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Flip: 2013-08-30 01:13:53 pm
1-Up!
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/DonkeyKongJungleBeat.html

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (Any %) (Single Segment)

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Zack 'PiePusher11' Maher!
Thread title:  
1-Up!
Run Information

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/DKJB/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting. Verifications are due by Aug. 29, 2013.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

After 2 weeks I will read all of the verifications and move this thread to the main verification board and post my verdict.
Well, I won't keep this very brief, since I actually know a decent amount about speedrunning this game, and I feel like more information would help others who don't know the game much.

Actually, I should've verified this during the normal verification stage, but I forgot to.  Sorry about that.


Video and audio seem good to me.



First, a few general notes.


1. The game doesn't have separate save files, so the only ways to start a new game are to (a) not have DK Jungle Beat data on your memory card, or (b) just go without a memory card.  PiePusher does (b) here.


2. There are two stages that trigger an ending ceremony and the credits: Vs. Cactus King, and Vs. Ghastly King.  It's not readily clear which of the following runs would be called "any%":

(1) First 12 kingdoms -> Vs. Cactus King (1st credits)
(2) First 12 kingdoms -> Vs. Cactus King (1st credits) -> 4 more kingdoms -> Vs. Ghastly King (2nd credits)

The Ghastly King run isn't strictly an extension of the Cactus King run.  Unlocking Vs. Cactus King requires 22 crests after 12 kingdoms.  Unlocking Vs. Ghastly King requires 51 crests after 17 kingdoms, which requires getting more than 22 crests from the first 12 kingdoms (in this run, PiePusher gets 34 crests from these kingdoms).  However, getting the points needed for these extra crests actually doesn't require many detours at all.

I'm not sure, but I think there was a decision on this, in favor of the Ghastly King run being any% (as this run's listed category suggests).  But I figured it was worth mentioning this again anyway.


3. Yes, he uses the bongo controller.  The controls with a regular Gamecube controller are quite clunky and nerfed in comparison.  For example, I believe you have to repeatedly tap the stick right to run right (instead of tapping the right bongo), and the button-mashing caps are much more restrictive on the Gamecube controller compared to the bongo controller.


4. Getting "beats" (points) : you get beats from bananas and certain enemies.  To maximize your beats, you can grab multiple bananas/enemies in a single clap (this gets you 2+3+4+5+... instead of 2+2+2+2... beats), and you can maintain a high combo number as you collect beats.  The combo number acts like a multiplier, and you build up your combo by performing various tricks (backflips, ground pounds, vine jumps, etc.) without landing.  Each kind of trick only counts once toward your combo, so doing 10 ground pounds won't earn you anything.




And for the kingdoms (levels).  I'll chime in with a few clarifications that might help those not familiar with the game:


BANANA

00:47 - The clap sensor adjustment is for the Infinite wall clap glitch, as explained in PiePusher's comments.

01:10 - Yep, here it is.  This seems like a particularly difficult application of the wall clap, and it probably saves around 8 seconds.  Not the biggest time save you can get from this trick, but it is 1 minute into the run, so it's worth trying for.

01:17 - This is a bongo-mashing minigame.  I average a little over 60 myself, and it looks like that's also about what PiePusher gets.  Scores in the 80s are not unheard of, but I have no idea how one might get those kinds of scores consistently.

01:43 - You can have the mushrooms bounce you up as they materialize, but it's a bit tricky to get this to work.

Yes, he's skipping a lot of bananas, and running through a lot of bananas instead of clapping them (which would yield more points, but would lag DK's movement).  His medal goal for this kingdom is just 400 (silver), because 800 (gold) would take too long relative to crests he could get in other levels.

The game demands a few different types of bongo mashing throughout the run.  It seems like a certain mashing rhythm is needed for the Kong bosses in particular.  So if the speed of the punches seems different on different enemies/bosses, that would be why.

Uppercutting Dread Kong might be SLIGHTLY slower, but it does make the 3-cycle a fair bit easier.  Although, he made it look really easy here.  I usually just barely get 3-cycle, if at all.


ORANGE

For the Hoofer sections, you only need to mash the right bongo at at least a certain rate to achieve max speed.  It's not that demanding, although it can get tiring if you practiced the same level over and over or something.

There's a jumping minigame at the end of the Hoofer section, but the number of beats you can get from it isn't worth the time it would cost.

05:35 - This backflip and ground pound are literally the only slowdowns needed to ensure platinum (1200) instead of gold (800).  Note how he claps the banana bunch out of its bubble instead of clapping the bunch with the bubble (which would lag DK's movement a bit).

Scruff Roc's movement on each cycle is, as far as I know, random (as with all the Roc bosses).  To skip the "second phase" cutscene, PiePusher doesn't let Scruff Roc end a cycle with 300 HP or lower.  On the first cycle he leaves just a little over 300, then takes him down all the way on the second cycle.


WATERMELON

08:15 - This cool little skip in Monkey Fest can be a bit tricky to pull off, but it went well here.

08:54 - You just need to get 100 of these flowers to get 100 beats from them.  Getting more than 100 flowers does nothing.  On the other hand, getting less than 100 flowers means you get no beats.


APPLE

13:41 - As far as I remember, it's not possible to grab the chicken's head until he tilts a little bit toward you.  That's why PiePusher stalls a little bit before making his move.

The end of Ice Warren has another jumping minigame thing, but it's not worth the time.  Overall, the beats are somewhat spread out in this kingdom, so just 400 beats will do.

The Tusk bosses can be annoying.  You clap to grab pineapples, and you clap to throw pineapples.  Naturally, if you accidentally clap twice in a row due to the sensor being sensitive, you'll throw a pineapple right after grabbing it, which might not be what you want.  Considering that PiePusher's clap sensor is at the lowest setting, I'm impressed with the clean fight here.


STRAWBERRY

18:10 - At the end flowers, PiePusher got a lot more beats than he needed for his goal of 800.  You might think this looks suboptimal, but considering that he barely slowed down at all for the rest of the kingdom, the only way he could've sped this up would be to fly away from the flowers ~1 second earlier.  In other words, not a big deal at all.  Also, the number of beats you get from the flowers can vary a fair bit, so it doesn't hurt to linger there for a bit longer to make sure.


PINEAPPLE

21:38 - I'm pretty sure you can squeeze past this fish even when it has its spikes out, but getting hit here would be quite a setback, since it would drop all of your current combo's beats (combos continue as long as you stay underwater).  So the risk/reward is debatable.

21:50 - Yes, swimming straight down is a lot faster than swimming to the side.  The swimming is a bit odd in this game.

21:58 - Caught the orca pretty much at the latest possible point of its cycle, which is very good.  Come to think of it, maybe the spiked fish pass I mentioned earlier wouldn't even save time, depending on how the orca cycles work out.

Made gold by a pretty comfortable margin, so it might be better to get fewer beats in Rumble Falls or something.  Wouldn't make a big time difference though.  Also, I suppose Karate Kong CAN drain your beats pretty quickly if you do happen to mess up, so it's nice to have a bit of a buffer to work with.


LEMON

24:07 - The Helibird controls are harder than they may look, so it's tricky to squeeze through this shortcut entrance while it's opening.

As PiePusher explained, Cactus Mine didn't really go to plan, but it didn't waste all that much time either.  Platinum in Vs. Cactus King doesn't take long to get.

Another nice Roc fight.  I find that it's easy to accidentally go beyond 300 HP on the first cycle, especially because you really don't want to leave more than ~330 (to make the second cycle possible).


GRAPE

Nice wall clap in Sweet Paradise.  I think around 8 seconds are saved compared to a route without this trick.

29:40 - And another infinite wall clap to get up a wall.  This backflip looks quite tricky though, and PiePusher messes it up a couple of times, potentially losing around 9 seconds.  If I had to guess, that's also about how much this trick saves (maybe a bit less).

30:07 - You can jump off of these monkey swings while they're on the "wrong" side, which saves a couple of swing cycles.  The fact that the first swing was in the perfect position probably means the previous mistakes didn't actually cost that much time.

Missed a couple of shots on Grave Tusk.  It's harder to position yourself here than in the first Tusk fight.


CHERRY

A couple of errors in Aurora Glacier, but nothing big.

Looks like a pretty good plan to get beats in Grim Volcano.  Avoids the lag that would come from clapping banana bunches while they're still in bubbles.

Hard Roc can't be attacked as fast as the previous two Rocs.  This Roc's movement and attacks can be pretty annoying, but he behaved quite well here.


PEACH

40:02 - If you get too close to the black fish during the volleying, he'll stop volleying and you'll have to redo it.  PiePusher got in pretty close to that point at the last part of it.

41:29 - You can go over this bee, but I think it doesn't save much time at all, actually.

Unlike the other Tusk bosses, this one doesn't explode immediately once you toss all the available pineapples onto its heart.  It makes this fight relatively simple to optimize.


MELON

Another Hoofer stage means that even platinum is pretty simple in this kingdom.  I'm not actually sure if the up-slope jumps slow you down, but it doesn't seem to be much difference at least.

47:08 - Doesn't hurt to clap these banana bunches, since you have to wait for the blue meteor to pass under you, anyway.

48:58 - This bird can be horribly random about giving you pineapples.  Went pretty well here, though.

Here's where the Hog bosses start getting a lot more random.  Looked like it went pretty well here though.


DURIAN

51:28 - I'm fairly sure the plan was to jump over this second pig, but the edge hop forced him to just clap the pig instead.  Taking damage would've been slower, because those pigs knock you back fairly far.

52:14 - Pretty slick looking wall clap to save a couple of seconds or so.

The uppercuts really help to 3-cycle Ninja Kong.


CACTUS KING

A mishap at the black ninjapes cost in the neighborhood of 7 seconds (depends on the timing of the star-throwing ninjapes later, though).  They were synced well, but he just clapped a bit late, and got attacked first.

There are quite a few strategies for Cactus King, but this one is the fastest for sure.  Once you've grabbed him the first time, the rest is easy.


Yes, you have to sit through the first credits.  Without a memory card, you can't reset, and with a memory card, the game only saves your progress AFTER you get back to the Kingdom-select menu.  At least the music's pretty awesome, though.


PEAR

This infinite wall clap trick definitely seems more finicky than some of the previous ones.  It takes a few tries, but the result is pretty spectacular.

1:04:40 - Jumping up these pendulums can be pretty tricky, but it went well here.

Not the best mashing in the Hog fight, but he wasn't too evasive, so the fight was pretty fast anyway.


LYCHEE

Another Roc boss that can sometimes get out of hand.  Didn't go quite as smoothly as the previous Roc, but it wasn't bad.


CHILI PEPPER

1:17:06 - Missed a couple of coconuts in this pig fight.  It can be quite hard and random to optimize these fights though.

One missed pineapple near the end of Double Tusk, costing about 4 seconds.  Otherwise good though; this boss can be a pain sometimes.


STAR FRUIT

Just wanted to point out that Ninjape Rally's song is pretty awesome.  Looks like the race went quite well, too.

1:23:20 - Since you can't backflip the same way on ice as you can on regular ground, you have to wait for the spider to lean down to grab him.

1:23:41 - The skip in this asteroid can be finicky, but it saves you from going all the way around the left side.  The skip worked on the second try, losing 4-5 seconds and probably saving a bit more than that.  Worth it.

There's no way to uppercut Sumo Kong, so 3 cycle is quite difficult.  4 cycle is generally the best you would hope for here.


GHASTLY KING

No more kingdoms to unlock, so no need to pay attention to beats here.

This fight goes as well as Cactus.  And we're done!



The SDA stat id thing says 55:24.92 as the in-game total time (sum of all level times).  But when I added the times up, I got 55:24.91 instead.  Worth a double check perhaps?  If anyone else wants to check, the level times are all shown at the end of the run.



As someone who has done some DK Jungle Beat speedrunning, I find that this run has quite consistent play, solid strategies (especially considering PiePusher came up with almost all of the strategies himself), and nice luck and execution on the bosses.  There are mistakes, but mostly on understandably finicky points, and they really don't add up to that much time lost.

Accept.
Claimh Happy
Piepusher and Yoshifan have both provided very thorough notes and explanations on this run.  I almost want to say we should add in Yoshifan's notes after Piepusher's when this game is posted. I have literally nothing to add that isn't in one of their notes.

Accept. Good job, Piepusher.
How did this game not get enough verifiers? o.O
Yoshifan: Oh, the way I got the ingame time is I added up all the ingame times up myself. If I did it wrong, I'm sorry. Thanks for double-checking.

RE: Marche_Fighter_Paladin: If someone in the post-verification process would like to add in some of Yoshifan's notes, for something I glossed over in my own notes, I would be perfectly ok with that.

Onin: Because basically no one ever plays this game (except me)
My experience with this game: none...
A/V looks good and I couldn't spot any goofy stuff.
Everything looked fast. I spotted few sections with minor execution mistakes. Nothing that stood out as major though. I also compared the run with one or two of the IL of the already published run (which by the way is mislabeled - it should be 100%/platinum IL). The published run received good reviews at the time, so I guess it can be used as sort of a benchmark for the quality of gameplay. To my untrained eyes, the new run does not fall very far behind the IL run. I'd say the gameplay could very possibly even deserve much more praise than I give it here, but I simply don't know enough about the game to determine if it's a "good" or a "great" run.

Question to the runner: Would it be possible to 2-cycle the chili bosses? On the first cycle, it looks like you could have sent half of the projectiles to the left elephant and the other half to the right. That would have given you double the number of projectiles in cycle 2, possibly allowing a 2-cycle kill.

ACCEPT
What I do for Double Tusk is the best way I know how (even though I did screw it up a little in this run). I kill the left one in one cycle, and then go for the right one as quickly as possible afterwards. Your strat wouldn't work, because by the time I get pineapples from knocking down one of them, it would be dead, and wouldn't give me anything. Each one has its own 250-health bar.

And, the original run is labeled correctly. There's no need to say "100%/Platinum", because getting all platinum crests is the definition of 100% in this game.
Looks like a really solid run to me.  Accept
Thanks for the explanation of the Double Tusk fight (I assume that's the chili bosses).
I stand by that the original run is incorrectly labeled on the game page. Instead of "Individual-levels run in 1:00:05.53:", it should say something like "Individual-levels run of 100% in 1:00:05.53:". Compare with for example the game page for Yoshi's Island.
HELLO!
Do I gather correctly that you have to get crests to open up the levels you're trying to beat, but not the 100% as mentioned above?  Is there a cost to getting more than the minimum time-wise, and if so is it routed correctly with respect to that?

Everything seems to go so fast though for the most part, and those attacks seem to get chained together really well.  Hard to tell what's going on here if you have no idea how the game works or anything.  That's probably a good sign.
Am currently watching the run, I've actually played the game before so I feel I can give verification a shot. I will give my comments when I'm done.
Quote from presjpolk:
Do I gather correctly that you have to get crests to open up the levels you're trying to beat, but not the 100% as mentioned above?  Is there a cost to getting more than the minimum time-wise, and if so is it routed correctly with respect to that?

You need a certain number of crests to unlock each level. The number is indicated on the circle before that level is unlocked. Bronze = 1 crest Silver = 2 Gold = 3 and Platinum = 4. 100% is all platinum crests. You need a certain number of beats (the number in the upper left, also your health) to earn the different types of crests. As mentioned in the comments, the final level requires 51 crests.

You'd have to spend extra time to build up bigger combos/do other stuff to get extra beats to go over the necessary number of crests.
HELLO!
Sounds like it's an Accept Then.
Edit history:
TheMG2: 2013-08-29 04:43:22 pm
TheMG2: 2013-08-29 02:52:01 pm
TheMG2: 2013-08-29 02:37:45 pm
TheMG2: 2013-08-29 02:34:28 pm
TheMG2: 2013-08-29 02:10:40 pm
A/V: Seems good.
Cheating: None detected

Overall this run seems really good. An acceptable number of mistakes given the length of the run.

Ironic that only a silver is obtained on the level designed around getting a massive combo.

Can you explain why you decided to throw pineapples into the nostril of the Tusks when you did, stunning it, as opposed to throwing at the body? I guess IL comments sorta touch on it for the first one?

Other than that: Accept.
Edit history:
PiePusher11: 2013-08-29 04:49:36 pm
Also, getting exactly 51 crests is actually faster, because in the crest ceremony, there is a quick little cutscene showing "You got ___ crest!"

Why I throw the pineapples into the nostril is because it does 50 damage, as opposed to throwing it at the body, which only does 5. Any time I hit the body is on accident. The general strat for the Tusks is, whenever it's not stunned, to get a pineapple into its trunk as soon as possible.

There IS a faster strat for the Tusks, that involves hitting the body a lot while it's stunned, but for that strat to actually save time, basically has to be TAS perfect.

Presjpolk: My crest route is routed to the best of my knowledge, although in this run, I actually did make a mistake with it. I meant to get a platinum in Lemon Kingdom, but only got gold. I made it up in what I believe to be the fastest place to make it up, Cactus King.
1-Up!
Decision posted.
Just something quick I would like to point out again, if any SDA admin sees this before the run gets posted-It was mentioned earlier, but, on the DKJB game page, the IL table is simply labeled as an IL table, when it should be labeled as a 100% IL table.
Exoray
I'll be sure to fix that when this table is posted.