I'm placing my bet on 267000 points

272622700 points?

Low score Mac is my favorite boxer. He has his opponents analyzed down to the bone. He'll dodge and weave for 2 rounds and land one punch to end the fight. And in the next fight he can't dodge a punch to save his life, getting punched every time he lands a hit. Yet he still wins, every time. Somehow all his fights seem like they're pre-determined, but you never know what kind of Mac will show up. It is an honor to be a boxing spectator in this era. Low score Mac will always be my world champion.

It must be unbelievably frustrating to fight a guy who turns into a phantom and dodges every shot you throw for rounds on end... and then drops you with one perfectly placed, kidney-shattering punch.  Especially when he's ten weight classes smaller than you are.

As someone who's never paid attention to the score in punch out, I'm going to say exactly 38610. Let's see how awful my score is in an hour...

As mentioned in the intro, it is physically impossible to complete the game with zero points, as hitting an opponent in any way gains a point.

Therefore, mathematically, 0 points is the worst guess, and I should be pinned for this glorious achievement in scientific problem solving.

Now that I've finished watching, I'm going to make another bold prediction. I predict that this video was only a prelude, the calm before the storm, a video to establish background information before the main event, which is trying to figure out the highest possible scores. In your TAS video you, said that the full TAS speedrun wasn't even close to the hardest thing you've done, and looking at this, I don't think it's this either, but now that we already know how exactly to get points, and we know a way to refill a bit of HP by punching and that it works for enemies as well, something tells me this was just the beginning.

This may be a bit off topic, but it's really amazing how well made this game is. Most NES games, even the big titles, have a lot of jank to them. Whether it's weird hitboxes, buggy graphics, or sprite flickering/lag, you'll find it everywhere. This game has so few issues that even speedrunners can barely bust its code. Tbh, I really don't like most NES games because they've mostly aged very poorly, but this is a huge exception. The only real "dated" things I can see are the lack of a level select (which is easily made moot with the password system) and the score counter. You could legitimately put this game on a store for 5 bucks (maybe with cleaned up sprites like the video) and it'd feel like it was made today. It's a marvel of game design.

next thing I'd like to know is what is the highest possible score?  I mean, you can only score so many points before the opponents will go down, so there has to be a max points limit, right?

yeah idk mate. probably like a billion

Let's see, since win by decision is off the table, each foe needs to be knocked out at least once. So that immediately gives us 14 * 1010 = 14140 as a lower bound. And not every foe can be beaten in one knockdown – if we imagine that, on average, each opponent takes 2 knockdowns, this would give us an estimate of 28280 points, disregarding other sources of points. So I'll give a broad guess of 30000 points total to give some room for 10 points per punch adding up.

I know literally nothing about this game, so I'm sure my guess is perfect
200,000
Edit: the points are not going up as much as I thought they might

My guess for the lowest score is 5.51 seconds. Not sure why Twin Galaxies removed that record...

Unironically hilarious that you still have to be really good at the game to get the lowest score possible! You pretty much have to use perfect fundamentals and dodge everything and win with the least punches every fight...
Is this the boxing version of golf?

I love how at 55:20, you get Super Macho Man crouching and turning into Soda Popinski before releasing his uppercut

I’m going to guess around 40,000. One knockdown for Glass Joe, King Hippo and Piston Honda II, two knockdowns for Don Flamanco I, and three for everyone else gives 35 knockdowns total; that’s 35,000 points. I reckon about 500 punches total for another 5,000 points

EDIT: forgot about the Bald Bull II one hit KO

My guess right after the rundown would be average of 2 knockdowns per fighter (28280), and just round up a bit to account for the majority of punches and maybe the odd star knockdown and I'd guess right around 35,000 points

Plz no laugh senpai Papi I guess 69420 points.

I'm guessing 36,000ish


Why the fuck did that work

I find it strange that I'm so interested in the depths of a game I've never played, and looks like a game I probably wouldn't enjoy playing.

I think I like the theorhetical aspects of it and the ways that math is used to maximize (or minimize) different categories of efficiency. Ik most speedruns do that with frame-saving techniques, but that sort of math is a fundamental part of the gameplay itself, and is therefore more visible and interesting.

Can't wait to see a high score video.