Technical details:
  • Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.8 (Glide64mk2 / HLE)
  • Heavy glitch abuse

Overview

Donkey Kong 64 chronicles the adventure of five simians to defeat the evil reptile King K. Rool. To get the final key to fight the King you must collect 100 Gold Bananas (think Super Mario 64 stars), thousands of loose bananas, two special coins hidden behind classic arcade games, 15 banana medallions, 4 battle crowns, dozens of banana coins, and more. The game has even made it into the Guinness Book of Records for “Most Collectable Items”.
We’re just going to skip all that.
There are two main goals in this run: spawn K. Rool, and kill K. Rool. The former requires the third and eighth key in this game - keys 1, 2, and 4-7 are supposed to be “required” to get key 8. The latter requires getting enough abilities for the Kongs that they can win the 10+ minute fight.
Central to this run is a trick called “Main Menu Mode” (MMM) that will be detailed below. Freeing all the Kongs and buying moves turns out to be a very time consuming process, but through MMM that can be skipped. Much of the start of the run is devoted to setting up and executing MMM. This includes unlocking seemingly useless features on the main menu, notably a Rambi minigame and the ability to re-watch cutscenes.
The final time of this run is slower than the best real time runners. This is for three reasons.
  • RTA timing is about 33 seconds shorter than TAS timing.
  • The Wii U Virtual Console version has minutes worth of less lag.
  • Unlike this TAS, real time runs start with main menu features already unlocked. As is standard, I avoid using dirty SRAM. This makes for a more entertaining run with less questionable validity. This choice costs on the order of 4.5 minutes.

Key Techniques

Orange Clip: DK64 is a laggy game, so the devs made you go faster in lag to compensate. By throwing orange grenades, you can cause lag spikes which quickly accelerate you and allow you to clip almost anything. These are used many times throughout the run because of how fast they are to set up. However, on average they save less than 4 seconds per clip - there are so many different ways to clip in this game that they are really only used for the bit of extra speed.
Moonkick: Cancelling an aerial attack (usually with the ground) and chaining it into a kick allows DK to elegantly gain height for a few seconds. Very useful and quick form of movement.
Skid Jump: Reversing direction and jumping right afterwards will allow a Kong to jump in a skidding animation, which they can then act out of in midair. This is useful for quick extra height.
Ledge Clip: Many ledges in this game are not well made and can be fallen through if you land on the edge correctly.
Tag Barrel Storage (TBS): There are many ways to do this trick, but the easiest one is to skid jump into a barrel, and leave crouching animation just before entering. This allows you to move around while in the tag barrel, along with a myriad of other side effects not featured here.
Telegrab: While in TBS induced invisibility (here activated by tagging a Kong outside of range of the barrel), climbing up a ledge can dramatically increase your height. The amount of height you gain is based on the distance between the ledge you grab and the Y=0 plane. I am very much simplifying here, so if you want to learn more about the intricacies of this trick or other TBS side-effects there is a ton of content.
Intro Story Glitch (ISG): Watch the Intro Story in the Mystery Menu, and cancel it ASAP after the scene starts loading. You’ll kick off an incredibly complicated glitch - so intricate that there had to be a 76 video YouTube channel dedicated to it ( https://www.youtube.com/user/IntroStoryGlitch ). See the section below.

Intro Story Glitch and Main Menu Mode, AKA “What am I watching???”

While ISG (see above) is active, a lot of weird things start happening (you may immediately notice oddities with music not playing or playing in the wrong areas). The best way to think about things is that the Intro Story, a 5 minute cutscene, is “playing in the background”. Whenever there is a fadeout in the intro, the game will try to “pull you in” to the intro the next time it sees you in a cutscene. Successfully navigating around with ISG requires avoiding cutscenes or canceling the “pull-ins” with properly timed loading zones (this will usually play a weird cutscene upon entering the next area). At the end of the intro, you gain control in DK’s house, at which point the effects of the glitch go away. The important thing to remember here is there is no way to speed up or slow down the intro story - all your actions must be based around a global timer.
If you are on the main menu when you get “pulled in”, you’ll be in “Main Menu Mode” after the intro story. This prevents you from pausing or losing health. It also keeps the state you were on in the main menu into the file. Notably, the Rambi Arena minigame gives you almost all of the moves in the game. By playing Rambi Arena and then entering MMM, you have all the moves you need to beat K. Rool without having to free the Kongs. This is such a huge benefit that it is worth getting the 6 banana fairies and Rambi crate needed to unlock the arena.

Route

After starting the game, we head to Cranky’s to spawn the training barrels and then complete two of them. This gives us the ability to throw oranges (speeds us up and is important for MMM), and also the ability to pick up barrels (needed for the K. Rool fight). There are several glitches to escape the rest of the training grounds, but an orange clip ends up being the fastest.
Next, we beeline to Banana Fairy Isle to get the camera. This lets us take pictures of fairies, which helps us unlock Rambi Arena for MMM. We immediately take a picture of a nearby fairy, activate a warp at the back of DK isles for later, and do a series of clips into Jungle Japes. There we get a fairy in a back cave (landing in the water after the photo gives us control), and transform into Rambi which is required for his arena. With two fairies in hand, we reset.
Back on the main menu, our 2 fairies allows us to activate ISG. We now have 4+ minutes to get as much done as we can while waiting for MMM (any fadeout sooner than the one used in this run wouldn’t save any time). A telegrab and a ledge clip lets us quickly get into factory before the first IS fadeout, and we enter Factory at the right time to cancel the fadeout with a new area load.
As mentioned, fadeout cancels tend to have strange effects upon reloading - here, we get kicked right back out to the lobby. After re-entering and watching an intro cutscene, we activate Chunky’s distress cutscene while kicking back into the exit portal to skip the cutscene and cancel another fadeout (which brings us right back to Factory).
While in Factory, we get another fairy, then pause exit to leave without watching its cutscene. We then demonstrate how the road to Helm is paved with good ascensions, and quickly snap another fairy in midair just before entering the lobby. Helm is demonstrated to have questionable solidity. This is not the fastest route through the area, but there are some seconds to kill and it gives a few more oranges for later. Critically, orange damage is used to skip the Key 8 dance cutscene, which prevents a fatal fadeout which would otherwise doom this route. After two more conveniently placed fairies makes 6, we are back to the main menu to finish off MMM.
Upon returning to the file, we again escape the training grounds and head back to Factory for Key 3. The Troff & Scoff portal by Chunky is chosen since it allows us to leave the quickest, since we cannot pause. Also since we cannot pause, there is no way to skip the Mad Jack intro cutscene.
Mad Jack is a deceptively difficult fight. For him to move at maximum speed you always need to be two squares ahead of him. Furthermore, his switch spawning algorithm means you need to be approaching a platform in a very specific way to get a very fast location. And of course, RNG and lag are always issues.
After Factory it’s a short trip to K Lumsy to turn in the two keys, and then on to K. Rool. This fight relies a lot on lag reduction, as well as proper timing of when to engage with him. For example, dropping lights at exactly the right frame on Diddy’s phase forces K Rool to immediately run to the next spot instead of bumbling around in pain first. After over 11 minutes we’re finally done.

Misc

DK64 emulation has been awful for a long time, but the latest revision of BizHawk is a major improvement. This run was created because this game is way overdue for a run. However, some issues remain, especially around inaccurate loading times and lag (since lag effects speed this is very important and even changes some movement strategies). I tried to avoid abusing emulation inaccuracies, such as not using artificial photo lag to clip after the second fairy.
I am open to making another run in the future if lag emulation significantly improves. As with most first-edition TASes, I know things at the end of the run that could have improved things earlier. Known movement optimization techniques and a small route tweak add up to around 4 seconds of improvement for the next iteration (ignoring the larger time loss from better lag emulation).
There are a lot of things I skimmed over in this description, even as long as it is. If you want to learn more, please get in contact with the DK64 community. If you want a sampling of what a 101% TAS would look like, I have a low-optimized demonstration here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nIfy8LO054 - check it out if you can handle bad video quality.
Mega thanks to Isotarge and Cronikeys for their work on emulation for this game. Hats off to Exchord for discovering so many things about ISG including MMM, as well as telegrab and moonkick. And thanks to everyone else who has helped or advised who I didn’t name.

Fog: Judging.
Fog: I'm currently unable to sync this TAS with either 1.11.8 or 1.11.8.2, as Donkey Kong fails a moonkick in the lava room and dies.
I'll need more information from RingRush to figure out what's going on here.
Fog: This has been sync checked by Spikestuff, so the judging can continue.
Fog: I've synced this personally now, using a pretty under-powered Windows tablet.
This has definitely been a long awaited TAS, with a lot of work put into it by not only RingRush, but also Isotarge, Cronikeys, and the BizHawk developers for making it possible for this game to be TASed in the first place.
The overall quality of the TAS is top notch, but there are a few things which should be addressed:
Normally in regular speedruns of DK64, runners would use dirty SRAM from the cart (as the cart can not be cleared of certain progress without external hardware). Because of this, this run decides to start with a completely clean slate, and unlock everything needed for ISG and MMM to work properly. I feel that this is actually more of a benefit for the TAS, as it provides greater entertainment value compared to just using dirty SRAM to be equivalent to console speedruns. Any future TASes that would want to obsolete this particular TAS would also need to start from a clean SRAM if it wants to be published here.
Secondly, in the course of waiting for this particular run to be judge, a new trick was discovered which can possibly make this particular TAS obsolete. Because this trick is in it's early stages of routing, attempting to find where it would be most applicable, I'm not going to delay this TAS to implement this new trick into the run for a small time save. A new submission with the new glitch can be submitted as per usual in order to obsolete this particular run.
With that being said, I'm accepting this run for Moons! Great Job!
feos: I'll be working with thecoreyburton again, to help him encode the crap out of this run, as usual. Don't expect this soon though, we'll be developing a resync workflow to use GlideN64.

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5376: RingRush's N64 Donkey Kong 64 in 27:37.60
Active player (397)
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I watched the TAS reveal on twitch. While I'm not too familiar with DK64 speedrunning, I thought this TAS was really fun to watch. I also like the choice of a clean cart instead of starting with stuff already unlocked. The TAS is really entertaining, so it's an easy yes vote from me.
Fog
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What would the final time be if not starting from clear SRAM?
Experienced player (510)
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It would rearrange the MMM route so its hard to know exactly (the route I have in mind I'm not sure if you could complete that section in time), but I think something like a high 22 or low to mid 23 for TAS timing. The run wouldn't really have anything substantial that isn't already included in this run though, just less tricks.
The8bitbeast
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Yes vote. It was great to see this run finally happen. It was really well done and the sections with playaround were great to watch. The stream reveal and commentary was great too and it was good to have the 32 minute RTA estimate to compare against. The choice to use clean cart probably made for a more entertaining run but I was really disappointed that you said it's against the rules to start from SRAM in the Twitch reveal as it's simply not true. There are many runs on this site that start from dirty SRAM.
Joined: 6/3/2014
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I am pleased that I was able to stream the surprise reveal. You can catch a commentated version of the TAS here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/117912110 Please disregard the splits, as they do not accurately represent the quality of the run. The splits that were used compares to an RTA run with a different ruleset: that run used dirty SRAM while the TAS used clean SRAM).
Patashu
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So great to finally see a DK64 any% TAS on tasvideos. Yes vote.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Joined: 10/14/2013
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I thoroughly enjoyed watching this! Should it get accepted, I would be happy to do the encoding for it.
I'm not as active as I once was, but I can be reached here if I should be needed.
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One of my most anticipated TASes is finally here and it did not disappoint. Obvious yes vote! As for the decision to start from a fresh cart, I'm fine with it. I just have a question for the DK64 guys here: Is the RTA route that uses dirty SRAM solely based on using intended unlockable features, that - in typical Rare-fashion - stay on the cart forever? To make it a bit more clear what I'm talking about: Is it like using TT in Diddy Kong Racing, where you're using an unlockable character that stays on the cart forever, even if you delete all files? Or is it like FFM in Banjo-Kazooie, where you rely on information from a pre-existing savefile? I'm asking because I only consider the first case to be a legit NG+.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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Came out of my 6 year lurking spree to vote yes and post this. Will still lurk moar.
Editor, Player (44)
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I strongly agree with the use of a fresh cart here. Pity that the final boss is so tedious, but that's not the run's fault, but the game's fault. (I stop watching at that point in realtime runs too.) Everything before that was highly entertaining.
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andypanther wrote:
As for the decision to start from a fresh cart, I'm fine with it. I just have a question for the DK64 guys here: Is the RTA route that uses dirty SRAM solely based on using intended unlockable features, that - in typical Rare-fashion - stay on the cart forever?
Short answer: yes. Long answer: Collecting a crown unlocks multiplayer. This is sometimes used in RTA, although not in the world record run. Collecting 2 fairies unlocks rewatching cutscenes, which are all unlocked independently based on what content you've discovered in the game (e.g. Japes intro is unlocked the first time you enter Jungle Japes). This is used in RTA. Collecting 6 unlocks minigames, although you also need extra requirements (e.g. Rambi for Rambi Arena like in this TAS). Collecting 10 fairies unlocks boss fights that you've already beaten (RTA runs use the Factory boss in the mystery menu to clear the cutscene during MMM, which is a luxury this TAS couldn't afford). Collecting 15 fairies unlocks Krusha for multiplayer. Finally, collecting 20 fairies completes the Mystery menu with cheats (infinite oranges, infinite ammo, etc.). All of these unlocks stay forever on your cart and cannot be erased unless you use external tools. Note that using external tools is the only way to copy and load save files, as the game doesn't let you do that. As for the run, this is a big yes from me. A ton of work was put into this and it shows: the route is very creative and the optimization is thorough. Ringrush TASed (albeit low-optimization) 101% of this game when the emulation was still wonky, so he had a lot more experience working with this game than most first-edition TASes.
d-feather
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Is it me, or is 2017 going to be a year full of crazy comebacks? First, maTO returns; all of a sudden, RingRush returns, too? And he TASed a game I've been meaning to play for awhile now? Hmm. I'll provide my vote after I'm done watching this TAS. EDIT: Okay, I'm done watching this TAS. It certainly shows that this game is screwed up in both ways--in one way, it's really weird at certain points (but not as weird as Banjo-Kazooie, another N64 game by Rare); in another way, the hilarious amounts of glitches that are used in speedruns of this game certainly show that this game is even more screwed-up than you may have initially imagined. In short, it's crazy weird, and I like it. Yes vote.
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Thank you for your detailed answer, Bismuth! I believe under those circumstances, a NG+ of this game should be compatible with this sites rules, as long as a verification movie is provided.
Current project: Gex 3 any% Paused: Gex 64 any% There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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Great! Now if we can just get a 100% TAS...
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The8bitbeast wrote:
The choice to use clean cart probably made for a more entertaining run but I was really disappointed that you said it's against the rules to start from SRAM in the Twitch reveal as it's simply not true. There are many runs on this site that start from dirty SRAM.
I apologize, that comment was poorly worded. There is a standard, not a hard rule, to not use dirty SRAM when it does not provide a significant increase in entertainment value. I'll probably splice together a demonstration of the dirty cart route soon, basically doing a low-optimized version of the start + footage from this run for things like MJ & K Rool. Since it doesn't add anything new to the run, I don't think an optimized TAS would be worth publishing alongside this run, so it isn't really worth more effort than that. Thanks for all the positive comments!
Fog
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Having watched it, I think not having it start from dirty SRAM can show how much more broken the game is than what you normally see in RTA runs.
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And about time too! Great run, and good job articulating the reasons for the speed differences between RTA, makes perfect sense. Yes vote.
snorlax
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Congrats Ringrush on completing this. I've looked forward to it since watching your DK64 streams. It was quite entertaining.
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Captain Forehead wrote:
Great! Now if we can just get a 100% TAS...
About that... This is what I was referencing when I said Ringrush had already done a tool-assisted run of 101% before this TAS. Great, albeit a little long, watch. I was crying laughing at the awesomeness of certain segments when this was originally revealed. Sorry for straying off topic a bit.
GloriousLiar
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A fantastic first-edition TAS. RingRush is a very active member of the community and is constantly finding meaningful contributions to the game. Definite yes vote.
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Alyosha
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Really cool to see this run! Another long expected N64 game finally on the workbench, even if it's not quite emulated perfectly that's still progress at least. Voting yes! Are there techincal details about the Intro Story Glitch? I'd be interested in seeing exactly what went wrong.
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Using fairies to activate ISG? Is this OoT3D?
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This is a really cool run and was very impressive, so I voted yes. I really think any improvements should start from SRAM though and follow the fastest route possible. It's always a good idea for TASes to be as close (route and rule-wise) to the console counterparts when possible.
Joined: 12/30/2013
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awesome stuff ringrush. looking forward to a TAS (or maybe its a LOTAD) that uses the standard MMM from RTA runs. voting yes, obvs