Random: A Bearded Man is an Unlikely Ally in Punch-Out!!

Punch-Out!! on NES is one of the most iconic games in the 8-bit system's library, inspiring popular culture into its third decade. Little Mac's rise to the top of the boxing world is simplistic, brutally difficult and still huge fun to this day.

Like so many of Nintendo's NES classics it has its secrets, and it seems that a keen gamer has found something new. It transpires - thanks to Redditor MidWesternHousewives - that the one bearded man in the watching crowd is some kind of guardian angel, showing the user when to initiate a one-punch knockout of Piston Honda. Check it out below.

Another user, unvaluablespace, then pitched in to confirm the authenticity of the find and to show that the bearded spectator also helps with the one-punch knock-out of Bald Bull.

The interesting thing is the bearded man did not flinch or move a single pixel until I reached the second fights with piston Honda and bald bull. The bearded man seems to not do anything during the first fights with these opponents. I repeatedly set up and re-loaded save states to perform various random movements to see if the bearded man would react differently, and in the case of bald bull, constantly dodged his bull charge. Sure enough, exactly every time you mentioned and showed in your video, the bearded man ducked just in time.

It's an awesome find, and shows that there could be more fiendishly hidden secrets to discover in the future.