But these are super punches by the boss that may knock the player out in one hit, so it isn't a common punch for the boss to use. If I remember correctly, the timing and number of times the super punch is used is loosely based on how well you are doing. I remember feeling that if you are winning handily the super punches come out sooner and more often.
I would suppose an easy test is to go the full round without attacking the boss and see if that spectator does the head nod at any point other than during the super punch.
That would not disprove what Zikes is proposing. Zikes (and gburt, and myself) are saying that it's possible the two actions are coincidentally linked. We are not arguing they are not linked, just that the fact they are linked does not necessarily mean they were intentionally linked by the developer. We all agree on the events in the game, we're talking about intent. The only way to know would be to ask the developer.
The developers are quoted halfway down the page as having included the timing cues for opponents intentionally.
We (the gaming community) have known this since 2009 when that interview came out, so it's kind of amusing that people are making tech-based arguments trying to debunk a cultural fact they aren't familiar with. It could have been an unintentional artifact of the PRNG, sure, but it isn't. At the very least it was intentionally not removed.
If nothing else, those cues probably helped QA quite a bit.
You're misunderstanding, and I don't blame you because I don't think I'm explaining it well. First, I do not disagree that this is very likely intentional "easter egg" behavior programmed in by the developers. However, this behavior could just as easily be a result of chance, even though it is 100% reproducible.
When you look at how older video games are developed, you almost always have to first consider what the extreme constraints are. Nowadays you can get away with paying very little mind to, say, how much disk space a video game takes. Even optical disk space matters little, as additional content could be downloaded as a part of the game installation process.
On older games, however, disk space, processor usage, RAM, everything was in terribly short supply. As a result, lots and lots of shortcuts were taken. A more well-known example is how the Mario Bros clouds and bushes used the same sprite with a different color palette. [1]
So when developing a game under those constraints, the developer would have had to be keenly aware of how much was going on at any given time and whenever possible re-use any existing processes or assets. In Punch-Out there are several things happening on the screen at once, between the movements of the crowd and the enemy. When it came time to implement the "super punch", the developer would have probably wanted to re-use any existing RNG process already being run, rather than run a whole new RNG for that action alone, in the interest of conserving resources. In this case, they could have chosen the same RNG results that drive the head-bob in the crowd NPC.
I understand, I think it was explained fairly well. I'm just saying that since the super punch event appears to be an event that is not necessarily random (granted it does to me from memory without researching it), I don't agree that it could be tied to another event that is seemingly random. I guess my main question is whether the super punches are indeed random or the result of conditions with randomness mixed in. If it is fully random, then I agree your explanation is possible. If it is not, then the head nod event should happen occasionally outside of the super punch event.
I would suppose an easy test is to go the full round without attacking the boss and see if that spectator does the head nod at any point other than during the super punch.