This is the Any% TAS of DKC2 Unveiled, a romhack of the 1995 game Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. It aims to beat the game as quickly as possible. As such, any and all parts of the game that aren't necessary to achieve the objective, such as bonuses and DK coins, are ignored.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.6.1
- Get to K. Rool's ship and defeat K. Rool
- Aims for fastest time
- Intentionally takes damage to save time
About the game and my experience/decision to work on a TAS for it
As the description says, DKC2 Unveiled is a romhack of DKC2 made by emptysys which completely changes every level in the game with the general exception of one aspect, most commonly the tileset or theme, but the game's engine and physics is unchanged, so expertise on such from vanilla DKC2 can and was applied here. This romhack is widely considered to be the best romhack of any DKC game, and is the only one with submitted runs on speedrun.com. This, along with the facts that it was so recently released and that I've been a big fan of both watching and making TASes was my motivation for creating this TAS.
I started working on this TAS in July 2020 and finished in April 2021, but the rate of progress was extremely varied. In fact, the latter two-thirds of the movie was done in the last month and a half of the development of the TAS.
1-1
Welcome to Unveiled! Enemies like zingers are introduced right off the bat, signaling the significant difficulty step of the game over the original. Goal swapping is used at the end of the level due to a gimmick in the next level which starts the player solo as the other kong. I'll want to be Diddy for much of world 1 since he moves faster, so I goal swap to Dixie.
1-2
One of the shortest levels in the game, yet still has tight spaces to move through. This one has many invisible autobarrels disguised as banana coins which shoot the player into a bee, killing them, since this stage cannot be entered with both kongs. Those who have ran either this or the original game might see the potential to roll off the ledge, turn back immediately once leaving the ground, then hit the goal from underneath (this is known as crotch goal), but unfortunately the goal is just barely too far from the ledge to be implemented here.
1-3
Quawks is the main star of the show here. Not much to talk about this level really.
1-4
The game's first water stage. Water levels are pretty simple to know how to optimize: just take the corners as tightly as possible. I do a moonwalk at 3:04 (using the video as a reference) to manipulate the camera such that the Krusha spawns when I'm closer to it; had I not manipulated the camera there, I would not have had enough time to get over him before he turns around.
1-5
Team up jumping is done at 3:25 to gain enough height to team throw to the platform above, allowing me to skip a section of the level to the right. At 3:31, team jumping is used again to hit myself onto the bee and gain enough height to reach the platform above, again skipping another section of the level to the right.
1-B
Remember Krow's Nest from the original? He's back and has friends in the form of Kaboings. However, they are still no match for our expert gameplay here. The element of luck has been completely removed from this fight; the player will always only get real eggs here.
2-1
Rambi is the main star of the show here, hence the name of the level "Rambi Rampage". Goal swapping is done at the end of the level due to a specific type of jump that can only be done with Diddy in the start of the next level.
2-2
This level is all about cannonballs, team throwing, and cannons. Team up jumping is used at the start to reach the platform above, just like in 1-5. The catch here, though, is that only Diddy can jump enough to reach the platform above like this. The RTA strat here is doing a big boi as Dixie, using a kremling to the right of the red bee at the start to get enough height to reach the above platform, but that loses quite a bit more time than the previous level's goal swap and the swap in the middle of this level. Team up jumping is also used in the main part of the level when possible since one keeps more vertical speed than simply teaming up then jumping.
2-3
The game's second water stage. Just like the corresponding level in the original, Clappers must be used to cool the water enough such that one can enter the water. The game forces the player to do this entire level as solo Dixie, so it could be said that she is the star of the show here. This gimmick, combined with how many enemies the solo kong must navigate around, makes this among the most difficult levels, especially for being early in the game.
2-4
Not much to say here. The fanfare goal is unavoidable, so I keep Dixie for the entire level since her fanfare is three seconds shorter than Diddy's.
2-5
This level is the first to make use of Rattly, my favorite animal buddy to both use and TAS with. He has all the same double-jump shenanigans he did in the original, so of course I use that here. As Squeeks, it is possible to clip through the ceiling with very fast B mashing (upwards of 20 times per second). Goal swap is done at the end because I want to start the boss fight as Diddy.
2-B
Bees and kremlings were added from the original to this one to spice up the fight. Unlike in the original, it is not possible to make it to the other side with Dixie only using one part of the level. Since I started this stage with Diddy, I damage boost on the bee to get to the other side as Dixie and listen to her fanfare.
3-1
The ground is ice, so jumping accelerates me faster. This entire stage is best done entire as solo Dixie for a few reasons. Firstly, doing any part of this level as Diddy would require me to break open a DK barrel and swap, together taking up nearly 2 seconds. Secondly, the gap at 11:36 can't be cleared as Diddy without entering the slow autobarrels below. Finally, just like in 2-4, the fanfare cannot be avoided.
3-2
Enguarde is the main star of the level. For the Enguarde section, there is a Lockjaw chasing him around the whole time, but luckily there are invincibility barrels to get him through the level. Autobarrels and Enguarde barrels are thrown in all over the place as obstacles the player must avoid, lest the invincibility timer run out. A DK barrel at the start of the level is avoided in favor of another DK barrel later on with no timeloss, since the game does not freeze when getting a DK barrel as an animal buddy.
3-3
I keep Dixie for the entirety of this level due to many undamageable enemies that Dixie can hover over, most significantly the very first bluish-purple kremling, a type of enemy which, unlike normal kremlings and kaboings, cannot be harmed. Goal swapping is done at the end of the level to switch over to Diddy with no time loss, as I'll need him for 3-5 and 3-6.
3-4
There are multiple animal buddies the player can use to beat the stage, but Rambi is the fastest. The player has a window of four frames to release Rambi's charge and jump on the bee at the end to the last section where the goal is. Too early, and Rambi will destroy the bee prematurely, rendering him unable to scale the large gap at the end. Too late, and he won't catch up to the bee to bounce on it.
3-6
Much of this level is skipped with damage boosting in various ways. Damage boosting is done at 16:06 to skip a large chunk of the level to the left and again at 16:19 to skip a series of ropes.
3-B
This version of Kudgel leaves the player much less room to avoid him than the original due to the presence of spikes here.
4-1
I find honey levels fun to practice RTA because of the incredibly high ceiling honey wall climbing comes with. At the start, the game intends for the player to destroy the bees using two boxes, of which the second falls after the first box is used, but I intentionally hit myself on the bee and use i-frames to get past the 2nd bee. This is not only much faster than breaking the box, but also allows me to goal swap to Dixie, which is very useful as I need her for the next level.
4-3
The longest level in the game, as well as one of the levels where this TAS gains the most time relative to level length on the fastest performed IL. There is a chunk of the Rambi section to the right of where I perform some difficult maneuvering and bee bounces to skip that section.
4-4
Survive. There is a krook you can take out around the :20 mark in the left corner, but why do that when I could just show off TAS gameplay?
4-B
Just like in the TAS of the vanilla game, I can skip a cycle (known as 2-cycle) by hitting the bee on the one frame it's vulnerable (done at 28:28 in the video)
5-2
This level is all about intense bird movement. Real-time speedruns typically wait out the bee at 30:27 and damage boost on the bee at 30:38, but with very tight maneuvering, it's possible to get around the latter bee, allowing me to skip waiting for the former. Goal swap to Diddy for the next stage.
5-3
The wind acts exactly the same as it did in the corresponding level of the original in terms of where you are horizontally in the stage.
5-4
This level took me three days to complete because every jump in this level had a formula worked out behind it. Each jump had three parts to it: when I release A to get my little hop, when I repress B to jump again, and when I release B to increase my gravity to land quicker. The formulas I applied showed on which frames these three things should happen such that I get to the next platform/barrel in the fastest way possible (for getting to barrels, I don't release B at all once I repress it, as I want to keep my speed).
5-5
RTA strat is to damage boost at 34:04, but with a moonwalk, I can delay the despawning of the ghost rope and jump off it in the frames before it disappears, allowing me to continue as Diddy.
6-1
In this stage, the water is so cold that the kongs will take damage should they touch the water at all. S/Os to SBDWolf for working on this one so I didn't have to. For some reason, goal swapping doesn't really work here.
SBDWolf: Normally swapping characters gets rid of the invincibility status and would immediately result in a hit in the water, but I found that there's actually one frame after the swap where it's possible to jump out of the water and avoid the hit. This is good since swapping characters in the water has a faster animation than swapping right at the start of the level before taking invincibility.
6-2
Waiting where I do in this level might seem slower, but I strongly believe it was faster to do this stage as Diddy without any damage boosts because the DK barrel in the beginning of the next stage is not directly in the way, and only with Diddy is it possible to scale the bee at 36:56.
6-3
SBDWolf: There's a very slow-moving bee in the first half that is damage boosted through. The swap to Dixie is surprisingly worth it: with how long this level is, Diddy's higher movement speed more than makes up for the 1.25s lost from the swap. Keeping both kongs for the second half of the level is essential due to Team Up dealing with enemies much more swiftly.
6-4
Teaming up and throwing is disabled specifically for this stage. RTA strat is to damage boost on one of the bees at 40:20, but using the Krushas to bounce me up allows me to keep both kongs with Diddy in front throughout the rest of the stage and the next; shoutouts to Bluebeary26 for finding that strat.
6-5
This level is by far my favorite to watch back. It really speaks for itself. RTA strat is to damage boost at 42:17, but similarly to 1-2, the next stage starts the player off as the kong opposite what they were before, and I want to end the level as Diddy because the next stage is done faster as Dixie.
6-6
This stage is mostly just a survival autoscroller; once the player hits the trigger to rise the toxic liquid, there's nothing that can be done to speed up progress. Ending is what makes Dixie faster for this level because her barrels speed up the stage more than Diddy's movement does.
SBDWolf: There's a weird mechanic that I don't fully understand that involves landing on platforms with a hover, which allows certain jumps to be performed a few frames sooner. I implemented this wherever I could spot it being possible. In the timed sections, I slowed down at times to optimize for lag since I have to wait for the poison anyway.
7-1
The gimmick of this stage is to get the four KONG letters in order to be able to destroy a series of bees using TNT barrels, which only spawn when the corresponding KONG letter is collected, but a runner by the name of Dna423 found a way to skip doing all that entirely by team up jumping beneath the goal, using the fact that goals can be hit from below and that teaming up vertically enlarges the kongs hitbox. This was discovered an hour or two after my initial submission of this TAS.
7-B
A ball appears from the fourth phase onwards and floats left-right throughout the remainder of the fight, joined by a second cannonball circling the stage from the seventh phase onwards. Setting down the cannonballs were faster than throwing for the first two throws, so that's what I did for each phase in which K. Rool activated his vacuum as soon as the ball was able to be carried.
References
RAM used
I used a lua script specifically for DKC2, which shows the kongs vertical and horizontal position and speed values in terms of pixels/subpixels and subpixels per frame, respectively, as well as the hitboxes of the kongs and each enemy and their ID values. Needless to say, this TAS would be significantly more rudimentary without it. Link to the script:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ud1ZxWr-mMx10mkbQtoi3eDxbdXk00Pw/view
Special Thanks
SBDWolf for co-authoring the TAS.
Bluebeary26, Dna423, and V0oid for sharing and labbing optimal strategies and movement routing.
Samsara: Setting to Delayed due to the discovery of a new skip.
Samsara: File replaced with the above improvement, apologies for the delay! Also, judging.
Samsara: Setting back to Delayed due to further work being done on improvements and entertainment.
Samsara: Not the worst I've seen, don't worry. Replaced once again.
Samsara: Honestly I just like how long this chain is getting. Replaced once again.
Samsara: Final file replacement. No change except returning the Kongs to their default palettes.
Honestly, this is a great run of what looks like a great and unique hack. It's a little sad that it's not getting a lot of feedback, but the feedback that's there I feel is good enough for publication. Accepting.
If this would positively affect anyone's entertainment level, please do that whole post-y thing and let me know. The votes are a BIT borderline, I wouldn't mind some more words of feedback, especially since the palette choice seems to be the most prevalent piece of negative feedback.
EDIT: The encode in the submission text has been updated, please check it out and holy heck provide a little more feedback please I am dying here send help but by help i mean feedback
