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If I asked you to name a retro game featuring Mike Tyson, your first thought would likely be Punch Out!! for the NES, and understandably so. After all, the boxer's name was in the title, acting as a clever piece of marketing to win over audiences at the time.
What you might not know, though, is there's actually another game released a few years later that featured a surprising cameo from the boxer — one you potentially could have blinked-and-missed if you didn't know where to look. And no, before you say anything, it's not Street Fighter 2.
Instead, the game in question is Ocean Software's 1989 ZX Spectrum conversion of the 1988 Taito crime-based chase 'em up and arcade hit, Chase H.Q, with the Ocean artist/animator on the project, Bill Harbison, sharing the piece of trivia within a new video on his YouTube channel. The video, called "Chase H.Q. How we RAMMED it ALL into a #zxspectrum in 1988 at Ocean Software", was published at the end of last week, and seems to be part of a recent push by Harbison to share more stories from his time at the Manchester developer/publisher, who became successful in the '80s and '90s for topping the charts with games based on existing licenses.
It talks about how Harbison reacted to working on another driving game after 1988's WEC Le Mans, and how both he and the Ocean programmer John O'Brien ended up building a Spectrum conversion of "a Taito arcade monster," which has since gone on to be praised as "one of retro gaming's most celebrated arcade conversions."
But neither of those are what we're going to be talking about here, with the part that stood out to us as the most fun for us being the reveal of some of the real-life individuals that inspired the game's cast of characters, from the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader Dorie Braddy (who served as the model for police dispatcher Nancy) to Ocean Software staff, and the former Heavyweight champ himself, who stood in for the game's criminals.
Harbison explained, "Now, since we couldn’t use full-screen images of the villains being arrested, like in the arcade, I decided to use small portraits… and have them presented at the end of the level. For those, the inspiration I used was a little closer to home, apart from one.
"I drew Ocean’s hardware guy Steve Lavache, Spectrum and Amstrad artist Martin Macdonald, and game tester Kane Valentine, and then I threw in Mike Tyson, who was getting up to all sorts of shenanigans in his personal life. And this is before he even bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off... Finally, I drew the Commodore 64 artist and my archnemesis, Steve Thompson. I call him that because I was always jealous of his use of colour, especially on the Commodore 64."
Of course, as you might expect, this appearance wasn't quite official, instead being intended as a subtle Easter Egg for those with a good eye; nevertheless, we thought it was pretty interesting, and are surprised to see it hasn't been documented widely online in the past, considering how much people love to tear apart these kinds of games for secrets.
If you want to learn more about how the conversion was created, you can watch the full video here.