Here we go again! Just when I thought I was burned out on this game, I managed to pull it together and make some improvements. This run is 10 minutes faster than my previous effort. It contains roughly the same route, with some improved and/or more dangerous strategies.

4:26 is as close to perfect as I'm willing to go for now. I calculated roughly 2 minutes of major mistakes (detailed below), so I could theoretically get sub-4:25 with exactly the same approach. However, it's more likely that I'll be able to make up the same couple of minutes by improving the route again, so I'll wait until I do that before attempting to go farther this.

Here are a few notes on each level. I've left several of the comments in from the previous run, since much of the run hasn't changed. Look for "**" instead of "--" to see the new stuff.

• #1: Jungle Japes

  --It's a couple of seconds slower to use the #3 bananaports while rescuing Diddy, but I prefer this method because you get an extra banana bunch for DK's medal. Otherwise, you need both bunches from the barrel-blast course, which is tough to do. As it turned out, I missed BOTH of them and had to quickly re-enter the course for a bunch.

  **One of these day's I'll have to draw the line here and force myself to get those barrel blasts right. I'm losing roughly 30 seconds by being conservative AND screwing up the shots! If it weren't for the Production Room in Frantic Factory, I would have concentrated more on this.

  **I managed to pull off Diddy's "plank" jump in the mine area (the one with the switch that makes a banana appear at the very top of the level). A special thanks to YautjaElder for pointing out this nice little trick!

  --During the boss scene, the damage I take is deliberate. The Army-Dillo likes to roll around for longer unless he hits you.

   

• #2: Angry Aztec

  --Going after DK's blueprint without his "Strong Kong" barrel is a bit risky with just one melon. Still, it's early in the run, so it's worth it.

  --It's actually faster to exit-warp out of the level after rescuing Tiny. It may look a bit weird, but it works!

   

• #3: Frantic Factory

  --A big part of my run is my usage of the Rainbow Coins, which are worth $5 for all Kongs (even ones you haven't rescued!). This requires me to visit the banana fairy to get the "charged attack" move. This move is also useful for collecting blueprints, since it can kill even strong enemies (Kasplat, Kosha) with one hit.

  --Getting the Rainbow Coin in K.Lumsy's room may seem like a waste of time, but I make up for it and then some. Just to give you an idea, think about this: There's a set of 5 green coins in Frantic Factory near the starting point. Normally, Chunky would need to warp back and forth from the basement to get these (he needs at least $8 before visiting Cranky and only $5 is available in the basement). This path takes roughly the same amount of time as getting the Rainbow Coin, but the rewards are far greater.

  **Chunky's Zinger room now uses the "through the box" glitch! Thanks again to YautjaElder for pointing out another great time saver.

  **I FINALLY GOT THE PRODUCTION ROOM RIGHT! I lost count of how many times I started the run over trying to do this part cleanly.

  --As the reigning world record-holder on NES Donkey Kong, I know a thing or two about DK Arcade. :) I proved it here by scoring death-free runs on both levels of the game, as I collected the Nintendo Coin. I even managed to do the shortcut jump in the elevator level, which is harder to do in this version of the game than on NES or even the actual arcade game.

  **This time, I did the shortcut jump "correctly" like all the other DK pros do it. :) I made the jump from upper ledge to upper ledge instead of riding the elevator down a notch like last time.

  **To top it all off, I beat the Jack-in-the-Box boss without taking a hit!

  **This was EASILY my best Frantic Factory run ever, which makes the mistakes that follow a little disheartening, but tolerable.

   

• #4: Gloomy Galleon

  **Disaster strikes in one of the battle crown fights. I lose about 30 seconds from getting knocked over the edge in a freak accident. :(

  --DK's Lighthouse area bananas are a bit slow, particularly since the cut scenes that follow them count against you. However, they both include tons of easy bananas, so I make up for it by getting him a banana medal on this level.

  **Minor mistake: In going after Diddy's banana bunches atop the lighthouse, I slipped and had to retrieve the jetpack a second time.

  --I discovered that you can get Diddy's blueprint here with the water level raised! It's simply a matter of timing. You have to jump on Kasplat's head just as he gets up from a knockdown.

  --This is the only other place where I exit-warp in mid-level (the way I use the Lanky glitch forbids me from doing it from here on). I use it after collecting Chunky's Lighthouse Ship banana, which is a pain otherwise because he gets dizzy just afterwards, which is slow and painful.

  --Here's a stumper that I couldn't figure out: There's supposed to be a green banana balloon (for Chunky) floating next to the #2 bananaport in the main watery area. I wanted to collect this in my run, but I couldn't because it's not there right away in the level and I don't know how to trigger it. The only time I've seen it is after I collect almost everything else, such as when I'm trying for 101% and all regular bananas. Does anyone out there know if there's a simple way to trigger this balloon? PM me if you do!

  --I manage to wait until this level to collect any of Chunky's weapons. He doesn't need his gun at all in Frantic Factory and the Triangle is only needed to fight the "toy chest" monster (which takes too long).

  --It took a little bit of study, but I managed to crack the Gloomy Galleon boss' pattern. The stars always appear in the exact same places, so you can plan out a specific path to each of them.

  **I had another accident against the boss. Late in the battle, I let the timer expire due to taking too many hits. Another 30 seconds lost. :(

   

• #5: Fungi Forest

  **NEW GOLDEN BANANA: I get Chunky's blueprint. I forgot about mid-air rolls before and thought I couldn't make the jump without coming back at night!

  **I also try to throw in a few of Chunky's banana bunches, but as you can see, I forgot where they were at first. :) Not sure what happened, as I practiced this several times. This little brain fart only cost me about 10 seconds though.

  --A nice little stunt-jump with Tiny nets me a Battle Crown without having to wait until nighttime to open the path.

  --Back in DK Isles, I manage to make the jump from the Forest ledge to Diddy's caged banana, which normally requires a Jetpack. This took a LOT of practice to master, but once I figured it out, I hardly ever miss this jump!

   

• #6: Crystal Caves

  --Tiny's Monkeyport path from Funky's is a bit long, but I make up for it by getting Diddy's blueprint, which cannot be collected without Tiny.

  **I found the answer to my jetpack woes with Diddy and bananaport #4...Don't use it! :) I came up with a precision drop move that lets me land on the tiny ledge every time!

   

• #7: Creepy Castle

  --There is no need to warp from the upper bananaport #2. Its mate and all of the others (plus a tag barrel) are just below the ledge!

  --The Battle Crown in Lanky's maze seems like an obvious one to collect, but the Forest one is quicker. The Castle Battle has a longer clock, plus Lanky can't sprint out of the maze after collecting the Crown.

  --Very few bananas can be skipped here, so I force myself to collect Lanky's TOUGH balloons across the green lava. This is another one of those areas that can ruin a speed run unless you practice hard. I used to miss at least 3 times per run until I sat down and learned a little "touch" for this room.

   

• #8: Jungle Japes II

  **A stupid detail I missed before on Jetpac: You don't have to die to end the game once you get the RareWare coin. You can just pause and select "quit" from the menu! I was always too chicken to try it before. :)

  --You might wonder why I use the Saxophone when collecting Tiny's shrinking/mushroom-bounce banana. The reason for that is because I've been victimized by a glitch here where Tiny disappears from the screen after shrinking! I can't prove it yet, but I believe it has something to do with those bees and their bombs exploding at the wrong moment.

   

• #9: Hideout Helm

  **I was a bit slower this time with this part, but just by a few seconds. Nothing great, but nothing terrible.

   

• #10: Final Battle

  --This is one of my favorite final battles in all of video games! :) It's a bit long, but I love the antics with the Kremlings and that bell, among other things.

  --My DK round is the best part. I take a few incidental hits between shots, but I nailed each cannon shot at the earliest possible times. Note that you can register the third hit REALLY fast, if you time it right. The pattern I used there always works.

  --The rest of the battle goes on without incident, though I'm a bit slow with the Diddy part. The key is not ruining everything by getting get beat up during any one part, which can easily happen if you're careless.

  **As part of my frantic effort to make 4:25, I gambled a little on Chunky's part and got burned. Funny thing though, it turns out that the 30 seconds lost here didn't hurt. My actual final time was 4:26:40, but I didn't know that then. :)

  Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: Feel free to link to this run, but don't upload the files or any part of them to any other site. Directing people here instead of uploading the files elsewhere lets them read my comments, contact me, and see other speed runs. For the same reason, please link to this page and not the files themselves.

Before I dive into the comments, I want to point out that this run has audio commentary. Switch to audio track 2 in your media player to listen to it. Because of the large number of glitches and other timesavers used in this run, I can't possibly explain everything in real time, so be sure to read the comments if you want more details.

I want to thank everyone who helped me with the run. The following people found tricks and gave suggestions:

Unreal
PMIT
leftysheroes
Exchord92
mike89
RingRush
Aquaspeeder
AniMeowzerz
Toesrus

Thanks also to rdrunner, from whose no-major-skips run I picked up a number of timesavers, and to deutsch_joe, from whose posts in the DK64 thread I learned a few things.

Thanks to KAS, from whose 1:14 run I learned a big timesaver in Hideout Helm.

Thanks to David Wonn for having such a great site; I learned a lot from it.

Thanks to the SDA staff for running SDA.

Shortly before summer 2009, I decided to play this game for the first time in years. I initially had no plans to do a speed run. After I finished a 101% playthrough, I did some research on glitches. Pretty soon, I found a way into boss battles without collecting bananas and a way into Hideout Helm without 100 Golden Bananas. From there, I and some of the people listed above found even more tricks; we literally cut hours off the game in a matter of days. In the ensuing months, we kept hammering away at what remained. After about a year, the game was every bit as broken as Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. You can beat it with 0 Golden Bananas; you can beat it with 0% completion; you can enter all but one level lobby early; and you can get past B. Locker everywhere he appears.

This route skips most, but not all, of the things that can be skipped. The biggest of the skips that I didn't do were omitted out of necessity because the run is single-segment. It's possible to glitch into the Angry Aztec lobby early, but when you try to leave, you will be stuck in a cutscene as your kong tries to walk through the door. A segmented run can savewarp out, but a single-segment run cannot. So, I must open the lobby normally, meaning that I need to collect and turn in the Jungle Japes key. A similar problem occurs in Hideout Helm. You can get the key without shutting off the Blast-o-Matic, but you can't select Exit Level to get out. You can actually kill yourself with oranges, glitch out of bounds, and walk back to the entrance, but even when you're outside the level, the timer will keep ticking down and you'll get a Game Over when it reaches 0. There are only two known ways to stop it--shutting down the Blast-o-Matic power or quitting the game. The latter is not an option in a single-segment run, so I have to shut down the power. Those are the two biggest timesavers I didn't use in this run. There are a few smaller timesavers that I chose not to do because I didn't think the time they saved justified their difficulty. Segmenting the run would not help because of Donkey Kong 64's abysmal save system; nearly everything you do causes the game to save automatically, and there is no way to copy files. This means that savewarping is essentially the only thing that gives a segmented run an advantage over a single-segment run.

Below are my comments on each part of the run. I tried to separate explanations of what's going on and comments on how well I did.

Main menu: Yes, the glitches start before I even gain control of DK. The glitch I use here is called the Funky weapons glitch. By entering the Intro Story and exiting at just the right time, I partially load the data in slot 1. The Intro Story scene is still running in the background, so I need to wait until it gets to a fade screen (I use a stopwatch for this), then enter the Rambi Arena. I'm not sure exactly what this does, but it's necessary to get the trick to work. I then go to multiplayer, in which you have Simian Slam and all of Funky's weapons. This somehow gives you those abilities in Adventure mode. After that, I start the Intro Story again and cancel it at without activating the glitch to unload the cutscene, then start Adventure mode. You might be wondering why I have one minute on my file when I start; it's because the glitch causes the timer to start before I fully load the file.

This glitch always takes about the same amount of time, but there is some slight variation. After you press A to start the Intro Story, there is a window where pressing A won't do anything, then another where it will cancel the Intro Story properly, then another where it will cancel the Intro Story and activate the glitch, then a long window where it will cancel the scene properly. In this run, I managed to press A during the second window. If you don't press A until the fourth window, you'll lose about a second.

Training area: I need to do the training barrels for several reasons. One is that I can't use the abilities you learn there without completing the relevant barrels. More importantly, Cranky will not sell me any upgrades until I've completed all the barrels. So, I do the barrels, then I use a glitch called "swim through vertical walls" to leave the training area without pounding the switch.

There is a glitch that lets you jump out of the training barrels earlier than usual. I have no idea how it works, though, and I didn't get it to work here. As for the barrels themselves, I did well in them. You can finish the diving barrel with 56 seconds left, but you don't actually save a whole second. You can finish the vine barrel with 53 seconds left, but it requires you to jump at just the right time as you're climbing up the tree to get on top of it sooner. If you jump at the wrong time, you may fall off the tree. It's not worth it for less than a second of savings.

DK Isles: I use a glitch called "swim through shores" to get the camera early. I don't care about the camera itself, but the shockwave move that comes with it lets me get rainbow coins, which give five coins to every kong, including the ones you haven't freed yet. If I didn't get rainbow coins, I would have to hunt down large numbers of regular coins. After leaving, I get three Crystal Coconuts for later on. I then talk to K. Lumsy to open up Jungle Japes. The Golden Banana outside the Jungle Japes lobby is very close to the loading zone for the lobby. By rolling at the correct angle, you can enter the loading zone, then grab the Golden Banana before the screen fades out. This lets you skip the "banana get" cutscene. In the Japes lobby, I kick before triggering the B. Locker text to move forward while it comes up. I use variations of this trick a number of times throughout the run.

I sometimes lose a few seconds entering Banana Fairy Isle due to bad camera angles, but I didn't here. I also sometimes have trouble leaving; the passage is designed for Tiny, and DK's head sometimes gets stuck on it. Crouching and sliding underneath it seems to help. It's fairly easy to enter the Jungle Japes lobby early using the same trick I used to get inside Banana Fairy Isle early, but getting past B. Locker inside is difficult. Even if you have a key when you first visit K. Lumsy, you still need to watch the cutscene showing Japes opening, so you don't gain a whole lot of time. I decided it wasn't worth it to pile these two tricks on top of all the others in the run.

Jungle Japes: You may have noticed that I didn't use any warps in DK Isles, even though it would have saved time. You'll see why near the beginning of this level: by rolling onto the warp pad during the cutscene showing Diddy asking for help, I interrupt that cutscene with Squawks' (much shorter) explanation of warp pads. After that, I get the Golden Banana in front of Diddy's cage to make the switches that free him appear. Because I did the Funky weapons glitch, I already have the Coconut Gun, so I don't need to visit Funky. The glitch also gave me Sniper Sight, so I can hit one of the switches from farther away than is usually possible. After freeing Diddy, I enter Troff 'n' Scoff's room, then make use of a very versatile trick: the C-up glitch. It lets you walk through many of the game's walls. Here, I use it to fight the boss without collecting any regular bananas. During the battle, I get hit intentionally to end the rolling phase sooner. After getting the key, I get one of the three rainbow coins in my route, then exit the level.

It's a little faster to kick onto the warp pad than it is to roll, but it's easy to overshoot it that way, so I play it safe and roll. It may be slightly faster to shoot the center switch before swinging on the vines, but I find that more difficult. If you grab and jump off of the vines with proper timing after shooting the last switch, you'll be in a position to jump immediately after the cutscene ends and get to the ledge with the boss portal. This only saves about a second, though, and I couldn't find a consistent way to do it, so I left it out. I did the C-up glitch to get past the boss door quickly. The boss fight was slightly faster than average. There's a trick to skip the "key get" cutscene by pausing and exiting the level right after you get the key. If you pause too early, though, you risk leaving the boss fight without the key. For that reason, I didn't do the trick.

DK Isles: As I mentioned above, I need to turn in the Jungles Japes key to open the Angry Aztec lobby; although I can glitch inside, I can't get out without savewarping. After turning in the key, I get another rainbow coin, then use a trick called moonkick to get to the Crystal Caves lobby early. Inside, I use something aptly named "the DK trick" to get past B. Locker. I then exit the level immediately. You may be wondering why I would enter the level, then leave without doing anything. The answer has to do with the game's upgrade system. As soon as you enter a level, you gain the ability to purchase upgrades from that level and all previous levels. So, just by entering Crystal Caves, I make most of the game's upgrades appear in the shops. This will be useful later. After leaving the Caves lobby, I go to the Angry Aztec lobby, then use the DK trick to enter the level.

I'm not sure if it's faster to swim directly to K. Lumsy, turn in the key, and swim to warp 2 or activate warp 1, swim to K. Lumsy, turn in the key, use warp 1, and activate warp 2; they're very close. I prefer doing the latter, so that's what I do in the run. It's easy to lose time doing the trick to get into the Caves lobby early, but I did it well here. I almost went sailing off the edge while doing the DK trick in the lobby, but I held it together and got into the level without losing too much time. I lost a little time doing the DK trick in the Aztec lobby as well, but it wasn't terrible.

Angry Aztec: As you'll see, I don't need the key from this level; all I need to do is free Lanky and Tiny. After going through the tunnel at the beginning, I use another "move forward while a cutscene plays" trick. I then jump through a wall to get past the door that normally requires you to get Diddy's guitar. I need Chimpy Charge to free Tiny, so I visit Cranky. First, he gives me Simian Slam. Because the game doesn't expect you to have left the training area when you get Simian Slam, it doesn't bother checking to see if you can buy any other upgrades, so I have to enter Cranky's lab twice. After buying Chimpy Charge and Rocketbarrel Boost, I tag DK, go through the rest of the tunnel, and use the C-up glitch to enter the llama temple without playing the Barrel Blast minigame. Inside, I use swim through vertical walls, the same trick I used to get out of the training area, to get to Lanky without cleaning the water. I then line myself up, shoot toward the switch, and quickly jump into the "lava water" to kill myself. This lets me skip part of the cutscene that plays when you free Lanky, and it also puts me at the beginning of the level, which is where I need to go next. After warping back to the first open area, I get the third and final rainbow coin in the run, then tag Diddy and enter Tiny's temple. Inside, I use the C-up glitch to get to Tiny's room quickly, then I save a little time by Chimpy Charging off the tops of the letters instead of raising the platforms and charging into them. I need to hit the "O" first or else the "K" will not be active. I pick up a Crystal Coconut for later on. After freeing Tiny, I exit the level.

The guitar skip went very well. The original trick involved jumping through a different part of the wall, which was much harder. This version is still tough, but not as bad as the original. Crossing the narrow path to Cranky is easier than it looks, but it always makes me nervous anyway. Glitching into the llama temple with DK, on the other hand, is much harder than it looks. For some reason, certain walls are more resistant to the C-up glitch than others. This is one that you can just barely get through. It's easy to spend a minute trying to get this trick to work, so I think I did pretty well here. The Lanky death warp trick could have been set up a little faster, but it wasn't bad. Chimpy Charging the letters can be tough. Sometimes, you charge off them and they don't register anything. leftysheroes, who is working on a 101% run at the time of this writing, suggested that I face perpendicular to the wall before charging off the letters. I tried this and it worked fairly well, but after some more testing, I decided that making a small angle with the wall was more consistent for me. I had a little trouble with the "N" and "G", but it wasn't anything severe. Afterward, the pause screen gave me some trouble. <_<

DK Isles: The path to the Frantic Factory lobby is normally just out of reach, but I get to it here with a trick called the moontail. It basically allows you to do two things at once: a ground attack and a double jump. Since you can cancel a ground attack with a jump, you can jump again at the peak of your double jump. You can then do an aerial attack to get some extra height. The shockwave attack is somehow involved; without the camera and at least one Crystal Coconut, the moontail requires much more precise timing. That's why I picked up a Crystal Coconut in Angry Aztec. The moontail doesn't give the height or distance of DK's moonkick, but it's just enough to get to some areas that are ordinarily out of reach. You can actually get up to the walkway to Factory with a moonkick as well, but it's slower than what I do here. Rare figured you wouldn't be able to get up to the entrance to the lobby without raising the platform, so they didn't bother to make the metal door solid; you can walk right through it. After doing so, I use an orange to force Lanky into B. Locker, then stretch his arms out (just for you) and enter the level.

I failed the moontail a couple times, but I didn't lose much time. Getting past B. Locker in the lobby is pretty difficult. I get it less than half the time, and each failed attempt is costly. There's another method that involves long jumping into B. Locker, but I find that even less consistent. Luckily, I got the trick with only one orange here, although I did have to use two standing attacks.

Frantic Factory: I use another "move forward while a cutscene plays" trick here, this time with a long jump. After making my way to the Storage Room, I use a trick to climb up the slippery slope leading to the switch that frees Chunky. I then pound the switch and head up to Cranky's room to do some shopping. I will use everything I buy except Super Simian Slam. I still need to buy it, though, because Cranky will not sell me Monkeyport until I have it. After I finish shopping, I enter the boss portal. Just like before, I use the C-up glitch to enter the fight, but then I exit right away and do the glitch again. I did this because there's a cutscene that plays right before the fight, but only the first time you enter. The game assumes that you have already seen the cutscene if you've entered the arena, so I exit and reenter to skip the cutscene. Other boss fights have similar cutscenes, but they can't be skipped because you don't gain control until after they are done playing. After beating Mad Jack, I exit the level.

The Robo-Kremlings at the beginning usually move toward me as I pound the switch, then hit me immediately afterward. This time, they were nice and walked away from the switch. It's possible to use the C-up glitch to get through the hatch, thereby skipping hitting the switch, but it's hard and doesn't save much time. I lost a little time getting up the pipe in the Storage Room, but it could have been much worse. After climbing the boxes leading to the room with Cranky, I meant to long jump, but I must have pressed A at the wrong time, so I just crouched. I did the C-up glitch to get into the boss battle quickly the first time, but I lost about 15 seconds the second time. The battle itself went well. Mad Jack jumps more slowly when he's jumping to your square, so it's best not to be right next to him when he's about to jump. I screwed this up in rounds 3 and 5, getting one more slow jump than necessary in each, but I still did a pretty good job forcing fast jumps on the whole. In round 4, I used a trick to skip the cutscene that shows Mad Jack shooting a laser. If you are in the air when the cutscene is about to activate, it'll wait until you land to start. If you then pound a switch without touching the ground first, the laser cutscene will start, but it will be interrupted by the damage cutscene. The switch placement in the fight could have been better, but there's nothing I can do about that.

DK Isles: I use Monkeyport to get up to K. Rool's head, then I use a slippery slope climbing trick to get on top of his mouth. From there, I jump through his eye to get into the Hideout Helm lobby. I glitch through a wall there and enter Hideout Helm.

Climbing up the slippery slope could have been better, but not much better. You can get next to the eye sooner by going around the back of the head instead of the front, but this gives you a weird camera angle that makes it hard to get through the eye. The method I use gives me a camera angle that usually lets me get through the eye very quickly; this run was no exception. Getting out of bounds in the lobby took a few tries, but I didn't lose much time.

Hideout Helm: After going through a few rooms normally (more or less), I glitch through a wall and jump up behind the door that opens when you shut down the power. Then I warp to the entrance, tag Diddy, warp back, and get out of bounds again. As I explained above, even though I could grab the key at this point, I must shut down the power to stop the countdown. I jump up onto higher ground so that I'm high enough to reach Diddy's minigame room, then I navigate through the darkness until I get there. Since Diddy's minigames come after all the others, the game assumes that you've beaten them all if you've beaten his. Hmm, that logic sounds familiar... After shutting off the power, I exit the level, reenter, use the warp, and glitch out of bounds again. This time, I grab the key and exit the level for good.

A lot of things can go wrong here, but overall, I did a pretty good job. I got up the slopes quickly, but I failed the "move while a cutscene is playing" trick with Chunky. Getting through the computer with Chunky can take ages, but I did it relatively quickly here. After getting through the out-of-bounds area quickly, I had some trouble backflipping back in bounds. Getting into the wall with Diddy could have been a little faster, but I did a great job navigating the out-of-bounds area. That's the most nerve-wracking part of the run; there are a lot of places where you can either go back in bounds, which traps you, or go too far out-of-bounds, which sends you back to the beginning of the level. Either one is game over. Diddy's kill-the-right-Kremling game went well. My shooting could've been better, but I got lucky and only had to kill a few enemies; sometimes, you have to kill every single one of them. The jetpack game, on the other hand, is probably the low point of the run. After missing the first three targets, I had to readjust my height and keep spinning around. I shot a few peanuts toward the last switch and dropped down so I could be ready when the cage lifted; I always do this, and it's really not very risky. This time, though, I missed and had to get the jetpack again to shoot the switch. I then proceeded to miss the final switch. Everything after that point was good, though.

DK Isles: The keys from Frantic Factory and Hideout Helm are the only ones needed to make K. Rool's ship appear. Luckily, the cutscene showing his ship appearing doesn't play until you've turned in all the keys, so I get to skip it.

It may be slightly faster to use warp 1 in the Hideout Helm lobby instead of death warping. It would need to be done very well, though.

K. Rool: Remember how I said I used a stopwatch to help me do the Funky weapons glitch? Well, after doing the glitch, I kept the stopwatch running to give me an idea of how fast I was going. When I got to K. Rool, I didn't think I would get 0:54. I knew how long a typical K. Rool battle took, and there's not much you can do to speed it up (although are plenty of ways to slow it down). However, I did everything I could to make the battle as fast as possible, and it paid off.

• DK's round: This is the only round where I lost time. If you jump at the right time before the barrels appear, you can get inside one during the cutscene that shows them appearing. You can then fire almost immediately after regaining control. I jumped at the wrong time here, so I had to enter the barrel normally, losing a few seconds. The rest of the round went well, though; I entered the barrels quickly and hit K. Rool soon after he became vulnerable.
• Diddy's round: It's very easy to lose time in this round. If you don't hit the lights quickly, K. Rool will probably knock you around and cost you a decent chunk of time. But I hit all the targets very quickly here. Even the first light, which usually takes a while, went down quickly.
• Lanky's round: K. Rool tends to do the same thing here as long as you do the same thing, so all of my movements here were planned. Depending on where K. Rool lands when he slips on the third banana peel, you may or may not be able to sneak by him. If you can, you can throw the last barrel right instead of left. Doing so reduces the amount of time you have to wait for K. Rool to get into position before you play the trombone.
• Tiny's round: The most important thing in this round is to get into the Mini Monkey barrels quickly. If you get in soon enough, the barrel will not start growing and shrinking right away. The sooner you get in, the longer you'll have to wait before you get out. This means that getting in as soon as possible isn't necessary; you just have to get in soon enough. Getting hit by K. Rool or the shockwaves doesn't usually slow you down. It's easy to predict how the toes will attack, but once again, getting hit usually doesn't cost any time. Sometimes, the game lets you hit the toes a little sooner than usual. I don't know what causes this, but it happened to me quite a few times here, so that's good.
• Chunky's round: This round is by far the easiest. I tried to use the Gorilla Gone pads (which you don't actually need Gorilla Gone to use) in an order that lets me run around without having to dodge K. Rool, but I honestly didn't put a whole lot of effort into studying his movement patterns in this round. I could've saved a little time by Primate Punching him earlier, but I tend to be cautious here.

I don't think I'll do another DK64 run. This run already took over a year, and there are other games I'd like to run. My time here is probably a very high 0:54, so anyone going for 0:53 will have to cut off almost a whole minute, which I don't expect to happen without new tricks. Of course, I'd be glad to see it happen. I'd also be glad to see a segmented run, which would cut off several minutes from this run thanks to save warping. No one is working on those runs, though. leftysheroes is doing a 101% run and Toesrus is considering doing a no-major-skips run; both will be great to watch. Until those runs are done, I hope you enjoy this one. Let me know what you think of it. If you'd like to learn more about DK64 glitches, check out the SDA Strategy Wiki and David Wonn's site.

In-Game Time – 5:59

RTA Time – 5:57:46 (Canceling Squawk's textbox to Chunky's final punch cutscene)

This run is single segment and has no resetting, but contains intentional deaths for warping to the beginning of a room or level as well as pause-exiting to leave a level.

First of all, I'd like to give a huge thanks to the large amount of people who put work into this game. This speedrun would not be possible without this very long list of DK64 contributors who I've worked with directly and have helped with glitches, routing, runs and testing: Exchord, Cfox, Znernicus, RingRush, Isotarge, Bismuth9, EmoArbiter, TiffanyJane, Connor75, hipstur420, kiwikiller67, Adam Whitmore, Outlawmentalman and Run_Haakon. Also, shoutouts to the many people who ran and/or helped break open DK64 before I started running the game back in 2013 (Manocheese and anyone else who posted in the SDA thread).

The current 101% leaderboards as well as other DK64 category leaderboards and resources can be found here: http://www.speedrun.com/dk64

My stream channel can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/2dos

101% has come a LONG way since Cfox's 7:14 submission: dozens of new tricks, several re-routes and a new lagless official version of the game are just the tip of the iceberg. This run is single segment and uses the Wii U VC version of the game. The Wii U VC version is identical to the N64 version except for any lag-based tricks, as there is very little lag overall. Orange clips, which were found after the former 101% run was submitted, are the only major tricks now gone from the run. These clips allowed us to lag the game so our kongs could clip through walls easier. Additionally, lag allowed kongs to travel faster relative to the rate the game is moving at, as the game sped your kong up based on the amount of lag happening at the time. Nevertheless, the game is still ridiculously broken on multiple levels. The levels are done completely out of order, and will surprise you, even to people who watched the old 101% run by Cfox. There are many, many parts of the run that need an explanation, so I'll try to keep things brief as much as possible.

 

Training Grounds

In order to buy moves in the game, I need to clear Cranky's training barrels. I make a 2 second mistake in the orange barrel but the others go smoothly. To escape the training grounds without buying simian slam, I use a trick called Swim Through Vertical Walls (STVW) to clip straight to the exit.

 

Freeing Kongs Early

One of the biggest breaks in the game comes in the form of a trick called DogaDoneQuick. A user on Youtube by the name of "Greeny Yoshi" discovered you could end the final cycle of Fungi's Dogadon boss early by taking damage and blowing the TNT barrel up on Dogadon at the same time. We then discovered this same principle can be used to beat Dogadon with ANY kong. This is significant, as we can now access Creepy Castle early. More on why that's significant in a bit. A couple months later, Adam Whitmore discovered the method you see in my run, a setup that defeats Dogadon in the very first cycle, which saves over 3 minutes compared to killing him the normal way.

Before heading to Fungi Forest, I use Swim Through Shores (STS) to clip into Banana Fairy Island to get the fairy camera early as well as getting the charge attack, which is significant for getting a large amount of banana coins early. I collect 5 crystal coconuts and do several Moonkicks in order to get to Fungi Forest early while collecting 3 rainbow coins along the way; each rainbow coin gives 5 banana coins to each kong. A Moonkick is a trick that allows DK to fly through the air if a midair attack is done when DK is just above the ground. There are many places in the game where you can do moonkicks, including slopes, ledges and low ceilings. DK can get past B Locker by jumping close to him at the right side of his hitbox and using his neutral ground attack to reach in. Once in Fungi, I simply go to the nearest Troff & Scoff (T&S), moonkick to clip out of bounds and defeat him via DogaDoneQuick. I will come back to Fungi Forest later once I have all the kongs.

I head over to K Lumsy to hand in Key 5 and head straight to Creepy Castle, collecting 2 more rainbow coins along the way. After some banana collecting I head into T&S to free Lanky, Diddy and Tiny kong. Because the game believes you have already freed these kong beforehand (Castle being the 2^nd last stage), it gives you the kongs in the middle of the boss fight. To free them, all you have to do is leave the boss room when you control the kong you want and enter the tag barrel. I will not free Chunky here as I will be heading straight to Frantic Factory after Castle. It's important to note that I need to enter the tag barrel with DK before I do this, as for some reason, the game doesn't actually consider DK "free" unless you enter the tag barrel. I do not get Key 7 right now, as I do not want to hand it in to K Lumsy.

After freeing Tiny, I won't enter the tag barrel quite yet, as I need to buy moves from Cranky in order to access Factory early. Because I never entered the tag barrel, all her collectables are invisible, but still able to be picked up (see the 10 invisible bananas I collect along the way). Because this is the last level with Cranky in the game, I am able to buy all the moves Cranky offers because the game assumes I was in all the levels before this one. After buying Monkeyport, I grab her blueprint and leave the level: I will be back later. In the meantime, I use my newly bought Monkeyport to go to Factory without getting key 2.

 

Frantic Factory (Level Time – 48:53)

You cannot use the DK reach in trick for this B Locker, so I tag Lanky and long jump at B Locker until Lanky is close enough to stretch his arms into the portal to pull himself in. This trick tends to be pretty finicky, but I manage to get it in 3 tries.

I open the hatch and head straight for Chunky and free him for the first GB in the entire run, nearly 20 minutes in! I damage myself into the GB, as this is one way to skip the dance cutscene that plays upon grabbing a GB normally, saving several seconds. You will see me go for these several times throughout the run, and I get a decent amount of them. Now that Chunky is free I head to Cranky and Candy's area to buy moves and the instrument for all the kongs. One of the major benefits of freeing kongs in Castle is getting access to the moves early so you only need to visit Cranky, Candy and Funky once.

With Chunky I grab the final rainbow coin of the run so the kongs can buy guns (I then don't need to worry about coins for the rest of the run), and grab the GB in this room from outside the box, skipping the dance cutscene in the process. When I want to clip into the boss room with a kong other than DK, I can do a Ledge Clip. On some stairs, I can buffer my movement with C-Up and find a small plane to fall through out of bounds. In my opinion, Mad Jack is the hardest boss in the entire game. In order to defeat him quickly, I need to make sure he "fast jumps" as much as possible. He will always fast jump unless you are on the square he's about to jump to next, in which case he will "slow jump". In the first 3 phases of the fight it's easy to do this, but in phases 4 and 5 I need to do a very difficult technique to make him fast jump each time. The execution of the fight goes well overall, but the switch luck wasn't so great; the switches appear on random squares each time and there's not much I can do.

Heading up to the upper part of Factory, the zinger sometimes gets stuck on the pole and I get damaged on my way up. I head straight to Funky's and get guns for all the kongs as well as some upgrades. I do not need sniper scope in the run, as there are skips for all GBs requiring it. After buying Tiny's gun I lose a little time from sloppy movement and from the wheel GB, which has really good hit detection. After DK's gun I take W5 to DK Arcade. Round 1 for the GB goes smoothly, but in round 2 I die climbing up the final ladder in 75m due to using the round 1 route instead of the round 2 route (I have to wait to climb it in round 2). I have to get the 75m skip a third time and complete it successfully. That death combined with poor 100m RNG in round 2 resulted in a 35 second timeloss, the first major one in the run.

The rest of the Testing room area goes well other than needing 3 tries to snap the fairy. The R&D area also goes well outside a problem balloon in Diddy's room. After turning on the Production Room, I tag Diddy and do a trick called Moontail: if you jump, then jump while doing his neutral ground attack at the same time, he will jump in the air with his ground attack. You can jump out of this attack again for extra height. I use this technique to get back up to the power shed so I can do beaver bother. This game itself went OK, and realistically lost 10 seconds due to slow completion. The Production Room area afterwords goes smoothly. Overall, a solid Factory with a small amount of minor mistakes and one glaring one (DK Arcade).

 

Gloomy Galleon (Level Time – 40:12)

Galleon is thoroughly abused due to the STVW glitch. It starts with setting up warps and punching gates for later events in the run. Cannon room was mediocre, as I missed a cannon shot. I STVW straight to the Lighthouse area to raise the water; we can do everything we need to do in the level at the high water level. Apart from missing the balloon several times, the lighthouse section with DK goes well. Chunky only needs to break 2 barrels to get to his ship GB; it skips the seasickness section and makes leaving faster and easier. Tiny hands in 4 blueprints here early so we can complete Hideout Helm without running out of time. For the mechanical fish, I attempt to do a very hard trick that involves hitting two of the switches on the very same frame, which allows me to skip several fan cycles. Although it takes me 3 tries, I still save time over doing it the normal way. You can only STVW in one specific direction on each map, so I have to enter Diddy's 5 Door Ship through Lanky's gate. Fortunately, I have no issues entering the treasure room afterwords using STVW.

Several times throughout the rest of the level I use a trick similar to the quick dive in Banjo Kazooie: by throwing an orange right before a kong hits the water, he'll sink as far as the orange throw animation lasts. I use it here to get to the tag barrel at the bottom of the area quickly. After the first Baboon Balloon on Lanky's coin tower, I can just backflip up the rest of the way to skip the long animations. After grabbing the pearls as Lanky (you can get them with any kong and they'll count), they get handed in shortly after with Tiny. I pause exit right after grabbing this GB to skip a long text box animation. The fairy in Tiny's 5 Door Ship is one of the hardest to snap in the game, so I STVW into the room directly and snap it there (I cannot access this room in normal gameplay).

You cannot get to the smaller, 2 Door Ship through the gates because you can't STVW in that direction, so Lanky and Tiny have to swim through a lower wall and enter through the bottom. Pufftoss, the level boss, goes relatively well outside a couple minor mistakes, and I successfully maneuver myself to the middle after defeating the boss to grab key 4 as it spawns, skipping a cutscene. I have to enter DK's 5 Door Ship from the bottom of the level because for some reason he has trouble doing STVW on the gates. I can leave his 5 Door Ship room very quickly using STVW, however.

There is a neat trick that allows me to skip the seal race: ledge clip into the middle ship, then use the momentum from springing up from underwater to launch yourself into another nearby sunken ship with a poor hitbox from above. Inside is where the seal race GB is stored, and you can simply grab it and leave. I fail the initial ledge clip once but do the trick very quickly the second time. The largest time loss in Galleon comes when trying to enter Chunky's 5 Door Ship area: I miss the loading zone and have to perform the STVW trick again, costing 40 seconds. Finally, a nifty clip will get me into Tiny's submarine without Mini Monkey. Galleon ended up being one of the sloppier levels in the run, and also had a major time loss at the end of the level.

 

Hideout Helm (Level Time – 14:12)

After using STVW to get to Tiny's Mini Monkey GB in the Galleon lobby, I leave the level and head to Hideout Helm; I'm already on K Rool's ship and it cuts down on travel time. I use a trick that allows Tiny to get into Hideout Helm early by Ponytail Twirling onto the mouth of the ship. This trick is much harder on VC because of the lack of lag speed. I manage to get it fairly quickly and enter Helm's lobby. I can do a nifty backflip in the corner to clip out of bounds with Tiny and enter Helm without 100 GBs. Unfortunately it takes me a little while to get the clip.

You have 10 minutes to beat Helm initially, which is impossible, even through heavy glitching. The 4 blueprints turned in earlier give me 14 minutes, which is extremely trivial to do in that timeframe. To get to the blast-o-matic room faster, I can use Chunky to clip out of bounds using a terminal. All the blast-o-matic games go well except Diddy's, which features bad aiming in the rocketbarrel game, and bad RNG in the random kremling game. After getting Helm's battle crown, I clip with DK using a different terminal to get to Key 8 and the fairies to skip the 4 battle crowns door as well as the Nintendo/Rareware coin door.

 

Jungle Japes (Level Time – 26:10)

Another benefit to freeing kong through the Castle boss is getting to do Jungle Japes and Angry Aztec in one go. This is significantly faster than having to go back to these levels and burn extra movement to go to areas you were already at. You also get to skip watching kong freeing cutscenes, and cutscenes you would normally need to watch in order to free kongs.

Upon entering I use the bush by the entrance to push myself out of bounds to get to the main area quickly. Here, I can STVW to the underground GB and in-bounds by the blueprint. Both GBs by Diddy's cage are ripe for the taking because Diddy is already free (although you still have to watch the cutscenes after you grab them). Again, STVW is used to get to Chunky's underground cave quickly.

In the Diddy mountain, the balloon took an unfortunate amount of time to shoot because the Klumps were constantly getting in the way and I ended up having to kill them. I can skip slowing down the conveyer belts if I can do a precise jump around the bars to get to the minecart. In the minecart game I look back for the first half to reduce a little bit of lag; this will allow me to avoid hitting obstacles that cycle through getting in your way.

This next section features an incredibly broken glitch called gun skew. By taking out your gun out of bounds and swimming, you can angle yourself using C-Up to any angle you like. The kongs have no hitbox beneath them for some reason, which will allow them to pass through essentially any wall in the game; the only downside is that I cannot do a normal jump off the ground or I will lose the skew. The skew holds through warps and the tag barrel so I can collect a bunch of cage GBs this way. I use a technique called skew climb to climb the mountain with Diddy without hitting the switch; Diddy's position is constantly reset higher and higher because the game is trying to get you to slide off the mountain, but the weird angle messes with the sliding mechanism. Still skewed after collecting 4 cage GBs, I take Tiny up toward the upper area with the shell. I can walk through the gate to avoid a cutscene, walk through the logs to collect her bunches quickly, and walk through the stump gate to get her GB without becoming Mini Monkey. The skewed section ends upon entering the shell.

I can skip opening gate 2 in the shell by clipping with the torches to get out of bounds. After finishing this area, Chunky can clip through the shell with Hunky Chunky. He can then clip past the Rambi wall for a bunch of balloons and a fairy. After the back area is complete, I STVW to the front cave area with Diddy and make tags for the other kongs inside T&S. I fight Armydillo with Tiny because the gate in front of this cave isn't actually open, and she needs to get bananas just outside of the gate, so once I leave there would be no re-entering. In order to avoid Tiny's hilariously slow barrel throwing in phases 2 and 3 of the boss fight, I place the barrels next to Armydillo's head so when he's done firing, he takes damage immediately after coming out of his shell. Additionally, I take damage in the rolling phases because the phase ends immediately when you get hit once. Japes goes well overall and don't lose significant time anywhere. And yes, I got everything required for 101% from Japes in about 26 minutes!

 

Creepy Castle (Level Time – 48:39, includes both Castle segments)

Japes had to be done at this point in the run so we can visit K Lumsy one last time in the run. At this point Keys 1, 3, 4 and 8 are handed in. The only Keys needed to spawn the final boss area are 3 and 8, so no other keys are needed. 1 is for getting into Aztec and 4 is for getting to Fungi again without having to do moonkicks. Unfortunately, I had to take a quick bathroom break here, and lose about 28 seconds because of it.

The beginning of Castle features a clip into the tree at the beginning to skip baboon blast. By using STVW in the nearby moat, I can Airswim; if I out of bounds while swimming, and swim back in bounds into an area with no water, the kong will retain the swimming state until I jump. I now can use a combination of STVW and STS to clip into the tree. I can clip out of bounds inside the tree to completely skip the sniper game by rolling into a sloped wall. Unfortunately, the inside of the tree has my largest time loss of the run: I end up missing the GB and having to do the clip to get back into the tree again and I lose 55 seconds.

The crypt is generally a straightforward area. In Tiny's crypt, I throw an orange to damage myself so I don't die to the green acid. This skips activating the hands and waiting on their cycles to get the GB here. In Diddy's crypt, I intentionally hit the 4 a second time so I have access to the balloon that spawns from the coffin.

At the top of Castle, I can skip the library section completely by ledge clipping by Snide's to fall into the exit door of the library, which puts me right next to the GB. In the ballroom, the TNT barrels in the minecart bonus game always has the same pattern, so I can easily avoid the barrels with no issues. When Chunky enters his shed, I grab homing ammo because it will allow me to skip the Sniper section in Lanky's tower. Normally homing ammo doesn't hit switches that far away, but by standing in certain spots, the homing ammo will just reach them. Beaver bother doesn't go particularly well, but I get it in one try.

After Tiny's garbage can GB, I now return to T&S and get Key 7 now. It's convenient to fight King Kut Out here because no matter who you enter the boss room with, you always start the fight with Lanky. This acts as a free tag so I can do Lanky's stuff immediately after the fight. For this boss fight, for the first 2 phases, King Kut Out always appears in a different spot each time he appears, so if I position myself by two of the sides where he didn't appear, there is a 2/3 chance he'll appear by the cannons I'm standing close to. In the final phase, he always rotates counterclockwise so it's easy to know where he will end up.

In Diddy's section of the dungeon, I can use a Moontail to reach the chains on the ceiling to skip needing sniper scope to hit the switch to lower them. In Lanky's dungeon room, he can just barely baboon balloon from the first pad straight to the end with the bonus barrel. I end the level with Chunky using the same trick I used to clip DK into the tree. This beaver bother goes better than the one with Lanky. Other than the big miss with DK at the beginning of the level and the beaver bothers, Castle goes relatively smoothly.

 

Crystal Caves (Level Time – 34:45)

After some Castle lobby cleanup and some DK Isles music pads, I enter Caves. After the beetle race, I baboon balloon to Lanky's kasplat. In normal gameplay you can only get to this kasplat via warp 5, but baboon ballooning from the ice palace will just barely make it. I can STVW to Chunky's gorilla gone GB so I don't have to primate punch the ice wall. In the Armydillo 2 boss fight, I use the same strategies as the first one, placing barrels by his head so they explode when his head pops out.

There is a particular spot in the ceiling of Caves that is higher than the rest. I can use Diddy to rocketbarrel to this spot and easily clip out of bounds. Diddy can then travel above the level to get to his blueprint without needing to use Tiny's mini monkey to get to it. For all of the 5 Door Igloo rooms, I can simply STVW and enter them from the bottom of the igloo, skipping the need to spawn the instrument pads and play the instruments. In DK's igloo room, I kick off the door frame of the room to clip into the ice maze without turning it on. I fail it once (14 seconds), but get it on my second try.

In DK's rotating puzzle room in the cabins area, the entire puzzle can be skipped my doing a moonkick off the low ledge with a fixed camera, the hardest moonkick in the game. Getting it first try is very fortunate. Diddy's lower cabin in the 5 door cabin is slightly sloppy with some missed gun shots but nothing too time consuming. The rest of the cabin area goes smoothly without issues.

Tiny's bonus game, Krazy Kong Klamour behaves very strangely on VC: the game moves faster than you have the reaction time to shoot the GBs. I have to pause buffer otherwise I have no chance of shooting the GBs before they disappear. In Lanky's igloo room, you can backflip up the central tower before the baboon blast pad spawns. I don't make it in time, but it's a very minimal time loss, so it's not a big deal. The level ends with Chunky clipping into the transparent igloo. He can clip through the bottom, sort of like a reverse ledge clip. Overall Caves goes incredibly well, the biggest time loss coming from missing the ice maze skip once in DK's igloo room.

 

Fungi Forest (Level Time – 47:06, includes both Fungi segments)

There is a tough moonkick you can do to get to the lava GB in Caves lobby. I miss it so I do a slightly slower backup strat that lets me damage myself to get to the GB without dying in the lava. I forget to punch both ice walls so I'm forced to make an extra tag. As hunky chunky, I can STS into DK Island to get his cage GB from underneath by simply jumping at it. In Fungi lobby, the mushroom shots go slowly; I only get Tiny's on the first set of shots.

You can do almost the entirety of Fungi while it's daytime due to abusing glitches such as STVW, ledge clips and skew walking. After hitting all the switches in the giant mushroom, I pound Tiny's switch as the cannon spawning cutscene activates. This makes it so I only need to watch the bonus barrel spawn cutscene, which is way shorter. Outside the giant mushroom, I barely miss a barrel in the baboon blast course, losing 30 seconds. Again, like the one in Caves, Krazy Kong Klamour requires pause buffering to beat on the VC version of the game.

Round 2 of the rabbit race is a scary part of the run on VC, because the rabbit actually moves faster than you; the developers never compensated for the fact that the game doesn't lag here on VC and a very small mistake can lose you the race. Fortunately, the rabbit gets caught on Lanky's kasplat for a brief moment, and that was enough for me to just barely win the race.

Since I pause-exit the level with Tiny, now is a good chance to snap the Fungi lobby fairy. This fairy is by far the hardest to snap in the game due to the way it moves, but I snap it first try because it gets stuck in the alcove it spawns from. The Chunky minecart game I play upon re-entrance has some cutscenes you can skip by simply looking backward. Afterward, I enter the barn and fight the spider mini-boss. You normally are supposed to fight this guy with Tiny, but Chunky's ammo does significantly more damage than Tiny's, and you can defeat the spider in 2 cycles rather than 5. Tiny can then collect the GB later. You do not need to turn on the conveyer belt for Chunky's keg GB, the crusher will crush the kegs just by placing them close.

The programmers legitimately forgot to program a wall inside the barn, so I can simply walk out of bounds and grab DK's conveyer GB without turning on the conveyer belt. I can get skew walk without using my gun by damaging myself on the thorny hedges for damage skew. This allows me to carry the apple as hunky chunky back to the entrance area without opening 2 gates. I can also use this skew to get back to the hedge area and clip into the building.

There are 3 GBs that you need to turn it to night for, but I get Diddy's cage GB via STVW here as well for Diddy tagging convenience. I grab a bunch of homing ammo in Lanky's barn attic for a GB in Angry Aztec later on. Diddy's attic GB is rather difficult on VC due to controller dead zone but I get it rather quickly. Other than the rather sloppy start to the level, Fungi goes very smoothly after baboon blast.

 

Angry Aztec (Level Time – 47:35)

Because I freed Tiny through King Kut Out earlier, I can simply walk to her cage and grab her GB without watching the long cutscenes of hitting each letter. I STVW here to leave the temple quickly. The reason I got a bunch of homing ammo was specifically for the vulture shooting GB, which goes very slowly without homing ammo (the vulture tends to fly in areas where its impossible to shoot it). With Chunky, I can airswim in the temple so I can STVW into his room to grab his GB without playing the long mini game where you kill 4 rounds of klaptraps. With Tiny, I can STVW into her klaptrap game without mini monkey to kill the klaptraps fast. I even get a lucky damage boost into the GB to skip the dance cutscene.

I never opened the big door in the area with Diddy's guitar, so I use Tiny to backflip into a corner by the temple and I can eventually fall out of bounds when I fall into the right spot. I use this opportunity when making tags by Cranky to get the Rareware coin. I unfortunately die twice and get bad item spawns so getting 5000 points for the coin goes slower than I'd like.

After spawning the vulture in the totem area, I have just enuogh time to spare to fly over to the 5 door temple and hit a switch as well as collect some bananas. After this the vulture will warp me to the beginning of the rocketbarrel ring course. As DK, I can use a technique similar to the bush push I did at the beginning of Japes, using the banana on top of Funky's hut to push me out of bounds and skip opening the big door. Unfortunately I fall off the building trying to set it up and lose around 25 seconds.

Entering the Llama temple, I ledge clip on the stairs so I can grab Lanky's cage GB from out of bounds. This allows me to skip the llama spit cutscene. Before leaving the temple, I ledge clip with Lanky so I can get his 2 balloons I wouldn't have access to without the llama spit cutscene. These balloons are tricky to shoot while staying out of bounds, and I do a horrible job with it, losing 30 seconds in the process.

Now that I have all the blueprints in the game, I can turn in the remaining 36 blueprints for GBs right here. The turn-in cutscene in Snide's Aztec building is the shortest in the game, so turning them in here saves a little time. After turning them all in, I have to attempt one of the hardest skips in the game right at the end of the run, the beetle race skip. I ledge clip so I can fall out of bounds at the beginning of the course and crouch fall to fall down. This is important, as crouch falling doesn't trigger the lose cutscene, while simply falling normally does. I crouch fall in very specific parts of the track to get to the end of the course long before the beetle makes it down, and it skips a cutscene at the end as well. The trick overall goes very well. Aztec is probably the sloppiest level in the run overall, with the 2 larger mistakes mentioned beforehand as well as several parts with small movement errors.

 

The Final Showdown with K Rool

After grabbing the final few DK Isles GBs with Tiny, I quick check my inventory to confirm I have all the items required for 101%. You'll notice that there are several places in the K Rool fight where I angle the camera away from K Rool. This is a remnant of old lag reduction technique from when N64 was used to speedrun this category, but I do it anyway because I'm used to the movement. In the DK Phase I can hop into the first barrel as they spawn to hit K Rool right away. The rest of the phase goes well. In the Diddy phase, you can backflip into the barrel as it spawns, but I miss and have to wait a couple seconds to hop in while K Rool is flinging his gloves at me. I can shoot through the lights at specific angles so I can hit both targets at the same time. The phase goes around average for me. In the Lanky phase I throw the barrels roughly where K Rool will be when I play the trombone. The phase goes well. In the Tiny phase I can stand on the corners of the ring to avoid all the shockwave attacks from K Rool. I want to make sure I hop in the mini monkey barrel as it spawns as well. Inside the shoe, there is no lag unlike the N64 version, so I can use my feather bow the intended way to shoot the toes (it was faster to look away from the toes and throw oranges on the N64 version). The phase goes well. The Chunky phase is pretty self-explanatory, and this phase goes nicely as well.

After the 101% cutscenes play, I check my file time, which ends up being a 5:59, just barely getting 101% and beating the game in under 6 hours!

Again, playing perfectly for 6 hours is impossible, but I'm really happy with how this run turned out. I've ran 101% on and off for about 18 months and I'm happy with my current time. I hope you enjoyed the run as much as I did!