Rare NES Punch‑Out! prototype

A Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge that looked like it might vanish into one private shelf just did the opposite: after selling at Heritage Auctions for $45,000, its game data was dumped online for anyone to study. The cartridge holds an early build of Punch-Out!! from before Mike Tyson was attached to the game. (ha.com, kotaku.com) That “before Tyson” part changes the whole shape of the game. The retail Nintendo Entertainment System release in 1987 was sold as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, but this prototype has no Tyson fight, no Mr. Dream replacement, and no mention of either one. (dualshockers.com, timeextension.com) The cartridge itself is part of why preservation people are excited. Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi said he had “never seen anything like this” in more than 25 years of handling Nintendo Entertainment System prototypes, because this one appears to use dated mask read-only memory chips instead of the erasable chips usually found in test builds. (timeextension.com, youtube.com) That is a weird manufacturing detail with a simple meaning: most prototypes are like rewritable draft printouts, while retail carts are like books printed in bulk. This Punch-Out!! cart looks closer to the second category even though the game on it is still unfinished. (timeextension.com, youtube.com) The build is also much smaller than the game people remember. The playable order is only four opponents long — Glass Joe, Bald Bull, King Hippo, and Don Flamenco — and after Don Flamenco the game shows a training scene, gives a password, and loops back to Glass Joe. (nintendoeverything.com) It is missing a whole layer of polish. The Cutting Room Floor’s documentation says the prototype has no sound code or sound data, so one of Nintendo’s most rhythm-based boxing games currently survives in a nearly silent form. (nintendoeverything.com, tcrf.net) The fighter list reads like a fork in the road. It includes Piston Hurricane and Pizza Pasta from the 1984 arcade Punch-Out!!, while the final Nintendo Entertainment System game replaced Hurricane with Piston Honda and dropped Pizza Pasta entirely. (nintendoeverything.com, timeextension.com) Two names in the prototype are stranger than that: Rockyhead and Mongol Khan. Historians writing about the dump say those boxers do not match known final-game opponents, which means this cartridge preserves ideas Nintendo may have cut before most players ever saw a screenshot. (nintendoeverything.com, timeextension.com) The credits preserve another piece of Nintendo editing history. The character later known on the Nintendo Entertainment System as Soda Popinski still appears here under the older arcade-era name Vodka Drunkenski, before Nintendo toned that reference down for the home release. (nintendoeverything.com, timeextension.com) There are debug options too, which are the developer’s backstage controls. One option lets players take control of unfinished opponents and cycle through move sets, although reports say it produces obvious visual glitches because those characters were never completed for normal play. (nintendoeverything.com) The backstory sounds like something from the cartridge era itself. Multiple reports say the prototype was found in a garage in early 2026, was believed to have belonged to a former Nintendo of America employee, and then went from auction lot to public archive instead of disappearing again. (timeextension.com, nintendoeverything.com) That is why this find landed so hard with collectors and preservationists. It is not just an expensive cartridge with a different label; it is a playable snapshot of the moment when Nintendo was still deciding which fighters, names, art style, and even business deal would turn Punch-Out!! into one of the defining games of 1987. (ha.com, timeextension.com, youtube.com)