Donkey Kong Country 2 Any% in 41:49 by Arne the great

Settings, time saved, time taken etc. etc.

I'm not very good at writing these kind of things, they often end up so terrible confusing, but I will try my best to explain the most.
Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest is the sequel of the first Donkey Kong Country and this time Donkey has been captured by his rival K. Rool, leaving it up to Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie Kong to rescue him.
This game has some more complex leveldesign as well as new movements. It's a good thing but in my opinion, the game can easily get a bit confusing and sometimes slow. It's nevertheless very good but I don't think it top the first DKC. The game also got very good music and I think it suits better for a TAS than the first. This is the run of the game which aims for any% and the fastest time possible to complete the game. The run took about a year of work to do and it's a 5 minutes and 6.333~ seconds improvement of the previous run by Sami. Most of the time was testing stuff and searching for glitches and searching for it's use. Sami's run wasn't a bad run and was, in fact, a good one for being the first but he forgot to test a lot of stuff and using frame advance so there was many places where it could be improved by just better movement or using new glitches.
There has been quite a hype around this run so you might get disappointed on it's entertainment value. Sorry if so.
  • 18380 frames faster
    • 5 minutes & 6.333~ seconds
    • 10.88%
  • 157194 rerecords
  • One year of work
  • Snes9X v1.43+ improvement 9 used.
    • WIP1 timing ON
    • left+right & up+down enabled
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Manipulates luck
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Uses warps
<--Warning! Spoilers ahead, if you want to get more suprised by the run, you shouldn't read further.-->

Major/common glitches/tricks used in the run

When I started this run, I thought DKC2 was a rather glitchfree game but would I be proven wrong. This game is full of glitches and is suprisingly unstable, it crashes a lot. Most time spent on doing this run was hunting for new glitches and tricks. Therefore, I will list the most important and most used tricks/glitches and try to explain them to an understandable point.

Backwardsswitch

This trick is just like a regular characterswitch but the diffrence is that the character will move backwards instead of forwards. This can be abused to go through walls and the ground. This trick was very long a mystery to me but I figured out how to do it about when I was at the last world. Some special requirements are needed for a backwardsswitch:
  • The in-active characters speed must be 0 (This is checked by RAM-adresses, check at that section)
  • The in-active character must be at ground and moving towards the active (I think so, not 100% sure)
  • The active character must moving from the in-active
  • The character must not end up in something solid (You can go through though.)
  • Must be on land?
Even though you might see some zips in the run, I do not actually get into the wall but it will be too tight and Diddy will be pushed up.

Team-throw up

Yes I am aware that the name sounds like Diddy & Dixie would vomit simultaneous, but it's not. ;) The trick i performed thus: Press A and do a piggyride. Jump and, while in mid-air, throw upwards and when the character that is being throwed lands, you have a frame-window where you can make another jump. This trick allows you to go almost everywhere but is, alas, very slow. There is ways to make the tricks a bit faster though. Like, you can throw one character on an enemy and then jump and when the character returns to your shoulders you can jump again. You can also throw upwards at enemies to be a bit faster too.

Goal-switch

When pressing 'select', the in-active character will directly be active and if the he/she is on a goal target, it will be activated as if you would jump on it and you wouldn't need to jump. But one has to have in mind that the character will be switched and this can have a good and bad side. It allows one to do fast switches but for example, Dixie is a lot slower and she may be too slow on the next stage so it won't save time at all. This trick is used almost just only in the two first worlds. The trick doesn't work on all targets and somehow sometimes it won't work on targets where it normal works but it just doesn't. I haven't understood it yet.

Castle-CRASH

Probably the most interesting glitch in the whole DKC-series. The trick basically crashes the game and seems to scramble the memory adresses. It's actually just a part of the hold-air trick that I will begin with explaining. Holding "air" is when Diddy or Dixie picks up a barrel just after it breaks. This will result D. picking up nothing or "air". And then I think it works something like that when you're holding nothing, the game will force something that you will hold and that is often the newest spawned object. When you are holding that object and you throw it, weird things can happen to it. If it's just an enemy, it's speed often just gets very high and it will zoom away. It also depends on where and how you throw it, if you throw up or left, diffrent things will happen. I think the object just gets the value that is supposed to be the barrels speed and that often works for enemies and such but for other object it can happen obscure things. So far, I only know two ways to do this, drop a barrel against the wall in Castle crush and using the no-barrel cheat and go to mud-hole marsh. So how is this trick useful? Well when in Castle Crush, pick up the first DK-barrel you see and hold it against the wall, now put it down and pick it up right after. You will now hold "air" and if you timed it right, you will hold the Rambi Barrel. If you throw upwards, you will probably be transformed into Klubba and you can move sideway but if you touch any wall, the game will crash. Other things can happen like that you will go to the title screen or just watch the special ending. If you throw left/right, the game will often crash. But if you get hurt before jumping inside the barrel and jump into as dixie, you will probably be transformed to Rambi but he will be yellow and his vertical speed will the maximum possible that he can have. The game will also get really unstable and you will probably not be able to control Rambi where you want him. If you hurt an enemy, you will see Diddy piggyride Dixie and you will be able to throw but you will still have the same speed. I know this is confusingly explained but you should try it out yourself. And I do not know any way to activate the goal switch but I've been very close but it seems very impossible. Read about the Castle Crush stage further how this will is used. If anyone knows how to activate the goal target with zombie rambi, PLEASE tell me.
About Nitsuja's posts here and here: I don't believe this is an emulator-only bug. From what I know of the glitch, it gives the Rambi-barrel a new property and if you throw it diffrent, it will get a diffrent result which later scrambles a lot of memory adresses and often results in crashes. This is nothing I experienced in emulators only but on console as well. The results I've gotten on Console and on emulator has been the same. But I've only tried the PAL version where golden Rambi won't work but the results is still the same on console and emulator. This trick with golden Rambi is also on David Wonn's site with pictures and all: http://davidwonn.kontek.net/snes.html#D and http://davidwonn.kontek.net/dkqmorph.html and I've also talked with someone that said he done that trick on console in the very same way as on an emulator. So my arguments why this should be accepted (even though I didn't read that AFTER I'd done that) is:
  • The trick works in Snes9X 1.43+ AND 1.51 AND Zsnes
  • Snes9X is an accepted emulator.
  • The trick is too awesome to be left out
  • It works on console and could probably be done in the same way.

Rambi's extra jump + Animals flying

When Rambi is charged and at full speed, he can do an extra jump in air by pressing left and then jump while in mid-air.
If dixie lands on an animal when spinning and then jump directly after mounting, you will be able to float with animals. Might be useful for 102%
Of course there is a lot more glitches but these are the most important and common.

Level-by-level

In this section I will list all levels and write down some notes and try to explain what happened in that particular level. I will also write down how much I saved on each level. Much time was due to just better movements and stratergies. The time that I write has been saved is probably not always exactly correct because I often forget to write these things down and I don't want to doublecheck for every damn stage. And if you've been weird and adding up all time and sees that it doesn't add up to 5 min & 6.333 seconds it can be because I've written wrong and I have also saved some time between stages. So here we go! Sorry if it's get confusing and there is a lot more that I could write but I'm not a very good writer at the moment.

Pirate panic

First stage! \o/ Gotta be good, won't it? Well, nothing really special here. The improvements comes mostly from not throwing the barrel (throwing barrels makes your speed go zero) but instead I walked with the barrel into the gnawty. I think I also saved some time from some optimization. I think this can be slightly improved from picking up the barrel from the most far right side and that way roll a bit longer. Also, I saved 8 frames to the beginning of the stage.
15 frames saved.

Mainbrace Mayhem

First stage that uses the goal-switch trick. The goal-switch trick doesn't save as much time as it could've done on this stage because I had to do a jump. The trick saved about 26 frames.
33 frames saved.

Gangplang Galley

I lost about 21 frames because I had to use Dixie here and she's a lot slower(especially at jumping). I also used the goal-switch again.
7 frames saved.

Lockjaw's Locker

In Sami's version, he rolled down to the first kritter and then made a teamthrow up to the shortcut barrel. I found that you could roll directly into the barrel with precise control. Touching walls while rolling results in unability to move horizontally and that's the trick. And no goal-switch here, it just doesn't save time and dixie on the next stage = slow.
111 frames saved.

Topsail Trouble

Last stage on the first world. The fastest stage in the whole game actually. So the improvement comes from a lame goal-switch again which makes me to switch to Dixie again. Read on the next stage why Dixie should be used on the boss.
37 frames saved.

Krow's Nest

I ran into some trouble on this one. It took a while until I realized that the scroll needs to be at the far left to avoid Krow going far to the right. I also discovered that if you hit the bird on the right side, even though it takes a bit longer, the bird will be closer to the nest and take less time to pick up the next egg! I saved a lot of time on that. I had to sacrifice 8 frames between the stages to manipulate luck so I could get the eggs fall as I wanted. The only way to manipulate luck was to enter the boss at diffrent frames. It was also very important to use Dixie on this one. Why? Well it's because when Dixie pick up an egg, she holds it higher than diddy. But more important is that when you get the krem koin, Dixie/Diddy will start 'jamming' and Dixie is about 185 frames faster on that one.
361 frames saved.

Hot-head Hop

Yet again, Dixie is a bit slower but not by that much. The only diffrence here is Dixie and another goal-switch.
19 frames saved.

Kannon's Klaim

I tried diffrent tactics like throwing one character up in the barrel from about where the hook is but that didn't work out too well. But I managed to skip throwing a barrel and instead just roll on the very edge. Goal-switch again!
74 frames saved.

Lava Lagoon

I tried some diffrent things again which, of course, didn't work too well. But I saved a lot by using Dixie because if you missed it, Dixie 'jams' faster than Diddy.
197 frames saved.

Red-hot Ride

I didn't need to change to Dixie here which saved some time :-). And a goal-switch. 116 frames saved.

Sqwuak's Shaft

Nothing special besides a goal-switch which switches to Dixie for the boss again :)
26 frames saved.

Kleever's Kiln

I optimized movements a bit but more important, after the third cannonball, I went up on the ledge to the left and flew all the way to the right instead of waiting on the hooks to fall down. You may wonder if I could've hit that boss faster and yes I could. But the boss must do his attack before the hooks drop down and if I hit him earlier, I can't get back (I can but that is da slow). So I flew in front of him to let him to do his attack and then throw the cannonball on him. After that, there is nothing special. The cannonballs drops after a certain time so there is not really much time to save here. I also made Diddy stand in air for fun.
337 frames saved.

Barrel Bayou

With and after this stage, I stopped releasing WIPs of my progress. It was because I wanted to keep the run as a suprise and if you don't want to have it spoiled, don't read any further. It is now many suprising things will come (not really on this stage though). So, back on the stage! What's new? Not much beside better use of Rambi and his double jump (see glitch section). I had an interesting glitch that might have saved some time (but I don't think so) but I discovered that later and tested it and it seemd slower.
167 frames saved.

Glimmer's Galleon

Ah, the first complete water stage. It wasn't that bad to do, I kind of like to do water stages because there is a lot to improve. I spent a lot of time to save a few frames on the very beginning for example and I learned some new tactics :). The hard part was to avoid lag, at some places it was impossible though...
277 frames saved.

Krockhead Klamber

This one took some time for planning on where and how to roll. It's not very noticeable in the run but it's there :P. Nothing special here.
96 frames saved.

Rattle Battle

This stage got quite good music ^_^;; But, alas! I had to use that slowass snake. It took time to test what ways was the fastest to use with the snake and where to jump. You see, spending time on the ground slows down your speed a lot. So the best thing is to try to keep as long in the air as possible. I also noticed that you can land on far edges without losing speed \o/. Oh, I almost forgot, I had some desync problems on this one too so I had to redo :(
89 frames saved.

Slime Climb

One of my favorite stages to speed through on a console. Often did that at school and compete with my friends :). This stages is one of the first to use the team-throw jump and it uses it quite much. It was kinda hard to test where it was fastest and where to use it because there was a lot of combinations. But it ended up as one of the nicest stages :) I'm quite proud of this one. I really like the ending, it was trivial to get it just right and yes I had to wait a bit on the kritters to be able to reach the ledge.
417 frames saved.

Bramble Blast

One of the most boring stages to play but not that boring to TAS, it's quite easy and not that boring to look at. There wasn't much (if any?) changing in how to shoot the barrels and I'm sure that it's the optimal use of them. The new and cool part of this stage is a team-throw jump and a throw THROUGH the roof and skip a big part barrels. At some few places there is possible to throw through the roof, it's trivial and hard to find but I found it. I also took suicide so I don't need to change character and it saves time too.
844 frames saved.

Kudgel's Kontest

Boring! This boss is plain boring, I am boring in it, and the TAS of it is boring. Nothing to say here. >_> Actually, IIRC, it is the only stage where I didn't save anything at all. Except for Stronghold Showdown but that one doesn't count.
0 frames saved.

Hornet Hole

Honey! Yummy in my tummy. I didn't have time to eat some honey anyway and the honey slows you down as you may see. I did some new minor tactics and climbed the walls a bit better (L+R makes things easier). With enough proper speed and landing on the very edge, you will, instead of getting 'stuck', be able to do a roll or jump. This saves some time at several places in the stage.
197 frames saved.

Target Terror

A boring race stage where you can't affect your speed at all. There is nothing you can really do except avoiding lag and enemies and try to enter the other carts as soon as possible.
7 frames saved.

Bramble Scramble

This is a quite fun and challenging level. The improvements comes mostly from better movements and mostly at corners. The parrot can't take damage from below so I used that to move around corners a lot better than Sami. I also took a shortcut through the last bees. I suspect that it could be done a bit faster but I'm not sure.
319 frames saved

Rickety Race

Another race stage but on this one, you can affect your speed by jumping at the right places. When going downhill, the speed is a bit lower than normal so to be absolute fastest you have to find the frame where you jump over the whole downhill. I used a RAM-adress for X-position a lot for this one. I was quite picky when doing this.
48 frames saved

Mudhole Marsh

Improvements come from better movement and I rolled through the Cat o' 9 Tails enemies where it was possible which Sami did not. Sometimes I had to scroll backwards a bit by moving left for a couple of frames, this makes the enemies spawn a bit later and making them possible to roll through. That wasn't always faster but sometimes it was.
151 frames saved

Rambi Rumble

Yet again, I used the trick to roll on honey-edges to save some time. I did a team-throw double jump at a place where I thought would be slower but it turned out that it was quite much faster. I saved quite a lot time on the Rambi part and at one place I ran down the pit but I managed to go far enough for making the screen start scroll down. This was made with the help of Rambi's extra jump when being charged.
347 frames saved

King Zing Sting

This boss was quite trivial to do. The first parts were easy and I tried to be quite entertaining but I'm not very good or have the patient for doing it very well. I saved some time by just being more frame perfect but the big improvement comes from when the bee goes small and gets surrounded by some regular bees. Normally, you can't hit the bee before you have taken out all the bees that goes round the boss but I found a frame window where it was possible to damage the boss before it was meant to. It was a bit trivial to actually hit it. The last hits were somewhat trivial too because you had to keep the boss as low as possible at the last hit.
345 frames saved

Ghostly Grove

I spent a lot of time trying to save one frame to the first rope because I was just one pixel from doing that and that annoyed me. I lost some time because I had to switch character but at least I didn't end up slower anyway. Without the switch, I would be 74 frames faster. Oh, I think this is the only stage that rolls on the goal target from the ground and directly at the target.
27 frames saved

Haunted Hall

I was not very ambitious when doing this but it's such a boring stage and there is not much that can be saved on it anyway. I could probably squeeze some extra frames out of it but yeah... I saved some time by jumping at some better places but what is interesting and not even intended is that on the last part, the ghost appeared behind the door and the counter never appeared! This didn't really save anytime and nor do I know how this is done but I leaved it like that.
28 frames saved

Gusty Glade

Yay! Getting boosted and slowed down by wind! I can't remember anything special on this stage but I jumped under the ground, it slowed me down a bit but I needed to wait some time anyway so it didn't matter.
91 frames saved.

Parrot Chute Panic

This stage is one of the most entertaining and fast but I can find it a bit too confusing but it was quite fun to do. I used some new like skipping to mount the parrot by either holding an object or rolling just by it's side (not always possible) and then jump towards the ceiling to prevent wasting time. One thing that I also saved time on was that I didn't take damage. I found a way to not take damage but it took a long time to find the best way but it looks better and is faster now.
187 frames saved

Web Woods

I thought this would be the hardest and most boring stage to do but I was proven wrong. It was one of the easier and quite fun to do, squitters movement isn't that hard to optimize. When I had passed the Kutlass' (the guys with the swords) I do a backwardsswitch and I skip going around and it was one whole frame faster that way! But because I had to switch character anyway (for the boss) I saved about 75 frames. You may wonder why I didn't do a web-machinegun ala Comicalflop and the answer to that is, everytime you release Y you loose a little more than one frame (I don't know exactly) so to be fastest I have to shoot as little as possible. Sami did this but shot one time more than necessary. I don't think it matters so much because it looks nice anyway. One thing about CF's 102% run that I don't understand is why he didn't take damage where it can save some frames here and there. Oh well. I also saved time by avoiding walking over edges in a way that slows you down a bit. (does that occasionally)
152 frames saved

Kreepy Krow

I had to sacrifice some frames on luck manipulation but it isn't perfect but it is close and it would take longer time to wait even longer for the perfect setting. Most of the improvements come from the luck manipulation and you can see that on the second level that I rolled instead of jumping. It may seem like I can climb faster and that maybe is true but it won't matter because I have to wait for the boss anyway and I can actually outrun the boss but then I have to make a teamthrow and that makes a pause which takes too much time. I did sacrifice some speed for a cool trick, when the screen is scrolling upwards and you come up where the bottom of the screen is supposed to kill you, I do a piggyride and jumps down before the screen scrolls up and I throw at the last moment and I die but diddy will just land and I will be killed but I will still be able to complete the boss. I thought it was worth it and it cost me abot 15-20frames.
165 frames saved

Artic Abyss

I had such a cool potention trick on this one. It was here I was experimating a lot with the backwardsswitch and starting to understand how it
works and especially how it won't work to end up in a solid wall (In fact, it's impossible to end up in walls, even with game genie). I tried
first with game genie to make Diddy's speed go up very high to the left and he was pressed into a very small space and he zipped up. I walked to the right and to my supriseness, the goal target was just there which meant that if I could make the trick possible, I would've skipped the whole stage just like that. So I started to experimate a lot and calculating the position and distance of a backwardsswitch but even when I poked the position in it wouldn't work so I'm afraid that it's impossible. HERE is a demonstration on how it happens if it would work. If anyonegot it to work, I would be very happy. About this stage anyway; it was trivial to do. A lot more trivial than I thought because there is so much things to test down in the water and you have to optimize the movements very precisely but I was quite ambitious when I did this and I'm very pleased with the result.
373 frames saved

Windy Well

Well, this stage goes up very well and it turned out well it's also windy. The improvements here comes mostly from a new trick where you release Y at a specific moment when you are floating upwards and are about to land and you will land some maybe 10 frames earlier so this is of much use. There was also some new ways and it went very well. It was a bit windy though. Saved a lot more than I thought O.o
52 frames saved

Castle Crush

Ah, this stage is wonderful. Normally this stage is very long (4.5 minutes) but I found some time ago that you could use the teamthrow trick to get upwards very fast and save about 1.5 minutes. I did for long test the Castle Crash trick but it wasn't till I actually was about to do the stage that I succeeded to use the trick. So at the beginning I wait until I come up to the first DK-barrel and I do the 'hold air' trick and I have to throw the barrel sideways and then take damage and I did that on that Spiny. The Rambi-barrel appears and dixie jumps inside, Rambi will turn gold and will only be visable for one frame because he moves so fast. He moves so fast that he comes up to the Sqwuak barrel in just maybe half a second but it doesn't really matter, I just need to be faster than the scrolling screen because I can't enter it until the screen has scrolled all the way up. It is quite hard to actually get up there, you have to avoid all solid blocks because then you would get stuck and I had to calculate the exact position to enter the sqwuak barrel. But however, the screen scrolls up to the sqwuak-barrel and I enter the sqwuak barrel and get transformed to sqwuak and after that, the game will go back to normal and I don't need to worry that the game will crash anymore. I fly up, poffing away the parrot, changing character and team-throw the whole way. I was a bit rushed when doing this but I'm happy with the result but I wonder if I did the fastest way at the bees, they're very hard to avoid and being fast at the same time. This stage saves more time than ALL the stages in the WHOLE run... It's been improved down to hell.
9954 frames faster (2 minutes and 45.9 seconds faster)

Clapper's Cavern

At first there is just some optimizations of movements and stuff. But what I saved time on was that I jumped of Enguarde and swimmed upwards, which is faster, and didn't have to watch Enguarde poff away. This also did something interesting that I explain soon. I also noticed that there is an invulnerability barrel that can be accessed by a piggyride and jump. I took this because I can, later on, roll through all the bees instead of avoiding them and this saved some time but not that much but it looks really nice.
About leaving Enguarde, when you leave him there, you will notice that he will show up at the end. I thought about this long why it happened like that but I pretty soon found out that when you leave him there, he will never disappear, and when the water raises and becomes ice, it also becomes solid and making Enguarde zip upwards. It's a quite funny effect that also will make palette errors.
188 frames saved

Chain-link Chamber

One of my favorite stages to play on a console. It's fun, challenging and I like to compete with my friends on it. This stage also got two backwardsswitches and one zip. This stage is quite impressive by all it's fast climbing. I was looking into how the fast climbing would be done but I didn't really found anything, sometimes it was faster to jump as short as possible and sometimes a bit longer. I think you need to vary it a bit and I did so. Not much to say really, I used the left way with the hooks instead of the shooting barrels because it was a lot of faster and there was a lot of lag that was hard to avoid fully. The first backwardsswitch was quite trivial to do, I had to test a lot of diffrent tactics and that was the fastest way I could find even though it may look slow. If you wonder how it's done, look at the trick section. The zip wasn't that much faster actually but because I have to do another switch right after that one so it doesn't really matter, it's just a positive thing. You may also notice that I do a piggyride while in the wall and the answer is that I have to get Diddy's speed down to 0 and that's the fastest way to do it, it only wastes some few frames. The second backwardsswitch is nothing special, just a switch, get inside, throw yourself outside, wait for the bees, start climbing. The rest of the stage is just plain climbing, nothing special. I'm very happy how this turned out and I've been precise when doing it.
741 frames saved

Toxic Tower

I'm starting to get really tired of writing... This stage took its time, I was very precise to optimize the movements and especially the acceleration. I took damage at a diffrent place too where I am quite sure that is faster. I also let Rattly bounce up a bit and let him jump up to a platform where you normally need to use A to make a big jump. You see that Rattly can jump whenever he is in air but not if he has already jumped. The Sqwuak part is not that special, I took damage and made some minor route changes. With Squitter, I only made three webs instead of four. The hard part of this was trying to avoid lag, especially right before the Sqwuak barrel.
653 frames saved

Stronghold Showdown

This stage is so hard, so awesome and so much timed save that I won't even write anything. It's just plain awesome! OMFG
0 frames saved

Screech's Sprint

Ah, this also a very fun stage, especially the last part with Sqwuak. Diffrence here at the beginning is that I looked left for a frame and rolled through the Cat'o'9 tails. I did the ropes part a bit better and didn't have to pick up the chest to kill the bee nor do I have to avoid the 5 bees on the rope. Yet again, I looked to the left to be able to roll through the Cats. I was quite picky when doing that part. One thing about Sami's that impressed me is how he jumped on the kloak enemy but "unfortunaly", I was too fast to be able to do that. After I been transformed to the parrot, you can see that I will have skipped the countdown and not racing with the other bird at all. I just barely managed to avoid the trigger. I'm too lazy to draw a picture where it is. I skipped the first barrel because it's about 3 frames slower, at the other barrel after it shoot me up, I didn't start flying as soon as possible
because it was slower to fly immeadiatly so I started flying when the speed would slow down with the help of RAM-adresses.
I also did some new shortcuts. I'm very happy with the result.
353 frames saved

K. rool Duel

Last boss! Compared to the DKC K. rool, this one is very disappointing. No awesome music and the boss is very long and repetive anyway. I did, however, try to be as entertaining as possible but I'm not that good at it and I did actually play most of the stuff in 100%. One interesting glitch at the beginning is that if you pick up a cannonball and drop it and pick it up again very quickly, you will throw it much faster. I did this and threw it across the room to show something diffrent. Most of the time saved was from dropping the cannonball into the gun instead of throwing which can be quite slow (especially with Dixie). Can't figure of anything say... Maybe that I tried to be hit by that purple stuff that inverted input but, somehow, it made me about 80-100 frames slower. I saved a lot of time by jumping over K. rool and end input a lot earlier. And because I had Dixie, the run is about 3 seconds faster after input is ended.
28 frames saved. 208 if you count the early input ending.
That was all! There is a lot more to write about but hey, I'm too lazy... I have probably forgot to explain most of the stuff that happened in the stages and it is probably very confusing but whatever.

Suggested screenshots

These are the screenshots that I found and think will do the best, they show something special and entertaining from the run while they show the characters clearly and it's easy for the eye to watch. - 115936 - 95152 - 92032

Stereo Sound

I'm sorry that I forgot to choose Stereo sound. It doesn't matter that much for me but I know that it does for some but it wasn't my intention to choose mono, I just forgot it and I didn't even know that you could change stereo/mono. Again, sorry for it. I know that JXQ is trying to hex-edit in it but he will have to deal with a lot of desyncs. I thank him for trying and am wishing him luck.

Future projects

My project now after this one will be, for sure, DKC 101% together with Tompa. I don't want to give anything away but there will mostly be optimizations but there is one new trick which will save much time even though it's quite lame.

Post-Future projects

DKC2 102% - I've been thinking of this for quite a time and was actually what I planned to do first but it seems like too much work to do for now and I'm feeling all fed up on DKC2, I don't want to touch the game in quite a while for now. I've also thought of doing it with Comicalflop if so.
But this run needs to be improved. There is a lot of improvement in it and I can't really tell but maybe a minute faster. It might be 2 or 3, I can't really tell. An example is that I tried improving the first stage and improved it by 58 frames and I think it can be improved a bit further by some frames. 102%-WIP DKC any% - This doesn't feel as motivating as the 101% because there isn't as much to improve but it's still improveable and I might do it but I don't think I will after 101%. Tompa might do this on his own.
SMW2:YI 100% - This is a run that would be so awesome and I would like to do it but it seems like such a bitch to do and I don't have the patience for that. I might team up with Baxter if so.
??? - Some easy NES game would be fun to do but there is nothing planned so far.

RAM-adresses

I thought it would be interesting to show some RAM-adresses that was useful:
7E0E02, 2u = Diddy's horizontal speed
7E0E06, 2u = Diddy's Vertical speed
7E0E60, 2u = Dixie's horizontal speed
7E0E64, 2u = Dixie's Vertical speed
7E0DE7, 3u = Diddy's horizontal Position
7E0DEB, 3u = Diddy's Vertical Position
7E0E45, 3u = Dixie's horizontal Position
7E0E4A, 3u = Dixie's Vertical Position
7E1738, 2u = Most useful for detecting lag, -751, -750, -749, -748, -741, -740 works also.
There is a lot more, ask me for them.

Thanks and misc. stuff

I would like to especially thank (I may forgetting someone but don't be sad):
Tompa - For his support, motivating and ideas to the making of the end of the run
JXQ - For his strong motivation, he kept me going.
Sami - for making a good any%, he found stuff that I would probably not found anyway.
And thanks to Comicalflop, moozooh, adelikat, baxter etc. etc. etc. Thank you everyone who have supported me and motivated me. Also thanks to the whole TASvideos community.
This submission text will probably be updated more and more and if you see any error or something that should be better explained or some trick that should be added, tell me and I try to fix it. I also want to be in top 10 submission text because I like to steal attention :).
Edit: I'm sorry for the confusing formatting and writing but I'll try and fix it.
Well, enjoy watching it.

adelikat: Big improvement, I am accepting for publication.


Joined: 1/18/2006
Posts: 78
Location: Norway
I expected improvements, but this is just beyond any expectasion. I didn't know monkies could beat up a croc as badly as this. Clear yes, and let's bring out a star
Joined: 5/17/2007
Posts: 393
Location: Sweden
Nice movie, yes
"No love for the game gear"
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15629
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [898] SNES Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest by Arne_the_great in 41:49.02
Active player (378)
Joined: 6/5/2006
Posts: 188
Location: Malmö, Sweden
Oh excellent, this is one of my favorite games ever and I've been trying to watch it since it was submitted but couldn't get it to sync up, but for some mysterious reason it worked now so I got to watch it. Excellent run, really. Very well-made and entertaining. Surprised me quite a bit at times, Kreepy Krow and Castle Crush to name a few. Would've voted yes if it weren't already published.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 883
You can vote even if it's published it gives a good boost to TASer morales.
Mitjitsu
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 4/24/2006
Posts: 2997
"The author claims this movie took him a year to produce. " I'm a bit against that quote being used in the movie description, this isn't any different from claiming that playing with 2 players in hard to do. Basically my point is that a movie description should never boast about the authors achivements or skill within the context of a movie description.
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
AKA wrote:
Basically my point is that a movie description should never boast about the authors achivements or skill within the context of a movie description.
That quote tells nothing about neither achievements nor skill. It's how you interpret it. Similar mentions can also be found in other movies' descriptions.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Mitjitsu
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 4/24/2006
Posts: 2997
moozooh wrote:
That quote tells nothing about neither achievements nor skill. It's how you interpret it.
Its obvious that the description is trying to make a point about the authors achivement, so why bother mentioning it in the first place if its an apparently meaningless statement.
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
AKA wrote:
Its obvious that the description is trying to make a point about the authors achivement
Excuse me, but how is "a year of work" an achievement?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Mitjitsu
He/Him
Banned User
Joined: 4/24/2006
Posts: 2997
moozooh wrote:
AKA wrote:
Its obvious that the description is trying to make a point about the authors achivement
Excuse me, but how is "a year of work" an achievement?
Because it implies that the author has perserverence and determination.
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
AKA wrote:
Because it implies that the author has perserverence and determination.
May be. It's up to the reader to interpret, but I fail to see that as a bad thing. What I am most surprised with, however, is that you haven't noticed similar mentions here, here, here, here, or here.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 5/30/2007
Posts: 324
I would just like to mention that this is one of my ten favorite runs on the entire site. I would definitely give it a star.
Skilled player (1606)
Joined: 6/11/2006
Posts: 818
Location: Arboga, Sweden
VOTING NO FOR SUBMITTING WHILE I WAS AWAY :(((((((((((( ...not. I was very entertained by this one. Great work, Arne_The_A...Great.
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
Player (88)
Joined: 1/15/2006
Posts: 333
Location: Bangkok, Thailand
This is also one of my all-time favorite games. I thought that Sami's run was pure awesome (and it was), but this run takes awesome to a new level. Thank you for your time and devotion to this project; I think the end result was worth it.
print reduce(lambda x,p:p/2*x/p+2*10**1000,range(6643,1,-2))
Skilled player (1828)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I enjoyed watching it. Very nice job! :)
Post subject: Why did you hack N?
Joined: 11/14/2008
Posts: 1
Why did you hack N? Seriously... Get a life...
Post subject: Re: Why did you hack N? No he didn't
Experienced player (545)
Joined: 5/12/2005
Posts: 707
ska23 wrote:
Why did you hack N? Seriously... Get a life...
You just don't have enough knowledge and information about techniques and glitches. You should to ask the author first before saying something like that here. We don't use or support game hackings here and they can be seen through also with CRC-Cheksums.