Well, here we go again. Donkey Kong Country Returns is a side-scrolling platformer that was released in 2010. Donkey Kong has a mission, and that is to get his stolen Banana Hoard back from thieves known as the Tiki Tak Tribe. As seen, he takes this quite literally. There are 8 different worlds that Donkey Kong goes through to progress closer & closer to the Hoard. However, this time, the hoard isn't his main objective; rather, he plays every level in the game.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Dolphin 2407
- Aims for the fastest time
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses a theoretic route
2 years ago I submitted (looking back at it) a very weak TAS of this game. That's only because I knew little to nothing about it's timesave strats. Now, I learned a lot about this game and it's timesaves during this run. While it isn't optimized to the bone, it was one hell of a learning experience. I think about doing this again very soon. I'm glad I was able to run this back.
Some stages that had my most concern
World 1-6: Crazy Cart
Too much of the beginning optimal cart movement will make me short on the K so I had to adjust. Other than that, I'm sure 1-6 is OK.
World 2-6: Blowhole Bound
Introducing the new theorized trick: Blowhole rolling, where you can roll on the whale after activating the blowhole when it's tilted diagonally upwards. I haven't been able to successfully nail it in any other spot besides the very beginning, & when grabbing the N. It'd be nice to find more spots to do it in.
World 6-6: Crumble Canyon
I absolutely love the 6-6 platform phase glitch. Unfortunately, it's a bit slower than the original route because the ball is supposed to start moving as soon as you reach the first tilting platform. I realized this heading into world 7-3, but I accepted that, & didn't look back.
World 7-7: Music Madness
I don't know if I did too much slowdown after the 2nd checkpoint & could've made some more damage-boosting manipulation or not. Looks fairly optimized if you want to continue to keep Diddy, but maybe I could've lost him to save time.
World 8-1: Furious Fire
That double pound looks ridiculous when trying to keep Diddy after grabbing the K. I think the thing around the double pound is that you're supposed to be standing in a certain spot while being able to create a pound without the pound animation during the first time, then after 5 frames, a new pound begins with the actual pound animation starting. The way I did it was the only way I could do it whilst carrying Diddy. I'm afraid there might've been a faster way of doing it. Not sure right now.
Other important things
The Route (Good news for future runs.)
It seems the route is faster in this way especially since you don't need to do what I did at the end of World 1-1 & World 1-6. That wastes about a good 480 frames getting the 30 extra banana coins that I didn't even need. I got those just incase I didn't have enough within the progress of the run & feared that I would've had to start over or waste time trying to grab enough banana coins. (Could've used some of those coins for banana juice for levels like 8-1 lol)
Triple Gong Pounding
This trick is seen in World 3-5, World 5-4, World 8-K, & World 6-5. Triple Gong Pounding is done by standing at the very left edge of the gong. It's very hard to get it right especially since you're not always at the very edge of the gong on your very first frame you get to ground pound it. Getting more height in some situations would be better than just landing right on the gong. I don't know the proper inputs to trigger Triple Gong Pounding, but what I do know is that if you do, you press left+down (after shaking) for a few frames (maybe 3 or 4 or until you align at the edge of the gong again) & repeat those steps until you complete it. It's hard to explain but I hope this is enough to edify.
Running the DTM
I deleted my save.bin & my banner.bin files when making this movie & that seemed to be the only way I was able to run the movie perfectly without any desyncs. Was I supposed to do that or not? I'm a little curious.
Game Time
To avoid any confusion, the video provided uses In-game time & in-game frames rather than the movie's frames & movie time. OFC there's way more to the movie than what I said there
To Conclude
This run took 3 months, a bad desync fix, & a constant motive to complete. It wasn't so easy to make, & I acknowledge that this run can be improved. (Maybe about a minute more.) I was a little nervous to submit this movie too, but looking back at it, I still liked the way it turned out to be. Almost all levels are pretty optimized & there are new strats that can be tested in RTA. Would do this again sometime.
