Super Punch Out, the 1994 SNES game released as a sequel to the 1987 NES original, is like its predecessor a singleplayer game. You play as Little Mac and fight your way through a succession of cartoonish boxing opponents, and every single battle is just you against the computer. Or it was, until now!
While messing around with the game recently, Unlisted Cheats “casually found some new cheats” for Super Punch-Out. Using the same two-button combo method as the cheats already known, they found two news ones, the first allowing you to just casually pick any of the game’s fighters — even the ones from Super Circuit — for a one-off bout:
At the title, hold Y+R, then press A or START. Following screen will appear instead or regular menus. Here you can select any character to fight a free single match. See, even fighters from SPECIAL CIRCUIT are available here. -> pic.twitter.com/Hh7AtPdTcK
— Unlisted Cheats (@new_cheats_news) August 8, 2022
That’s pretty cool, and makes you wonder why that was never an option in the first place (at least as an unlock after you’ve beaten the game). The second cheat discovered, though, is a lot cooler, because it lets someone plug a second controller in and control the opponent
Sorry! Completely forgot to mention! All combinations must be held on JOYPAD2! Then A or START on JOYPAD1!
— Unlisted Cheats (@new_cheats_news) August 8, 2022
But wait! It gets even better! Ace IGN Senior Editor Kat Bailey soon found, not only do these cheats work on the version of the game available on Nintendo Switch, but the second player can even pull off the opponent’s special moves:
I got this to work on Nintendo Switch. Amazingly, you can even do the special moves as Player 2. As Bald Bull I did the bull charge by holding Down + B https://t.co/cAfOdqzOkx
— Kat Bailey (@The_Katbot) August 8, 2022
This isn’t the first time a secret has lain dormant inside a classic video game for decades, but I can’t remember the last time the secret was so accessible — the cheats are pretty simply! — while also being so important. This isn’t unlocking a single level, or buffing your stats, this is basically adding an entire new game mode, while also doubling the player count and bringing the boxing game into the multiplayer arena after spending 28 years as a singleplayer experience.
(Note though that this isn’t the first time we’ve been able to play a Punch-Out! game in multiplayer, as the Wii game had a two-player mode, though it was only against a Little Mac clone, not the game’s roster of weird and wonderful AI characters).