!! is also listed under his original name, Vodka Drunkenski, which was changed due to marketing concerns, while two mysterious, unknown fighters, Rockyhead and Mongol Khan, also appear.
Despite this list, only four characters can actually be fought in the game — Glass Joe, Bald Bull, King Hippo, and Don Flamenco — with Von Kaiser and Great Tiger also being present but very incomplete.
According to The Cutting Room Floor, which examined and documented the contents of the prototype, the early build was discovered in a garage at the beginning of this year and was believed to have belonged to a former Nintendo of America employee. It was eventually auctioned off for $45,000 to an anonymous user through Heritage Auctions, leading some to fear it would be sealed away forever from the public, but the new owner has allowed people not only to study the ROM but also to release it online for everyone to see.
In addition to the change in the intro, the early build also features a single-ring palette, lacks audio, has different victory and game-over screens, and includes various altered statistics for the fighters.
You can view the full list of changes here, courtesy of xkeeper and The Cutting Room Floor.