Speed Demos Archive - Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble

Note: The 'TUFST' code which removes DK and continue barrels is considered 'Hard mode'. The game normally reports 100% as 103%, but with the code it is 105%.

After completing a version difference video of Donkey Kong Country 1 (SNES vs GBA),

https://youtu.be/Awi4UtTofE0

I recorded some attempts of Donkey Kong Country 3's Riverside Race for the GBA version.

Turns out there are some notable changes.
The notes below are a huge factor to making this run:

* Holding the dash button when starting the level buffers a hairspin or roll.

* Dixie's hairspin loses its dash speed and doesn't gain a notable speed boost after taking out a single enemy, it does get a speed boost after taking out two enemies with a single hair spin.

* Kiddy's roll spam actually saves time

* Tag throw is no longer required to enter the warp barrel

* Using the warp barrel does not force the in-game timer to max.

* The in-game timer is a lot more accurate than the SNES version where you could get a faster in-game time by wasting 1 real time frame, just look at the SNES version and frame advance the video to get the idea.

* The exit point from the warp barrel was moved slightly closer to the left that you start at the end of the downwards slope.

If you are curious why the video looks super crisp, the run was done on a modified Nintendo DS phat model as it supports direct capture by USB. Although some players hate speedrunning GBA games on a DS phat due to the small buttons and slightly bigger D-pad, I don't have any problems with it.

This run is theoretically beatable like any other game, it is pretty much Dragster tier where most of the improvements are frame wars unless a new strat(s) gets discovered.

WITH AUDIO COMMENTARY : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60iMKdeXj0I

After almost a year of work, I finally got a 0:43 in-game time which is also World Record!
This is actually incredible and I didn't think back then I could go for a time like that!
DKC3 is actually my favorite game out of the 3 DKCs (haters gonna hate) and this game introduced me to the speedrunning community.
I will do a brief resume of my run so you can know where are the mistakes I did ( because no run is perfect ;) )

Quick infos : - In-Game time is beaten by two minute, but RTA time is beaten by over 3 minutes and a half. (In-Game time in this game is weird...)
- I played on the Wii Virtual Console version because it is a bit faster than on SNES

OVERWORLD-
I do something called "Wrinkly Skip" which is basically mashing buttons and hitting left at a very specific time (saves ~2sec)

WORLD 1-
Everything went perfect. For Belcha, you can just jump in it's mouth at the good height for the beetle to fall in it's mouth.

WORLD 2-
Everything went perfect (again). This boss strat is hard to do, but it saves about 30 seconds overall.

OVERWORLD-
The hover boat is literally soap. It is pretty hard to handle, but it got a safe strat to make it to the island without spinning around ridiculously.

WORLD 3-
3-1 : Damage boost near the end saves about 5-6 seconds.
3-4 : The last jump for the flag pole was hard to do since I was stuck in the enemy shooting animation hehe.
3-5 : With the parrot, passing between the two red bees is really hard, the gap is really small. Unfortunately, I didn't make it damageless (lost ~3 seconds overall)
3-Boss : When you spam team-throw in the air, you hover in place. This trick has been used to save around a minute on this boss only!

WORLD 4-
Pretty perfect overall, but the boss' first two cycles were not optimized.

WORLD 5-
5-1 : First major error : I hit Dixie trying to do a really hard optimal climbing. I had to hit Kiddy to get back to Dixie and hit Dixie in the next level to compensate (lost ~4 seconds overall)
5-4 : Some jumps were sloppy near the end.
5-Boss : Bleak was a troll. It's placement is random and at the beginning he went to the only place where we can't hit him. Cost me about 8 seconds.

WORLD 6-
*Funny info* : The bear part is actually 3 seconds faster on VC-U than VC-J.
6-3 : Hit Enguarde near the end by accident. So I have to switch to Dixie in the next level.
6-Boss : At it's second phase, there is an super hard trick to get through it without getting hit and it saves about 15 seconds.
I succeeded the trick, but attacked too early at the end, taking a hit and forcing myself to switch to Dixie in 7-1.

WORLD 7-
7-2 : This world is hard, it has the most RNG of all the DKCs. This level has white barrels that have random positioning. In that case, my luck was really bad (see last white barrel).
7-3 : Lightning is random, but you can control it by hitting a kong and getting a kong, which gives you about 3 seconds before a lightning pops again.
At some points, I got bad luck and got hit once where I didn't want to, which cost me around 4 seconds overall.
7-4 : Was really stressed at this point, so I was sloppy at some places.
7-Boss : Went perfect, finished with an unreal time : 50:15.

I would like to thank my first speedrun pal, Techiyo, for making me want to speedrun DKC3 (and speedrunning in general)
Special thanks also to TheJuice who accepted my first race in DKC3 on SpeedRunsLive, this really pushed me up to improve my time!
Also thanks to all the DKC community for supporting me even though they don't like DKC3 lol (too many names, you know who you are guys!)
Finally, thanks to the SDA members for letting me be part of their community and accept my run! :)

IF YOU WANT TO LEARN DKC3 ANY% OR ANY OF THE DKCs, HERE IS A USEFUL WEBSITE FOR YOU! : http://bombch.us/iP
Also, if you liked this run, I will sometimes make live streams speedrunning this game here : http://twitch.tv/MorKsQC

Quebec represent!

100%, Segmented, Hard Difficulty with Warps: 1:29 by Austinn 'Davis' Hallman done in 58 segments appended to 52 files.

Alright, well I'm back with my 2nd installment of DKC3, and I've beaten my first record by 7 minutes! This run is done on the hard 'TUFST' mode so as you know, no DK or continue barrels.

Some of the main strategies in the run and improvements from the old run:

Just about every level was faster overall just from using quicker jumping, cutting corners, etc. Something that works for a few levels to get the DK coin is to throw the steel keg at Koin before he is on screen and then to run towards him so that when the game detects him as being there, the keg is already hitting him. Another thing that is featured in a couple levels is finding a pattern in the green banana bonuses and using that to know where the bananas will most likely appear.

Lakeside Limbo, Tidal Trouble, Barrel Shield Bust-Up: I changed the route by not using the warps in these levels to save some time.

Squeals on Wheels: Towards the beginning I reused the steel keg to avoid waiting on the bees later.

Springin' Spiders: I decided to use Kiddy for the bulk of this level because he can jump quicker than Dixie, which is good for levels like this which are more vertical. I also started to notice a pattern for the bananas in the 1st bonus, and I took advantage of that.

Bobbing Barrel Brawl: Using a sacrifice to get into the warp saved some time, as well as jumping into the water under the first bee.

Rocket Barrel Ride: Once again, getting Parry saves a lot of time in the 2nd bonus.

Kreeping Klasps: I used a faster strategy for getting the DK coin, but overall this level was just quite a bit faster.

Tracker Barrel Trek: In the 2nd bonus I saved some time by killing more bugs per blast out of the barrel.

Fire-Ball Frenzy: I used a sacrifice to get up to the rope at the end of the level.

Ripsaw Rage: I shaved off some time by teaming up to reach the steel keg at the end.

Blazing Bazukas: In the 1st bonus I used a new strategy involving jumping on the spacing between the tubs of acid, and after the DK coin, there is a place where you can fall into a little pit and come up on the other side to avoid using webs.

Kaos Karnage: I used the team-up strategy and was aiming to just have to use 3 team-ups, but I got lucky and was able to get a run with just 2, so huge improvement on this level.

Krevice Kreepers: It saves a bit of time to just jump over the klasp just before the 1st bonus. I'm surprised I hadn't thought of that before.

Tearaway Toboggan: Once again, saved some time by jumping on the bugs in the bonus. I also did a lot more jumping up and down slopes to shave off a little time.

Barrel Drop Bounce: I came up with a fun new way to get the DK coin.

Krack Shot Kroc: This time around, I did a lot better job of using webs, and also jumping on the space between the acid.

Ropey Rumpus: I used the sacrifice to reach a higher rope and save some time.

Barbos's Barrier: I went ahead and used one of the TAS tricks for the 2nd stage of the fight, and skipped watching all the spikes in the 3rd stage.

Konveyor Rope Klash: I used a faster technique for getting through all the bees and ropes before the DK coin.

Creepy Caverns: This entire level was very good. I did less waiting for the ghost barrels, used a much quicker strategy for the 1st bonus, and had a new way of getting the DK coin. I wanted to keep Kiddy all the way until the sacrifice at the end, so the 2nd bonus is a little slower, but it's worth it.

Kastle Kaos: This level is just about perfect. First, I used a team-up to get around Kaos so that I wouldn't lose Kiddy. Secondly, the first 2 hits on K. Rool were fine and then the 3rd hit was earlier then before. After the 4th hit, I used a very risky trick from the TAS to get the barrel to fall on the platform right away, and in this run I actually hit K. Rool while Dixie was turned around instead of throwing the barrel at him, which was unintentional but looks really cool. Finally, the last 3 hits were done perfectly, including a sacrifice to set up Kiddy for Stampede Sprint. So overall, gigantic improvement for this level.

Stampede Sprint: This has another use of finding the green banana pattern in the 2nd bonus.

Criss Kross Cliffs: I drastically changed the strategy for both bonuses, starting with the Dixie throw trick to get a perfect run of the 1st bonus, and then using a different bounce pattern in the 2nd.

Tyrant Twin Tussle: In the 3rd bonus, I once again used Dixie to pick up more bananas.

Swoopy Salvo: Although this trick didn't save that much time, getting the coin in the 1st bonus through the branch and then walking through the tree is a fun, cool looking trick to save a wee bit of time. The 3rd bonus went well, as I only had to use 2 throws to get all of the stars, and at the very end where you jump on the bird to get up to the branch, I was able to use the 2nd bird instead of the 3rd.

Rocket Rush: I used the fastest flight pattern that I could find and at the end I used a slightly different way of getting the DK coin.

Knautilus: This is another close to perfect level. The key to finishing this one fast is to control both the direction that K. Rool is facing, and the side that the fireball gun starts shooting at first. By doing this you can get hits on him in less 'trips' of him flying back and forth.

Another run of this game on hard mode (just because it's that much more fun), but this time a little less complicated and annoying than 105%. Here's a breakdown of how it went:

World 1-

Not too much to say. The Belcha fight was a little cautious because more than half of the time that I would use the strategy of just putting the bugs in his mouth, he would glitch out on me (and I was sick of playing the first land over and over).

World 2-

Nothing special. Arich went quite well.

World 3-

In Low-G Labyrinth I had a bit of trouble around the 'no Squawks' sign. First I had to go over the top of the bee, and then I hit the ceiling instead of being shot into the barrel.

KAOS went pretty perfectly.

World 4-

I decided to be cautious on a couple things in Rocket Barrel Ride.

I tried to do a sacrifice trick in Tracker Barrel Trek, but it failed, however it only cost about 3 seconds.

In Fish Food Frenzy, the Nibbla gets stuck at one point, so I have to go back to get him. I've had this happen one other time and I thought it would mean that I could leave him, but that came back to bite me in the butt later (literally).

World 5-

Pretty good overall. I also had decent luck with Bleak.

World 6-

Buzzer Barrage was sort of sloppy, starting with missing the first barrel. Also at the end during the sacrifice, I ran into the wall which slowed me down quite a bit.

Barbos's Barrier was probably the worst level in the run. First I had to take time to dodge the Lurchin that he shot at me, then in the 2nd stage, he released an extra rocket thing which I foolishly waited for before I hit him, and then the 3rd stage was just a little too cautious.

World 7-

Lightning Lookout is the hardest level in the game, but it went pretty well and I lost Kiddy where I wanted to. The only bad thing is that it's maybe a little too safe.

And to finish, K. Rool goes down without any trouble.

Thanks goes to Mike for transferring my VHS tapes as well as answering all of my questions, and to all of SDA for continuing to work hard to keep the site up and running.