Version with live commentary: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/145613433 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6mVku_3dEs

On May 20th, 2007, Arne the Great and I decided that we wanted to improve his 101% run because some new things had been found. Now; 10 years, three emulator switches, 9 redos from scratch and a couple of tears later, it is finally finished.
It ended up being 21771 frames (6 minutes, 2 seconds and 51 frames) faster than Arne's time. Due to the emulator switch from 9X 1.43 to Bizhawk, some time is lost becuase of lag and loading times. The final in game time is 33:10.
This run aims to finish the game as quickly as possible while finding all the bonuses. The game's 101% definition is: Beat the 33 stages, find the 67 bonuses and kill King K Rool. The other six world bosses don't count towards the % count and can actually be skipped. However, only the second boss is faster to skip, because of the handy map warp in World 1. For the bonuses, the game counts them as obtained as soon as they are entered. It's therefore possible to press Start + Select, if you have finished the level, just when entering to practically skip the bonus completely.

When you roll into an enemy and keep holding Y, Diddy/Donkey will start a new roll with gained speed from the enemy. You can instead release Y and start the roll at a later point while the first roll is still going. This is useful to start the roll closer to a cliff, which will extend the time you stay in midair before falling, and to sometimes keep your speed for longer.

Normally when you make a roll, the roll will stop after awhile and you'll have to jump without losing too much speed. You can instead, while rolling, release Y for a frame, press B+Y and then Y, to start a new roll while keeping the speed. If you've been in midair and then land again, your first new continues roll will drop in speed, so another one has to be done quickly again to accelerate back up.

If you land on an enemy the same frame you start a roll, you'll roll in midair "without falling" (you actually drop one subpixel/frame). Because Donkey's hitbox is bigger than Diddy's, there are some JumpRolls that only he can do. Even if you rolled into an enemy, you'll only get the speed of one roll, though it's actually possible to store a Hump Roll to activate it on a second enemy for faster speed. This was however only faster in the last level.

This is a combination of two glitches: Super Jump and the JumpRoll. A Super Jump is done by first having Diddy/Donkey get hit and run into a vertical wall. This will have Diddy/Donkey jump straight up in the air. Break a DK Barrel, take damage again and hold B. The next time you'll land on an enemy, as long as you never make a jump or release B, you'll fly upwards. When you combine these two, you'll roll into enemies to build up speed, while at the same time moving upwards. Resulting in flying through a stage until you release B to drop. As all bonuses in the levels have to obtained, this glitch has limited uses for this category.

In slopes, and certain cliff corners, you can get very high speed if you jump using a barrel. This speed is also kept if you would bounce on enemies. Sometimes it is required to slow down in order to hit the right pixels of the corner that give you a boost.

After a level, or world, is finished, the Kong will automaticall walk to the next one (Unless there is more than one path to go). This can be prevented by holding right after the level fanfare, unless there's path to the right. This is useful for levels you have to re-enter to find bonuses.

With split up you can control two Kongs simultaneously. Easiest way to activate it is to re-enter a finished level, kill off one of the Kongs, throw a DK barrel and press Start + Select to exit. Now enter again and take hit while Donkey/Diddy falls down a hole, otherwise the game will softlock. The next you now break a DK barrel, both Kongs will be controlled simultaneously. This can also be used to bring an animal buddy to a different level, which is its the whole glitch's purpose for this run. See Croctopus Chase.

Walking into the Gnawty with the DK barrel will skip Donkey's throwing animation and quickly kill him off. Switching takes longer than killing off the character, but then you need to take into account that breaking the DK barrel takes some time. However, if you only have one Kong on the map screen, you save 10 frames/level, plus that many levels have less lag with only one Kong. While Rambi runs slower than Diddy is rolling, breaking the second bonus faster makes up for the time loss. He's then quickly disposed of, this game's Yoshi.

There's some lag in this level because of the rain and lightning effets. Sadly, not much of it can actually be reduced, nothing major hower.

First use of the mighty Barrel Boost! A quick turnaround makes it possible to land on the Kritter and have the barrel fly to the right without destroying the barrel. This is thanks to that objects you are holding takes an extra frame to turnaround than Diddy's animation. By jumping into crawling spaces the crawling itself can be skipped. If a roll is started when you are halfway through, you'll be zipped out. At the end of the stage, I skipped rolling into all four snakes. While rolling into up to four enemies will speed you up, each enemy you kill will pause the Kong's movement by two frames, or three if the game will also lag, and the extra speed didn't make up for the time it took to kill the snake.

Water levels sadly don't have any fancy tricks you can do. It's just to carefully cut the corner and optimise your subpixels like crazy.

I rolled a bit further after killing the three kritters, before jumping into the barrel. This was done to spawn the next barrel earlier, cutting down the waiting time. A barrel can be grabbed when jumping by pressing Y two frames after the jump. The slowdown for picking up the barrel is still the same in midair as on ground however.

Just land on him on the earliest frame... Real complicated stuff...

The shortest level in the game, which goes by quite quickly with all the rolling. First level to introduce Winky, which is "sadly" the only animal buddy we will not see in this run (Credits doesn't count).

Introducing the first out of 7 warps, all of which will be present in the run. Optimising the movement of the cart is kinda tricky. Downslopes normally increase the speed and when you jump this speed will be kept in midair and the landing has to be carefully planned as well.

The narrow passage after the midway barrel kept me stuck for a very long time. Getting through the first bee without getting hit was the main reason. I eventually got through it by making a short moonwalk, which moves me forward while not moving the camera as much, which ended up spawning the bee one frame later and still give me enough speed to bypass it.
I'm surprised that the small bounce from the tire made it into the run. Thanks to landing earlier, this was faster than a roll off the tire and then jump. The very last tire jump, up to the bonus, is actually very tight. Normally when you roll onto a tire like that it will take a long time to actually make the jump, as Diddy will "get stuck" onto the tire for awhile. But with precise speed and positioning of the tire, I could get an instant jump.

First example where it's faster to re-enter a level to get the rest of the bonuses. You can freely roll through the rockkrocs without taking damage. Though you are unable to start a continues roll while you are inside them. As Diddy enters the last bonus, I start + select out of the level to skip it. There is a sound emulation error with Bizhawk when you pause in this game, sounding a bit weird.

Heres comes the first Superjump. Have to wait for the Krusha to come closer, so why not have some fun with a TNT barrel? This bonus can only be accesses with Donkey Kong, which is why he's the one I have to set it up with. Have him jump up, get him back, kill off Diddy, land on the Krusha and fly into the barrel.
Once re-entering I use a slapslide with Donkey, done by pressing Y+downleft/right, this will instantly get his speed down to 0 and is the quickest turnaround in the game. Not really useful anywhere else however... And as Donkey Kong sucks, we sacrifice him again to get into the bonus. Here I use a nice combination of two glitches, which actually ended up being faster! I you end a bonus on a slope, Diddy will slide forward on the ground while he throws his cap and if you end a bonus with a jump, he'll jump very high straight up. This actually let him land on top of some platform off screen and actually made him land earlier than if he would have been on regular ground, thus cutting the animation shorter and saving time.

I rather not. Skipped!

Funky is a nice guy and takes us directly to the third world. OuG is the level with the most bonuses in the game: 5 of them. The final one normally require you to get Expresso and fly to, but thanks to a nice little JumpRoll, we'll ride the Klap Trap instead.

Not really much to say here. I had to redo this many times because of some minor improvements with corner optimisations. Jumping off Enguarde in the end doesn't save any time, but we need to go Yoshi-style on all our animal friends at some point.

Donkey actually has a faster victory fanfare than Diddy, this in combination that I need Donkey for the warp barrel in the next level, made it faster to sacrifice Diddy. RIP. It's possible to kill off Queen B when she's even lower down, this results in her falling through the floor. Neat trick, but sadly slower.

This warp barrel is both on a timer and only appears if Donkey is in the lead. A Necky or Mini Necky that is standing still actually can't hurt you, only their nuts do. Not much else to say here, moving on.

The level with the nice Ewok Village background. Lots of barrels you can skip with the speedy rolls, including some at the last bonus where there are a few pixels next to the barrel where Diddy can land.

Introducing Super JumpRolls. First a regular JumpRoll to get into position. After Diddy is killed off, Donkey technically kills one of the Kritters with the DK barrel, but as the Kritter is off screen, he lives to see another day, that is until I kill him in order to build up maximum rolling speed. Then all I have to do is hold B to gain height until it's time to drop. While killing more enemies at this state, as I have max rolling speed, actually slows you down, it was unavoidable in this case.
The last bonus normally requires you to bring a barrel to the end, but you can reach the exit barrel from the bonus to open it with, another use of the moonwalk here to delay spawning the second Kritter, as Diddy would have landed on it otherwise.

The game will still count as if you are on the roll when you roll through it, making the Kong teleport back to the rope as soon as you land. With enough speed you can skip through the rope's hitbox completely. I actually have to wait to take damage inside the bonus, as if you take damage while the screen is still fading in, you'll actually end up warping back to level 1-1. This is true for both the bonuses in this level.
Hitting the wall at the midway barrel actually slightly extends the jump height to avoid using the rope.

Ice physics sucks, as always. Jumping is actually now faster to first build up your speed. Spamming continues rolls normally don't increase your speed with reach roll, but on low speed on ice, it does.

One of the most beautiful tunes in the game, too bad we don't get to actually hear it... This is another warp barrel which was suppoed to be Donkey only, though jumping up the rope gets the jump down Diddy-style. It's easily possible to despawn the ropes when going to the second bonus, I actually had to slow down a little bit for them to be there, which actually didn't cost any time, if I remember correctly.

Because we all know that ostriches live in the snow. There are some bonuses where you don't exit from a barrel, instead you just drop down, and when you do you can actually make a jump in midair, rarely faster, but here it was. You can jump up slopes with Expresso to avoid slowing down at them.

The level that gave me nightmares. The level which stopped the TAS for years. The level which I couldn't even end up beating myself... HUGE thanks to Alyosha for TASing this for me and saving the run completely! He should technically have recieved authorship for this alone, but he declined it.
Anyway! The goal here is to bring Expresso from the previous level into the water. It's done via the Split Up glitch explained above. This will also make you run/jump inside the water as if it water didn't exist and you can also jump through certain walls + the fact that you move a lot faster with Expresso compared to swimming. However, this also spawns a lot of problems... Mainly the level's camera. As you were never supposed to move this quickly in a water stage, the camera won't speed up to keep up with Expresso's swift movement. The camera also only follows the level design, if jump through too many walls to skip section, the camera will get stuck, and the only way to finish the stage is for the camera to spawn the exit.
In order to TAS this, some kind of camera hack will be needed. A normal camera hack provides several problems. One reason is that enemies you encounter when TASing off screen won't be spawned when you replay it without the hack activated. As if an enemy is in your way, you can jump through it off-camera when replaying, but not when TASing. An enemy you see when TASing can also cause lag, which it doesn't when you replay the TAS. And enemies when you replay the TAS could also lag, and they aren't there when you are TASing... All these things + that general movement optimisations is difficult, made me completely give up.
Alyosha took a different approach and created a radar that displayed the level layout on screen. I tried to use this several times without any success, but Alyosha managed to produce a great result with it!

The fire barrels only hurt you if you stand on the middle of the barrel. You can freely jump through or land on the side without taking damage. When jumped through, they can also give you a small boost forward. Fun fact: This is the only level (Apart from the boss Queen B) which can't be beaten without using the Y button. Please prove me wrong.

This, among several other levels, also has a Super JumpRoll that would save time if I didn't have to grab the bonuses. This level is all about the almighty tire rolls! The last Army, after the second bonus, can be tricked into moving the other direction if you hold left when exiting the bonus, it would otherwise have been landed on.

The top right and left of a boss stage actually has solid ground for the Kong to stand on. This is actually useful because you can get hits in earlier. Donkey is sacrificed to skip the last cycle of high jumps.

It is possible to fall down the hole to the first bonus too quickly, where Diddy will fall down to his death before the barrel is spawned. The second bonus is one of the meanest in the game: Bonusception! You need to win with three bananas, grab the barrel and jump into the wall to enter the bonus. If you jump and grab the barrel in midair, it will not work. This could be the extra 1% that brought it up to 101 instead of 100. Donkey is brought back towards the end as he's needed for a JumpRoll in the next stage.

Thanks to Donkey's bigger hitbox, he can land on the Necky and activate a JumpRoll. The JumpRoll speed could be increased by also rolling into the second Necky in the level, this ended up being a little bit slower.

I realized that you could probably go under the third Bee at the first bonus, instead of waiting and going above. The window was fairly tight, but worked out perfectly. There's a speed glitch you can do with the Steel Barrel in combination with a wall and one of the elevators. But the setup was too slow for it to save time, sadly.

Last water level! Yay! *skip*

More annoying Mine Cart speed optimisations... Let's just skip riding it for awhile. First I need a Kong to sacrifice, so let's pick Donkey because he sucks anyway. If you switch character on a corner, you can actually move around during this switch. This has many interesting side-effects and could have potential for bigger glitches. None of which made it into this run, except for falling down this pit quicker.
Donkey is killed off and when Diddy jumps off he can start rolling and jumping in midair. It is still possible to use continues rolls in this state, though each time you drop in height. Making one every 11 frame is the most optimal way, height wise.

Catching up to the Steel Barrel in the end was a little bit tricky and went through a lot of failed methods. I still find this to look weird and unoptimised, but it was the best I could manage to achieve.

The only boss in the game that actually commits suicide... Way to go. As Donkey is the only one that can jump on Klumps and Army's, he got some time in the spotlight again.

All enemies are avoided here, as they will pause the platform for 2-3 frames. It is most important to never let the final lamp start blinking, as this causes lag, even when the platform is off screen. The JumpRoll could have been done at multiple locations earlier in the level, but sadly because of a bad Y-position, none of them ends up going all the way to the end.

Rambi can actually kill enemies without you stopping your movement. He can also do a higher jump if you press Y to attack and then jump at the right moment. When he has done his purpose, way say goodbye Yoshi-style, as always. There are two "bonus caves" in the game which aren't actually bonuses, one here and the other one in Bouncy Bonanza. The game kind of requires you to go into this cave to get the barrel for the bonus, but jumping up using the Gnawty is just as easy.

As the first bonus is pretty far into the stage, and rope being slow, using the Super JumpRoll saved some nice time.

This is the only Klap Trap in the game that isn't moving, which makes it killable with a regular roll, fixed in later revisions however. Not much more to say I believe...

This level ended up being very different than I first anticipated. By storing a JumpRoll, it can be activated again even while falling. This makes it possible to land on enemies beneath you to start the second, and also faster, JumpRoll. Enemies that drop down a hole will actually stay at the bottom before they are despawned. As you land on the enemy, Diddy actually never goes down to the death barrier, and can safely activate the JumpRoll. During the JumpRoll itself, Diddy drops 1 subpixel/frame. The roll is activated on Y-position -40 and drops down to -48 before reaching the bonus. This is the lowest pixel you can be before dying. So it's very convenient that the bonus barrel in the end is very low down, making it barely possible to jump up to it from this far down before Diddy dies.

The nuts often cause lag when they land. Some of it can be avoided by manipulating where Necky aims. Otherwise: Not much to say, not much to do...

I might as well use the same description a third time... "This fight is very boring as I'm running out of things to do while waiting. "
And that's it. Cranky will give you a special message after finding all the bonuses. But his "I did this using one life, and it took less than hour" will always remain the same. Even though Cranky is technically better than me, as I had to die once in the making.

It has been a motivational struggle for many years and I had to stop working on this multiple times to be motivated enough. One of the major break points was when Alyosha helped me out with Croctopus Chase, which was the main level that almost killed this run completely. So my first major thanks go to him!

Throughout, mostly the later parts though, the making of the run, RainbowSprinklez gave me some tips, pointed out stuff I had overlooked and discovered some of the tricks used (such as Super JumpRolls and Jumproll storage). It's always nice to have something watch your work and discuss ideas with, thanks a lot buddy!

While ArneTheGreat dropped out from the project many years ago, he really got the ball rolling initially. He was an inspiration for me to start TASing in general, both because he also was Swedish and for the DKC TAS he had already made for this category. A combination which was highly respected by me back when I was a scrub. We spent a lot of hours together researching the game and fooling around together in our many Skype and MSN conversation. I miss them :(. Thanks for what you have done for DKC TASing and my own growth <3.

And a big thanks to all other WIP-watchers, both at TASVideos, Youtube and Discord, and to the DKC speedrunning community in general!

Noxxa: Judging.

Noxxa: Great job on the decade-long development of this run improvement. The end result looks magnificent and is very well performed. Accepting as an improvement to the published run.

fsvgm777: Processing.