Donkey Kong 64 any% Tool-assisted Speedrun Explained

Donkey Kong 64 famously holds a Guinness World Record for most collectibles in a video game with 3821 critics often praised the game for its sheer amount of content was criticized it for simply taking too long to beat despite that and despite having one of the longest final boss sites of its time the game can be beaten in the mere 26 minutes how is it possible this is the Donkey Kong 64 tool-assisted speedrun explain so it turns out that the Guinness record is wrong because there are not 3821 collectibles but 4841 beating the game requires a bare minimum of 1927 of them note that banana fairies simply unlock bonus features and rainbow coins are needed so visiting the banana fairy aisle to get the banana camera and the shockwave attack is entirely optional using glitches though it's entirely possible to bypass most of the requirements here's what's actually required to get the fastest time only DK only two keys to moves including the shockwave six fairies which don't do anything in the adventure mode and five coloured bananas somehow and using the RAM B crate in Jungle japes none of this makes sense yet somehow it does get ready because this is going to be a wild ride before we begin if you don't know what the tool-assisted speedrun is please watch the video linked in the upper right corner first the story skip option is turned on this removes many long plot exposure cutscenes so it's an obvious choice for speedruns even with stories kept on there are still many cutscenes left so this video will fast-forward through them as much as possible this brand-new updated task by ring rush was created with this video in mind [Music] right off the bat DK goes through the ball in out of the training grounds this skips the training barrels for minigames that not only teach to player how to use a few game mechanics but actually enable them for the cons as well so by skipping them the Kong's can't dive under water use orange grenades pick up barrels and boulders or use any vines DK went through the wall using a trick called phase walking and here's how it works the variable used to store Kong's facing angle can range from 0 to 65,535 but the game represents one full rotation is 4096 units so theoretically the facing angle can get well beyond 360 degrees when angles exceed that value there's a safeguard in place and the game slips tracks the full rotation because of this correction most functions were not designed to deal with angles beyond 360 degrees so if the facing angle is more than about 450 degrees the collision detection in the camera incorrectly used the opposite angle for some of their calculations as a result walls which are normally only solid from the inside out become only solid from the outside in this zone where collision detection breaks is called the phase angle one way to make a Kong enter the phase angle is to exit the first-person view due to a bug in the camera function when leaving first-person the game adds one full rotation to the conchs facing angle if it's below 180 degrees this results in a zone about 90 degrees wide where while collisions become broken during most actions the facing angle is updated on every frame so it should be impossible to maintain a phase angle for long enough to go through walls without the angle being updated and therefore corrected but there are a few exceptions that make it possible first if a Kong is swimming or crouching the facing angle is only updated if the joystick is held in any direction as long as the stick is left in a neutral position the angle will stay above 360 degrees if a Kong is falling the facing angle won't be updated and finally the angle is not updated on the frame of a change in the movement action so on the frame akong starts walking decelerating or standing still the end we'll be preserved and only on the second frame we'll start changing and be corrected this means that by alternating between a direction and the neutral position DK alternates between walking and decelerating on every frame and the facing angle will never be corrected this allows DK to maintain the phase angle and walk through the wall since the collision detection is incorrectly taking the opposite angle [Music] [Music] swimming underwater is faster than staying on the surface but because a dive training barrel was never completed DK can't dive by pressing Z but when he jumps in the water D Keys momentum briefly carries him below the surface because exiting first-person view while underwater automatically starts the underwater swim animation by going in and out of first-person during that short dip below the surface DK can start swimming underwater even without learning to dive this is just another phase walk to reach the loading zone normally only accessible by shrinking tiny Kong at this point you might be thinking that DK can just walk through any wall at will well yes that's kind of true but remember that the phase angle only spans about ninety degrees so phase walking can only work within that angle range DK needs the banana camera to take ferry pictures which unlock features in the game's mystery menu two of these features are part of the key elements that make this speedrun possible and unlocking them requires six ferry pictures in total the details of this will be made clear later this is called a mood kick and the weight watch is actually pretty simple gravity usually subtracts 20 vertical speed per frame but many moves such as DK's aerial attack change that value decays aerial attack sets the vertical acceleration to 1/8 of its default value for 8 frames or negative 2.5 per frame instead of negative 20 by interrupting the attack within these first eight frames with a kick the lower acceleration of the aerial attack is applied to the kick since kicks don't update vertical acceleration DK is subject to 1/8 of the usual gravity for the entire duration of the kick mooncakes can only be done in a place where the aerial attack can be interrupted early for DK to hit the ground shortly after rising from the aerial attack there needs to be a steep slope a higher ledge or a low ceiling finally while cutscenes typically stop Kong's in their tracks kicking is an exception DK can kick into a cutscene trigger and although the player loses control DK will keep his momentum for the duration of the kick this is called a void warp by clipping out of bounds and walking out DK hits the void outrigger zone around the outside of the map that signals a player has somehow wandered out of bounds as a fail-safe the game treats it like a death and responsive player at the start of the level in DK Isles this warps DK back here which saves time compared to exiting normal [Music] [Applause] okay there's a lot to unpack here I know you've just witnessed invisible DK teleporting up to frantic factory's lobby entrance but first we need to explain this trick this is called tag barrel storage here's how tag barrels normally work it seems like tag barrels send you to a dark map but the effect is actually generated on the spot where attack barrel is used when a Kong enters the barrel the game locks the camera in place turns everything black and loads all five callings in a spotlight meanwhile the Kong did entered the barrel is still there but invisible and frozen in place when a Kong is tagged the new Kong will replaced a previous one and then being frozen and made visible after a short delay however if the Kong changes state after the tagged barrel is activated this will override the frozen state allowing control of the Kong with the tagged barrel active this can be done with any of these 24 actions all of which can trigger at least one frame after controls are frozen these include taking damage on Crouching entering a ranks then cancelling honky-tonky lending in water diving starting the long fall animation and many more here DK performs a skid jump this is done by quickly reversing the control stick direction which causes decayed his kid and by jumping on the same frame he starts skidding DK gains the height of the jump but still acts like he's skidding on the ground from this state he can jump again or Crouch tag barrel storage is activated with the uncrowded and DK keeps moving while the tagged barrel is active during that time DK moves towards frantic factory's lobby when Z is pressed and DK is tagged he's now far enough away from the tagged barrel that it's now unloaded which interrupts the tagging sequence before its completion so decays stays invisible and an attribute health his start position is modified but to define the stored position and explain why this change is useful we first need to back up a bit and clear up a few things an actor is a type of object it includes most of the interactive stuff in the game like Kong's and every other character enemies barrels boulders and so on actors have bones which are used to animate them more easily a calling start position is the position of one of these bones which typically follows their real pretty closely for example DK stores his position in the same place where he stores his bananas right after a tagged barrel is used the Kong is unloaded and there are no bones to animate so the storage position is set to its default value zero and all coordinates until the tagging process is complete and the new column needs to be animated again by tagging outside of the barrels range the tag process is interrupted by the barrel unloading so decays stays invisible and the stored position stays at zero zero zero so why does distort position matter a few movement mechanics such as climbing trees are pulling up from ledges rely on it for their calculations when DK pulls himself up on the ledge the difference between his current and historic position is added to his vertical position under normal circumstances the stored position is slightly higher than the current position so this operation moves DK down by a few units but when the current vertical position is 571 and the start position is at 0 DK doubles his distance away from the seafloor warping significantly upwards in order for this to bring him all the way up to frantic factory's lobby entrance DK needs to grab this ledge which he reaches with the mood kick using the edge of the island to interrupt the aerial attack but how did he manage to clip past a post or of the lobby well simply because it's not solid the second levels boss key does a few things it raises this platform which makes the whole middle area of crema accessible it opens this door and it opens the door to the fourth level gloomy Galleon before the key is turned in the closed door of frantic factory's Lobby is supposed to be inaccessible and the very confident developers at rare didn't bother to make it solid at all [Music] banana Locker wants you to collect 15 golden bananas before entering frantic factory but the portal is right behind him and only needs to be touched to be activated B Locker has a pretty large hitbox to prevent you from entering the level without clearing him first he still does a laughably bad job at it though but the common ways to get past him don't work in frantic factories lobby because this by it blocks the way through his exploitable right side luckily the pipe on the Left gives an alternative like I said earlier most walls in this game are only solid from one side this helps getting back to normal play in case a player is somehow ends up out of bounds by phase walking into the pipe and then jumping backwards into B Locker the walls outer hitbox ends up pushing DK away ejecting him into B lockers hitbox far enough that DK can simply pass through the camera and the pipe makes this hard to see but there is going to be another instance of this trick later on I mentioned earlier that cutscenes typically stop Kong's in their tracks long jumping of the last possible frame before losing control can override this momentum stop which lets DK move during this cutscene [Music] wait somehow DK is now out of bounds what happened when the cameras switch to show chunky the game took a bit of extra time to load the next frame lag is common in DK 64 sometimes a little too much to make it less obvious that the game is lagging the developers used a clever trick the horizontal displacement of a Kong between each frame is determined not only by the Kong speed but also by the time it we needs frame so the lag year it is the more the Kong will move in between each frame which keeps to real-time speed more or less consistent when something happens it makes the game slow down considerably such as loading another room or dealing with visual effects like smoke or large amounts of particles the time between one frame and the next will be abnormally large this causes decayed to move so much between the two frames of he's in front of the wall on this frame and Beyond it on the next this is known as a lag clip it's usually done using orange grenade explosions to generate a big lag spike but in this case loading the storage room was sufficient [Music] [Music] as the key is navigating out of bounds now is a good time to bring up out-of-bounds ground properties the height of the ground below the Kong is updated as they move around but when out-of-bounds there is no ground below this means the height of the ground is never updated so it stays at whatever height the last piece of ground on their 2 Kong was effectively the ground extends of this height infinitely as long as no other round is passed over because this ground is above him DK can roll under it and remain out of bounds here's the first of six fairies pausing and exiting the level right after taking the pictures skips this cutscene which shaves about eight seconds the banana fairy normally refills ammo during the cutscene skipping it means no refills but the fairy picture is still saved which is all that matters here [Music] [Music] the key climbs up using a combination of skid jumps and mooncakes both of which we've already talked about because he jumps and skids at the same time DK is in the air but acts like he's skidding on the ground so that's why he can double jump the wall here is poorly made probably because it's not really supposed to be accessed the steep slope here helps get more height from the moon kick which is just enough to reach all the way up to the mouth where the height of ham lobby entrances from there DK uses more skid jumps to climb it a little higher through the mouth to load the second ferry we saw earlier how DK can Crouch from a skid jump he can use this to take out the camera in midair then take the picture as he's falling in the loading zone to skip the cutscene [Music] again because in his kid jump DK is considered to be on the ground he can perform ground actions like a roll he can pass through the wall because angled walls even if only slightly have much weaker collision detection he narrowly avoids hitting the instant-death lava with an aerial attack and reaches the back of the loading zone to enter hideout helm the final level in the game in hideout helm a timer is ticking you need to shut down the blast o matic Kiros weapon to destroy DK Isles within that time limit to open the door that leads to the door that leads to the door to the levels key but the key is always sitting at the back of the level so there's a faster way to get there [Music] this slope is slippery normally only lanky the ranks down move can climb it but using skid jumps and precise movement it's possible to get up anyway usually jumping from his slippery slope will send you backwards in such a way that climbing is impossible but for a few frames it's possible to walk on it before sliding off vicky uses this in the wall to angle this kid jump as far up as you can when landing on the slippery slope while gaining height from the aerial attack Dicky enters a slipping state in midair for a short time it's possible to jump out of this state without the backwards momentum slippery slopes usually give and that's just enough to reach the top the second slope is actually not slippery except with top corners the slope is also steep enough that DK can land just after initiating the aerial attack which allows him to moontak the wall here is similar to the lobby's wallet since it's slightly angled as well from here DK can simply navigate out of bounds directly to the key but there's an issue he's way too low here there's a small section of higher ground that's accessible from out of bounds by passing over it the effective out-of-bounds ground is raised up to its height the autobahns ground is raised again twice this time which now gives enough height to be able to access the key so why come here well the goal of the game is to free KMZ by opening all heath locks on the stage to access a level you usually need the key from the previous level so if you get the final key you should have every other key in the game so to spawn the final boss instead of checking for every key the game simply needs to check for key eight with one exception since the second level ski unlocks both frantic factory and gloomy Galleon frantic factories key unlocks nothing the developers did think about that one so the game also checks for key 3 but as long as you give keys three and eight to Keylong Z that's enough to make the final fight appear on top of that two fairies are conveniently placed right here bringing the total up to four then the game is saved and reset this quickly returns to the main menu which is useful for the next step here ring rush goes into the mystery menu the first option which is unlocked with two fairies is to re-watch the game's plot progression moments the intro story cutscene is activated this five minute sequence that normally plays when starting a new file with stories get disabled goes through seven different cutscenes in various maps to keep track of when it's time to change maps and continue the sequence in a new cutscene the game has a timer ticking along with a few key points in time where the game should fade out and load the next cutscene however because this is the mystery menu the player can always return to the menu at the press of a button when an active mystery menu cutscene is cancelled its corresponding fade alzheimer is also stopped but the timer starts 6 frames before the intro story is considered to be active if it's canceled within this six frame window the game goes back to the menu without interrupting the timer this causes the music to stop functioning properly often playing the wrong music or nothing at all more importantly it causes the game to attempt to fade out into the next section of the intro story of these key moments and most importantly this is the basis of a gamebreaking glitch that will unfold in the next five minutes of the run from here the goal is to get as much done as possible within that time and within the new restrictions that the intro story timer poses keep an eye on this reference of the intro story to see when the key moments line up with the run as we go through it [Music] [Music] [Music] earlier I said that swimming was one animation that preserved the phase angle as long as the joystick was left neutral this is why DK can go straight through the wall after leaving first-person similarly to out-of-bounds ground the current water level has extended infinitely as long as DK doesn't go into another body of water this lets him swim in midair this control room is used in a cutscene that plays upon opening the Crown door near the end of haidle helm where Kiril panics and goes into his airship preparing an escape DK is pretty Hollow and this is a very small room so the developer is saved some time in space by simply hiding that small room right in the middle of the island with how easy clipping through walls is in this game though it's not that well hidden after all after that DK enters a jungle japes lobby from the back thanks to laws only being solid from one side but what is this all about well it turns out that there was no reason to go into this room other than to kill some time the intro story timer is about to hit the first fade-out point when that happens if a cutscene is currently playing the screen will fade out and transition into the second part of the intro story loading the necessary map in cutscene if no cutscene is playing the fader will be put on standby and will trigger immediately whenever any cutscene plays going back to the intro story is bad because the player loses control and has to watch the rest of the intro there is a way around this when a fade-out is initiated two variables are sent the next map number and the cutscene number at the end of the fade-out the game looks at the next map number to find which map to load and the cutscene number to find which cutscene to play in that map if during the fade-out another transition occurs the next map number is replaced by the new destination so the instruction by the intro story timer to initiate the fade-out is completed and the sequence carries on waiting for the next key point however the fade-out is canceled and instead of loading the next part of the intro story in loads the new destination as long as the new map index is written to the variable in the one second window between the moment where it is set by the intro story fade out and the moment where it's used to determine which map to load next a fade out cancel happens keep in mind though for a fade-out to be initiated in the first place the cutscene needs to be currently playing most loading zones do not qualify as a cutscene but thankfully level portals and trough fenced off portals do play a cut scene when the Kong enters them so they will initiate a fade-out if no time had been killed and DK entered jungle James before the intro story fade out this would have happened the jungle japes introduction cutscene would have started playing but it would have been promptly interrupted by the intro story fade out therefore entering the portal has to be done in the 1 second window right at this moment in the intro story as you can see one of the main goals for this section of the run is to prevent the game from returning to the intro story which is done by cancelling the fade outs at these key moments with a well timed transition finally the locker was skipped here as well like I said earlier level portals only need to be touched to be activated decays hitbox and his center of rotation are offset by a small amount his hitbox is slightly front-heavy by pushing his back against an obstacle and then turning 180 degrees DK is able to position himself closer to that obstacle than by simply running at it this is what's done here DK kicks into a precise spot while facing backwards then turns to face the level portal while standing much closer than his hitbox normally allows him to be then because this slap extends his hitbox way forward his hand reaches into the portal activating it for most levels this trick is pretty easy to pull off but in jungle japes lobby it's almost impossible [Music] we're treated with this weird cutscene at the start of the level this is because although the next map number was overwritten by the new destination the cutscene number wasn't so instead of playing cutscene one in this central story map it played cutscene one in Jungle japes which happens to be this one this trick is very similar to the pipe trick in frantic factory Lobby the bush is a solid object that pushes Kong's outwards it pushes DK backwards far enough that he passes through the hitbox of the block pay attention to the void out zone this path allows DK to skip this section of jungle japes entirely going straight into the main area from the start in a few seconds this runs 5th ferry picture will be taken taking a ferry picture triggers an ammo refill cutscene which could initiate an unwanted fade out into the intro story so the picture needs to be taken at a point where there's no fade-out on standby as there would be no way to cancel wandering the ammo refill but as you can see a fade-out is coming up so DK makes a quick detour to the trough and Scalf portal to cancel it this plant is solid and has a slightly slanted surface so it acts as both a higher ledge and the slope to initiate a moon kick notice how the vines leading to the trough fenced off portal or not there that's because the training barrel for vine swinging was never completed again a weird cutscene plays because this is cutscene one in the intro story version of height of hell nothing is needed in this room right now but coming here both canceled the intro story fade-out and cleared the first visit cutscene like I said before t3 is also required to beat the game so DK will visit often scoff later in the run [Music] [Music] there isn't much to say about this clip other than it's one more example of a poorly made wall hitbox here DK does this kid job to take out the camera in midair while positioning himself above the water while taking a ferry picture tongs enter a state where they can't be controlled until the end of the refill cutscene by taking the ferry picture while falling into the water DK splashes down after losing control this changes his state from taking a picture to swimming where he can be controlled saving about eight seconds over waiting out the refill during that time DK initiates another phase walk to go back out of bounds this is to take a better line to this Randy box and to skip this gate he also performs the same trick behind tagged barrel storage on the Randy box by changing animations right as he enters the box allowing him to move a bit earlier the gate is only solid on one side as is the case for all the babble gates across the game if you pay attention to the intro story timer you can see that a new fade-out is approaching some time needs to be killed to line things up perfectly so this showcase of absurd looking movement is used to fill that gap this is typical for tool assisted speedruns whenever there is any amount of waiting that needs to be done passers tried to make it as entertaining as possible incredibly enough using Rambi here is actually required for this speedrun route to workout which adds yet another normally optional element of the game to the list of requirements to beat it in the fastest way possible the reason why will be made clear soon this is also why five colored bananas are required in this run this bunch is automatically collected when entering the randi box another bunch was collected here but that one can easily be avoided with no time loss visiting Franky here has two purposes first because talking with cranky is a cutscene that can lead into a transition it's used as the last of the three intro story fade-out cancels in this run second because the first visit to cranky which normally happens in the training grounds is a trigger to spawn the training barrels it turns out that one of the four moves two training barrels teach is required to beat the game barrel throwing which is used in lanky phase of the final fight therefore spawning the barrels is mandatory and doing it here is the most convenient one last we art cutscene plays this time cutscene three and there is nothing more to do in Jungle Jim's at this point there's one more ferry required for the main glitch behind this run and that one training barrel to complete wait so why go into the training grounds only to get right back out does this have to do with the intro story timer no in fact this is because talking with cranky sets a flag it indicates that the training barrels are spawn but only a temporary flag a temporary flag is not preserved after leaving the game file in returning to it which spoiler alert is something that's going to come up soon by angling the camera towards the training barrels the game loads them even though they're behind the cave wall when the training barrels are loaded the temporary flag is replaced with a permanent flag from this point on the fact that the for training barrels are spawned is saved in the file so it will be preserved even after leaving the game and returning later the most observant viewers may have noticed that the gate is gone and this switch is pressed even though we never pressed it the reason is a fascinating example of developers going out of their way to be consistent even when it doesn't actually matter which considering just about everything else in this game is a bit shocking there are two ways to free a Kong in this game the first is by opening their cage which is the attendant way and the second is by entering a tack barrel while controlling them which can be done using King cutout or the final battle when a Kong is unlocked through the second method their cage will automatically be open it turns out that this is true for all five songs including DK at the start of the game all five columns are caged DK simply happens to be trapped inside of his own home by opening this gate DK frees himself if the gate is skipped instead DK will go out into the world while the game still considers him as being locked using glitches it is possible to switch to another Kong without ever entering attack barrel or opening the training grounds gate when entering attack barrel is another Kong DK will be gone and replaced with a yellow question mark when the other Kong goes into the training rounds and pounds the switch which despite having decays face on it can be pressed by any Kong DK will then be freed at once so long story short attack the rule was entered way back at the start of the run to perform tag normal storage so that's when DK was freed and why this gate is already opened [Music] [Applause] this is the last fairy picture of the run instead of a reset this time quick game is used to preserve the state of the intro story with six fairies now the second option of the mystery menu is unlocked also the intro story is about to end this is when the magic happens [Music] [Music] [Music] alright somehow DK is back in his house what just happened as you can see by the comparison this is the end of the intro story the final fade-out was not cancelled and it was initiated using one of the main menus background cutscenes which play after spending about 12 seconds on this screen the reason why the game doesn't return to the mystery menu here is the same as why the timer wasn't stopped a few minutes ago it's because the intro story mode is not active since the cutscene was canceled before that flag was set Donkey Kong 64 has 15 different game modes including the adventure mode a few sequences snide and mystery many minigames a couple of induced ones and the main menu mode the game normally switches between these states as you select options in the menu however by going directly from the main menu to the adventure without going through file select the process of changing game modes is skipped since main menu mode is designed for the main menu and not for normal play many functions are disabled such as saving pausing and even taking damage if you want to know how they game you to select the correct file even though there was no file selection you can pause now for a quick explanation but here the real question is why do I do all this why this five-minute masquerade of unfitting music fade out cancels fairy pictures rambi crates and mystery menu shenanigans the answer is Moo's beating King K rool requires these special moves p-nut pumpkins trombone tremor Simeon slam honky tonky and primate punch to allow these moves you need to talk to cranky candy or funky as the appropriate Kong and pay some coins but unlocking Kong's and buying moves takes a long time this is where the mystery menu comes in handy each of the mystery menu minigames defines a number of upgrades that the player has access to at the time this is mostly used for the boss fights because they are recreated to simulate what a casual player would have access to at the end of each level usually this means having every move and upgrade up to the level whose boss you're currently fighting so if you decide to fight the fungi forest boss in the mystery menu the game temporarily gives you all of these moves as if you have been playing the game normally up to this point for some reason the same applies for all four minigames including rambi arena even though it doesn't actually impact anything of all the mystery many minigames rambi arena is the fastest to unlock because it requires only six fairies and entering one REM Bbox brandy arena happens to enable all of these moves which include everything needed to win the final fight except for Diddy's gun thankfully the demo was there to save today the demo cycles through five sequences one for each kong in order every time it's loaded additionally like the mystery menu it also temporarily grants whichever moves are appropriate for each sequence after the reset at the end of hide old helm decays demo plate then because the game was exited through the menu and not by resetting Diddy's diamond plate which gives Diddy his gun Rambi arena doesn't update any of the flags pertaining to guns so Diddy's gun stays unlocked to avoid having those free upgrades leaked into the main game when any adventure file is viewed all the flags related to upgrades are changed to mask dot files safe data in this case though this crucial step is skipped by the intro story fade-out so all the moves temporarily unlocked for demos and minigames make their way into the main game and this is why the banana camera the shockwave six fairies of the Randi box and its banana buns are all necessary parts of this run training barrel moves are not included in Rambi arena this one is required for Lucky's face so it has to be completed [Music] this is a void war except this time it happens as the game sets applied for having completed the training barrel to get the warp to work dak has to hit the void out zone during the transition out of the barrel which disables all input it can still be done by kicking or rolling before the transition begins and letting decays momentum carry him into the void out zone in most circumstances this part brings you back to DK's treehouse and saves about 4 seconds but here because the decals first time cutscene was already lost and the new spawn point is outside of the training grounds which saves an additional 10 seconds [Music] deikun needs to go back to frantic factory to get key 3 this couldn't be done in the first visit because the fight requires simian slam which decayed didn't have before using Rabi arena to unlock more moves here DK cancels fall damage by landing on a slippery slope the sliding state takes priority over splatting from fall damage which saves a couple of seconds DK also somehow activates the warp pad even though it's way down there this happens because the column leaving a platform doesn't enter a falling state until the next frame so for one frame the Kong is still considered to be on the ground except the ground is now whatever surface is below them if that happens to be a banana point worm it will be activated even though the door isn't open the loading zone that leads to the boss is always behind it because it extends infinitely under the door it's possible to enter the boss fight from way down there a face walk is used to clip out of balance because it's the fastest method but there are many other ways to skip coloured bananas the intro cut scene of this boss is lengthy so it's faster to exit the fight and re-enter it when entering for the second time a much shorter cutscene is used saving around 40 seconds however because main menu mode prevents pausing deke has to void out and travel all the way back to the boss door [Music] as you can see this is still barely faster than watching the cutscene this fight is normally done with tiny and her ponytail twirl ability but DK can still do it using kicks jumps and mooncakes one thing to note is that the switches that appear at the end of each phase are random but not completely random when magic starts his final jump before coming out of the box the game determines which pillar is a valid place where the switch can spawn it rules out the pillar Matt jack is jumping to the pillar either calling his closest team as well as all four adjacent pillars since the correct switch has to be on the same color as Matt tech this leaves anywhere between three and seven possible pillars from the switch to be on the rest is up to the game's random function so the keys movement was carefully planned to manipulate this randomness and minimize the travel distance to the correct switch in every phase there is another detail that makes Matt Jack very hard to optimize this boss always tries to go towards whichever pillar is the closest to the Kong in phases one through three he usually never goes back on the previous or the current pillar but in phases four and five he does on top of that if the pillar Matt jack is about to jump too is also the closest pillar through the Kong or in other words if Matt jack is one tile away he will do a slow jump and if the Kong is far away he will be a fast to jump the number of jumps is fixed so to speed up the fight Matt Jack needs to do a fast jump as many times as possible in this task there is one slow jump the very first one because that's unavoidable every other jump is a fast jump which makes Matt Jack's movement optimal mathjax flipping sound is actually the exact same as Nikki slapping sound if you don't believe me listen carefully here [Music] [Music] [Applause] with the right timing a mooncake can be canceled with a jump in which case the jump will have the same reduced gravity [Music] here ring rush abuses mathjax behavior to get him to jump back and forth when choosing which style to go next he doesn't optimize his direct distance to deacon instead he always moves along this axis until he's aligned and then moves along the other axis by going back and forth along this axis while staying far away DT forces Matt jack to do the same [Music] [Music] [Music] what was that weird sound that was the sound of the weirdest glitch ever discovered in this game the sound itself is used when shooting homing hamon for some absurd reason pressing all four directions at once on the d-pad while in a level lobby can sometimes make the homing animal sound nobody knows why it's utterly confusing completely useless but it was included in his TAS only to make my task a little bit harder [Music] now the only thing left to do before the final battle is to visit colloseum turning keys normally the final boss appears after turning in all eight keys and freeing key lungs a cutscene follow is where he knocks Carol's airship out of the air but as I explained earlier a check is only made for keys three and eight to spawn the crashed ship so keys three and eight are turned in kam Sze stays trapped and the ship magically appears outside the boxing match against kinky rule involves a lot of waiting out his attacks so not much can be done to save time besides reducing lag to the minimum ring rush uses this opportunity to showcase glitches by clipping out of the ring and into the stands [Applause] [Music] dica shoots out of each barrel at the earliest possible time to register a hint [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is called the crash climb when did he runs into a wall with his Chimpy charge movie he recoils back if he skidding to a stop and if a is pressed one frame before he runs into the wall he will get vertical speed from his jump but the recoil animation will take priority he then starts another champion are during which his vertical speed is preserved allowing him to climb way up again this is just for style and doesn't save any time camera swings his glove like a boomerang twice before did his rocket barrel appears by positioning did he very close to key rule ring Ross minimizes the time it takes for the gloves to come back to him [Music] jenny has to shoot both buckets on the lab to make it fall on kirron kher will cycles through different animations as she throws and catches his glove he has an animation timer in a picks down and tells him to go to the next animation when it reaches zero when the lamp falls on his head he also has a few different animations that play in a sequence if the lamp Falls as the animation timer from the glove throwing hits zero the first animation of the lamp falling on his head will be immediately skipped so by shooting the targets with the correct timing part of his animation is skipped saving more time than his spent waiting for the right moment [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the game has a fail-safe if the player somehow ends up outside of the lane it warps the Kong instantly back to the middle it helps save a little bit of time here position the banana next to key rule without having to travel a long distance with the barrel otherwise this phase is pretty straightforward [Applause] [Music] Chinese bound is pretty much entirely on Rails so Rick Ross spends most of the time playing around here he demonstrates how the facing angle doesn't change on the first frame when you walking animation by walking backwards [Music] the only things that can be optimized are entering the mini monkey barrel travelling to the shoe and the last hit on every toe each stone takes one more hit than the previous one but there's always a fixed amount of time between the attacks so only the last hit on each toe matters why will you watch this face let's learn a few fun facts if you go far enough out of bounds to allocate rule the finest paws including the timer until he's loaded again the an abounds fail-safe is used a lot in this phase to reach the mini monkey barrow without having to deal with increased lag from kyral's shockwaves tyranny automatically pulls out a gun even though she doesn't actually have it if she put it away she would be unable to pull it back out that would sell phosphor games as there would be no way to damage the toes without a gun or oranges and no way to exit the fight main menu mode prevents both pausing and taking damage and the round timer is paused inside of the shoe it is possible to reach the press box where the Kremlin's are but doing it causes extra lag so it wasn't shown also although Randy arena does give mini monkey is possible to skip buying the roof when any cranky barrel spawns it's actually usable by default and it's only disabled a few frames later so with good timing both rocket barrel boost and mini monkey can be used in his fight without buying them here ring rush shows how generous the window for hitting a toe is by hitting it on the last possible frame some of the attacks are based on which toe tiny is currently in front of by standing all the way to the left of the shoe she can be in front of no toes in which case no attack takes place unfortunately this doesn't save any time [Applause] as you can see the crowd is a simple textured surface and not actual models or even sprites also the game treats K rool as the boss of hideout hell if you void out at any point during the battle you will be placed at the entrance of hideout helm just like you would for any other levels boss using first-person view helps reduce lag during many portions of the fight but especially inside cumulus shoot however the lag in Tiny's phase is poorly emulated on the Nintendo 64 reducing lag would be crucial but here it doesn't really matter so reg rush opted to spend half of the time them is trading extreme lag reduction methods and the other half oofah around without wasting any time to lag [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you listen closely here you will hear the sound of going into first person [Applause] [Music] there's a tiny window where you have control just long enough to go into first person allowing for a phase walk immediately after in the cutscene here chunky uses the other bounds failsafe to his advantage to hit the middle switch faster and from there the rest of the fight is simple [Applause] [Music] it's [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] with this final bunch Donkey Kong 64 is beaten in 26 minutes and 46 seconds from whoring on the game for the first time some of you may know that the real-time world record is 24 51 by signal there are three reasons why this test has a longer run time first the real-time record was done in the Wii U Virtual Console which has virtually no lag saving in the ballpark of a minute and a half over the Nintendo 64 lag is sometimes inaccurately emulated for dk64 so this emulator run likely loses only about a minute to the Wii U version but it's impossible to measure exactly second the methods of timing are a bit different real time runs start on the a press in the menu to begin a new file and end on the first frame where the black bars are visible that has started the cutscene where a key rule gets knocked out past timing starts on powering on the console and hands on the final input required to beat the game by real-time standards this test would be a 26:13 instead of a 26:46 last but not least there's a major rule difference the amount of fairies collected is saved on the cartridges static random-access memory permanently this means that after collecting the fairies once on any given DK 64 cartridge the mystery menu features will be irreversibly unlocked forever as a result the DQ 64 community decided that using these features was fair game in real time any % speedruns the task community prefers different rules they recommend runs start from a completely clean state including a static random-access memory so the TAS has to collect the banana camera and six fairies and has to enter the RAM be current in juggle japes to unlock ramp the arena while the real-time one has access to it from the start again this is very hard to measure exactly but the estimated time difference is about four and a half minutes all things considered these three factors add up to about six minutes so this run is comparable to a 20 minute run on Wii U by real-time rules and timing and this concludes this tool-assisted speedrun explain thanks to ring rush and the bow of 96 for their help and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Bismuth

Views: 886,903

Rating: 4.9219809 out of 5

Keywords: speedrun, world record, fastest, best, most, speed-run, speed run, speed, run, donkey, kong, 64, dk64, donkey kong 64, nintendo 64, n64, playthrough, walkthrough, explained, how, glitches, glitch, 2020

Id: QKsRNoLyXO8

Length: 55min 15sec (3315 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/link5114]

This is RingRush's new TAS right? I heard he was making a new one

[u/County8219]

I love N64 runs. The games are usually so incredibly broken and an absolute treat to watch. Thanks for this, OP!

[u/asocial_butterfly]

For example, DK stores his position in the same place he stores his bananas.

ʕ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°ʔ

Seriously though, absolutely fantastic video! Great explanations, very useful added graphics, and good pacing. Thanks for making this!

EDIT: Also, great SM64 explanation video too. You've got some serious production quality.

[u/CanadianOwl_srl]

that absurd d-pad sound glitch added in just to annoy you is probably my favourite part. I laughed a bunch at that