Collect this large-format Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! photograph, from the Nintendo video game, hand-signed by Mike Tyson!
This great piece has been signed by Tyson in an especially large, bold signature in blue felt-tip marker. Framed in a black gallery style frame, measuring 17-3/8" in height x 21-3/8 " width, it is a graphic image captured from Nintendo’s extremely popular video game, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! The graphic image of Tyson stands front and center in the boxing ring. The much smaller figure of the referee, front right, calls TKO (Technical Knock Out).
Mike Tyson signed in the presence of a representative from PSA/DNA Authentication Services, and the piece bears a unique alphanumeric authentication label from PSA/DNA, which corresponds to the matching “In-the-Presence” Certificate of Authenticity which accompanies the item.
MIKE TYSON’S PUNCH-OUT!! was a boxing sports fighting video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), developed and published by Nintendo in 1987. The game received critical acclaim and many publications list it among the greatest video games of all time.
Genyo Takeda (the producer of the Punch-Out!! arcade games), was the assigned director of the NES variation of the game. Because the NES was not as powerful as the arcade hardware, Takeda and his crew realized that it would be impossible for the NES port to faithfully emulate the arcade graphics. The video game programming, design and functionality were adapted for the video game platform, resulting in a game that was less arcade-like, with a new look, plot, and with a changed AI ability of the opposing boxers.
Punch-Out!! features a boxer known as “Little Mac”, fighting his way up through ranks of the World Video Boxing Association. After facing a series of colorful fictional opponents in three main circuits, with one hidden one called Another World Circuit, the goal is to win a final “Dream Fight” against a highly skilled boxer.
Around the time the Gold Version of the game was released for a NES Open Tournament Golf competition, Nintendo of America’s founder and former president Minoru Arakawa attended a boxing match featuring future heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. While watching the boxer fight, Arakawa became so astonished with the athlete's “power and skill”, he was inspired to use the athlete’s name and likeness in the upcoming port of the Punch-Out!! series to help the game sell better. Tyson was rumored to have been paid $50,000 for a three-year period for his likeness. This transaction was something of a risk for Nintendo, as it occurred before Tyson won the World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight championship from Trevor Berbick on November 22, 1986, a feat that greatly increased the profit for the game.
In the original version of Punch-Out!! released in the West, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, Little Mac’s opponent is the real-life Mike Tyson, then-World Heavyweight Champion, and it is Mike Tyson’s graphic image that fights Little Mac. Years later, once Nintendo’s license had expired, worldwide releases of the game were rebranded from Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! to simply Punch-Out!!, and his likeness was replaced by a fictional character named “Mr. Dream”.