Description of the Game
DK: King of Swing Remix is a ROM hack of DK: King of Swing made in 2022 by fex34 (or Fexean, both usernames seem to be used). It features new level designs that stay faithful to the designs of the original game. fex34 also made a tool, Editor of Swing, which allows anyone to make ROM hacks of King of Swing with a level editor.
When the TAS was started, there wasn't any documentation of good speedrunning strategies for this game. As such, a large amount of rerecords were used to experiment with different strategies to figure out what's faster.
The TAS, including all the experimentation, was done in about 3 weeks.
Goal
- Max Completion of the Adventure Mode
- Beat the Game
- Get all 24 Medals
- Get all 20 Crystal Coconuts
- Speed/entertainment trade-off
The goal was chosen to display what was changed in this ROM hack over the vanilla game. The bosses, the time requirements for the time trials, and the Jungle Jams were not changed in any way, so the decision was to do the maximum completion which features all the levels that were changed.
General Strategies
Speedgrinding
If you alternate between L and R on every frame, the effect of having a single hand closed on a peg to rotate is applied on each frame.
The forward displacement from doing this strategy is marginally faster, on average, compared to intended movement due to the fact that every release of a peg normally causes one frame where DK does not move.
Using this method effectively usually involves taking a line that's slightly curved, due to the fact that going in a direct line usually does not give the fastest speed, especially when going directly upward.
The game's physics tends to move DK closer to cardinal directions while doing this strategy, which may result in forgoing speedgrinding being faster when diagonal movement is involved.
If speedgrinding is done over a long distance, the optimal angle to use may change, due to how the game handles rotation.
This mechanic is what makes DK appear to glide on the pegs with both hands closed.
Boosting
By pressing A, DK will consume 20 bananas, and will be "going bananas" for 10 seconds, where he becomes invulrenable to everything (except pits), and his movement mechanics are improvved.
In this state, the speed after releasing a peg is faster, charged attacks are much longer and persist after breaking something, thrown objects don't breaks when hitting breakable obstacles, the walking speed is faster, and the speed from using rocket barrels is faster.
As such, a banana route had to be created to benefit the most from bananas.
Extended Charge Attacks
When you charge an attack, you have a leniency of 6 frames between the moment where you release both hands. This can be abused to get 6 frames of additional movement before the attack starts, which can extend the reachable distance by a bit. This can allow for some more precise skips.
Damage Boosting
Although the recoil from getting hit can save time from better movement or a skip, damage boosting was not done in this run to avoid imposing the low health alarm on the viewers.
The only time save that was found was a damage boost to avoid killing a starfish in Underwater Ruins 2, which only saved 3 frames.
Object Regrab Glitch
If you are in a boost, throwing and regrabbing an object, such as a bomb or a rock, makes the object keep the piercing properties that it has when it's thrown. This allows DK to break many things with a single object while keeping it in his hands.
Underwater Movement
With water physics, DK facing the direction that he needs to move to and speedgrinding are 2 things that become more important, due to how the game caps sideways speed. As such, going in straight lines tends to be a more effective strategy, when possible.
Ice Skating
In levels where there are ice pegboards, sliding on the ice gives a faster speed than doing intended movement or speedgrinding. It is therefore prioritised when possible.
Banana Route
Here's a video of the run before most of the boost had been added, to showcase strategies without boosting:
The only banana that needed time to get in this TAS is the banana gotten in Conraption Cave 3, which took 1 frame to get. The others did not lose time.
The following Table shows all the boosts that were done in this TAS in the order that they're done, with their associated time save in frames, if they're optional. Time saves denoted by an asterisk are approximations, since those boosts have been accepted as fast enough without any timing.
| Screen | Time Save |
|---|
| Contraption Caves 3 | 168 |
| Cactus Woods 3 | 140 |
| Madcap Mines 1 | 214 |
| Madcap Mines 3 | 500* |
| Treacherous Twister 1 | Required |
| Necky's Canyon 2 | 155 |
| Fire Necky | 1700* |
| Ship of Souls 2 | 257 |
| Risky Reef 2 | 152 |
| Risky Reef 3 | Required (1st)
109 (2nd) |
| Raging Ravine 1 | Required |
| Ice Castle Bonus | 104 |
| Underwater Ruins 1 | 604 |
| Cold Cold Forest 1 | 217 |
| Booster Barrel Skyway | Required (1st)
135 (2nd) |
| K. Kruizer III Artillery 1 | 319 |
| K. Kruizer III Artillery 2 | 345 |
| K. Kruizer III Hull 1 | 784 |
| K. Kruizer III Hull 3 | 97 |
| K. Kruizer III Engine 1 | 600* (1st)
157 (2nd) |
| K. Kruizer III Engine 2 | Required |
Here's a shortlist of boosts that could not be included in the run, from a lack of bananas in the early game.
| Screen | Time Save | Video |
|---|
| Puzzling Pyramid 1 | 126 | |
| Tropical Treetops 2 | 120 | |
| Cactus Woods 2 | 113 | |
| Necky's Canyon 3 | 126 | |
Detailed Description of the Run
Intro
This ROM hack made is so that you can hold Select while pressing A to select the Adventure mode to skip the introduction and the tutorial, which is unchanged.
Banana Bungalow
This level is very simple from it being the first level of the game. There is not much to talk about here.
Contraption Caves
The first room shows the only room in the game that features fully downward movement. This gets to showcase that, while speedgrinding can achieve a downward velocity that's faster than terminal velocity, it is faster to be in freefall if lateral movement is also involved.
A boosted charged attack can skip straight to the modal in the third room. The medal can also be reached with a bounce from the tire that's under it.
Puzzling Pyramid
The first screen was very challenging to TAS, with these expandable platforms that needed to be dealt with their minimum size, which had to be figured out by trial and error.
In the second room, you can do a boost on the tire to avoid taking a detour on the right side of the room. However, it ended up being slower, due the fact that it put you in a bad spot to go arond the enemies.
In the third room, the Kremling and its switch lets DK skip the intended way, where he'd crank the the switch himself.
Tropical Treetops
In the first room, DK can easily grab the pegboards inside the boxes, due to the fact that they're as big as the boxes. The charge attack to the right to get the medal is very precise, due to how high the medal is.
In the second room, a boost to avoid zigzagging around the room almost saved enough time to be in the TAS.
Congazuma's Castle
The inputs are copied from the any% TAS of the vanilla game.
Cactus Woods
In the second room, a boost was tested to see if using the faster walking speed, the faster turning speed, and going through enemies would be worth it. It wasn't.
In the third room, a boost is used to skip turning every valve. The strategies without a boost don't skip anything, but showcase very precise movement to minimise the amount of turning. At the end, the boost ended up saving enough time.
Madcap Mines
In the first screen, a boost is used to skip having to go to the top-left section of the screen. That skip is barely not possible without.
In the third screen, a boost is used to skip having to get a bomb at the top of the screen, then to drop in the pit where the medal is.
In the bonus, the fastest strategy that was found to crank the sliding levers was to do a full crank, followed by alternating between holding and not holding the lever every frame at the lowest position. This gamve the fastest acceleration at the start of the movement.
Treacherous Twister
This level has a constant side wind that pushes you around.
In the first screen, a boost is required to hit the barrel which has the medal.
Necky's Canyon
In the second screen, a boost is used to do a charge attack from the rocks to the pegboard after it, and to break the barrel and collect the medal in one motion.
In the third screen, the intended way to break the barrel that spawns the barrels that lead to the crystal coconut is to grab a rock near the end of the screen. However, it is much faster to grab a second rock at the start of the screen, and bring it all the way to the barrel.
A boost could have been used to complete the third screen with only one rock, which features a very impressive rock throw. However, due to the fact that the early game has many boosts that saved more time, it couldn't be done in the run.
Fire Necky's Nest
The fight is normally required to be done in 2 phases, due to the fact that the boss has 7 HP and only throwing 6 rocks per phase.
However, with a strategy that was recently found by a speedrunner with the name of Astrowind, the fight can be done with 1 rock with the object regrab bug, saving 28 seconds over an intended strategy, and 3 seconds over the King of Swing any% TAS.
This strategy is hard to execute optimally, as bonking against the boss makes DK drop the rock that he's holding. When DK's left hand is not over a pegboard, you can release the rock on the frame before you bonk on the boss, then grabbing it on the next frame, to avoid dropping it. However, once DK's left hand goes over pegboard, you can no longer use this strategy, as grabbing a pegboard takes priority over regrabbing the rock.
Lockjaw Falls
There is not much to talk about here. The level features standard movement.
Ship of Souls
The first screen features pegboards that only spawn once DK hits certain triggers. This explains the weird jump at the beginning.
In the second room, a boost is used to break the box and get the crystal coconut in the same motion. Getting the coconut is very inconvenient without a boost.
In the third room, grabbing a peg makes the 6 pegs around it show up. Pegs don't exist unless they're shown, so planning the movement around each peg had to be done.
Kremling Kamp
The bonus is very cycle-based, so finding a route for it was very difficult. I tried finding a route with a boost for that bonus to avoid the wait that's at the end, but using a boost always led to cycles that lined up poorly, which made it not worth in the end.
At the end of the first room, releasing and regrabbing the peg was done to slow down DK's rotation to get a better trajectory on the final pegboards.
In the second room, bouncing on the 2 tires ended up being the fastest option. There is no convenient way to grab the rock, break the barrel and clear the gap without touching the tires. Going around the barrel also does not work, since the kremling will hit DK as he's turning around.
Risky Reef
In the bonus, the game really gets to showcase how restrictive water physics are when it comes to sideways movement.
Lower bounces are prioritised to reduce air time between tires.
The bounce on the last tire may look sub-optimal, but even with a higher bounce on the penultimate tire, the last tire is still barely reachable and will still lead to a leftward bounce. A sideways bounce ended up being faster, just for the fact that it gives a temporary sideways speed boost.
In the second screen, doing the screen without a boost will lead to an unavoidable wait at the end of the screen, due to the last starfish blocking the way. As such, a boost saved a lot of time on that screen.
In the third screen, two boosts are used. One boost is required to reach the rocket barrel. Starting the first boost as soon as possible allows a tighter turn once DK enters the rocket barrel, which allows him to turn around. The second boost is used to speed up the rocket barrel while in use.
Davie Bones' Locker
This is mostly the copy-pasted input from the vanilla any% TAS.
The original strategy lead to very unsatisfying results, 5 years ago, during the making of the any% TAS for the vanilla game. As such, more effort was put into getting an extra hit from the spikes, which lead to something that worked, and saved one second over what was done 5 years ago. The hitboxes for that boss are still as incomprehensible as they were 5 years ago, and there reason is no explanation as to why this new strategy worked the way that it did.
Raging Ravine
The first room has a required boost to hit a necky to get the crystal coconut. A charged attack was used to bonk on the right wall and get a faster way back to the pegs. After that, DK clips his hand in the ice block to barely touch the pegboard.
The second room involved a lot of trial and error to figure out the optimal amount of cranking.
Ice Castle
In the first room, going around the corner of the wall allowed DK to partially clip inside the wall to grab a platform from deeper. Then, an ejection from the wall made going right to grab the pegboard faster
In the bonus, a boost is used to avoid taking detours for bombs. With the fact that bananas start to accumulate around this point of the run, due to the low number of good boosts in world 4, boosts that save less time are starting to be included.
At te end of the second screen, a rock is thrown at the last barrel to avoid spending time charging an attack.
Underwater Ruins
In the first screen, sing a boost makes DK able to skip everything.
At the end of the third screen, being crushed near the top of the crushers gives an upward ejection.
Cold Cold Forest
In the first screen, a boost is used to break the barrel and get the medal at the same time, as well as killing the zinger. Not using a boost ended up causing a lot of waiting for the zinger to move out of the way.
The bonus was definitely a tough screen to route, but the route that was figured out lead to a very satisfying result, skipping many barrels.
Sassy Squatch
This level is very self-explanatory. The inputs from the any% TAS would have been copied if it wasn't for the fact that the pegs that the boss spits are random.
This boss fight involves a lot of waiting, so a lot of juggling with bombs was done to make it less boring.
Booster Barrel Skyway
Two boosts are used in that level. The first one is required to kill the zinger that has the crystal coconut. The other one saves time from benefiting from the speed increase when using the rocket barrel.
Artillery
In the first screen, a boost is used to skip break the barrel which spawns pegboards at the beginning of the screen.
In the second screen, a boost is used to go through the cannonballs, and make it onto the last platform without needed to grab the pegs that are shot from a cannon.
Hull
This level features a platform that is unused in the vanilla game. Only the 4 blue pegs are grabbable, and the direction that DK is facing when grabbing two pegs is what determines where the platform goes. You can learn more about it on
The Cutting Room Floor.
In the first room, a boost is used to skip the vast majority of the room. Do you remember that one banana that had to be gotten in Contraption Caves? This is where it becomes useful, as having one fewer banana would involve waiting to start the boost on this screen, and on Hull 3.
In the second room, a very precise rock throw can be used to break the first barrel without much detour, and a very p^ecise jump can be used to skip killing the kremling on the sliding lever, near the end.
In the third room, a boost is used to simply go faster around the room. Due to the fact that Hull has so many bananas in it and that it's the penultimate level, a boost is basically forced to happen on that screen.
Engine
Due to Hull 3 and the Hull bonus giving so many free bananas, 3 boosts are forced to happen in this level.
The first boost in the first screen allows for a more direct line to a switch, and allows to break the barrel which contains the medal in a much more convenient way.
The second boost in the first screen skips the second half of the screen, saving between 5 and 10 seconds (was not timed).
The boost in the second screen is required to get the crystal coconut. It also serves as a way to skip half of the screen by landing on a spike.
K. Rool
The first screen had to be redone, do the fact that K. Rool's movement on the first screen is random. The second screen is copied from the vanilla any% TAS.
Afterthoughts
After working so efficiently on a TASing project, I will say that it is fun to work on a quick TASing project for about a month. It reminds me of the feel that I get when duing Dream Team Contests, where you play the game for a few weeks, come up with crazy strats and a solid route, and feel satisfied with the result. I miss DTCs. When's the next one?
Also, for those that got inspired by watching this TAS, I'd like to say that we, the DK: King of Swing enjoyers, would love more ROM hacks of this game. DK: King of Swing Remix was definitely a fun experience, and we're looking forward to seeing more of what can be done.
Special Thanks
PiePusher11 and FryingRyan27, from reviewing the TAS as I was doing it.
A Note for Console Verifiers
Patching this game requires the European ROM of the game.
The parts that could desync on console, due to RNG, are:
- Necky Canyon and Lockjaw Falls: the pegs that shake;
- Lockjaw Falls 2: the pegs that move in a waterfall pattern;
- Sassy Squatch's Lair: the pegs that are spat out by the boss;
- K. Rool: the movement K. Rool does in the first phase.
Darkman425: Swinging on in to claim this for judging.
Darkman425: I, too, am a DK: King of Swing enjoyer and seeing these new levels completed quite optimally was a treat. I'm also impressed at the new Fire Necky and Davey Bones strats to save time compared to previous TAS efforts. Nice work!
Accepting to Standard.
