DKC Tricks

(This is still a rough draft. I'm sorry.)

Can we get off? I'm feeling a bit dizzy.

Rolling is the meat of this game. It's faster than running or jumping and generally does a better job of dispatching enemies and getting over gaps than the jump alone. Any time not spent rolling is generally better spent rolling. DKC is primarily based around speeding yourself up through tight maneuvering and tricks to gain speed, so rolling as often as possible and using enemies and the terrain to your advantage is key. As such, knowing enemy placement and how different parts of the stage can affect the Kongs' roll is very important.

That's a tasty single-file line you have there

The most basic - and probably most important - thing to note is that each enemy you roll through will extend the duration of your roll. A long line of enemies can be used to keep uptime on your roll and let you breeze through an area at a much faster speed than running. Additionally, rolling through any amount of enemies will remove the delay at the end of roll, so you can simply keep moving forward at the end of it. Rolling without going through an enemy will cause Diddy and DK to stop in place for a moment at the end of the roll, so normally you need to jump at the end to keep yourself going.

Another way to increase the length of a roll is to drop to a lower part of the stage. The distance you travel is always the same on a normal roll; however, if you fall off an edge, you will keep rolling until you hit the ground (you keep speed while in the air), and then the normal roll distance after that. If you time your rolls correctly, you can maintain your speed for a long period of time. This can be used in conjunction with enemies to keep your roll going through large areas of a stage. Certain spots can stop your roll early, however, and falling off a cliff at the very end of a roll will leave you plummeting straight downwards, so you'll have to be accurate and consistent to achieve the same roll through multiple attempts.

I've always dreamed of being faster than the camera

The duration of the roll isn't the only thing you need to focus on, though. There are a few different ways to gain speed when rolling through enemies. You will gain a set amount of speed when rolling through a series of enemies; each enemy will increase your speed, up to four.

• Rolling base speed: 1152
• After 1 enemy: 1408
• After 2 enemies: 1664
• After 3 enemies: 1920
• After 4 enemies: 2048 (this is the max)

Rolling through a line of enemies not only lets you roll longer; it makes you faster, too. This lies in tandem with another technique: the extended roll. The speed boosts above only apply if you are holding down Y when you roll into the enemy. If you let go of the Y button when you roll into an enemy, you will not gain the speed boost right away. If you press Y again before that same roll ends, however, you will get the speed boost and restart the duration of your roll. For example, if you press Y to roll, go through two enemies with the button released, then repress Y before your roll ends, you will start the roll over with a speed of 1664.

This trick lets us do two things: first, it lets us manipulate when we want to gain speed during a roll. Because rolling only lasts for a short period of time, doing an extended roll will ultimately make you faster, because you get the duration of a full roll with the increased speed on top of the longer roll from rolling through enemies. However, this does not apply if you have to interrupt your roll early - with a jump to reach a platform, for example. In that case, you want to hold down Y so you get your speed boost right away, since you won't be able to keep it for long. Therefore, the extended roll is faster if you have enough room to keep rolling the whole time.

Secondly, extended rolls can let the Kongs roll over much wider gaps than usual. If you release Y through a couple of enemies, then repress it right on a ledge (or even after you fall off), you will blast forward with a new roll at a much faster speed and be able to clear large gaps with ease. This is used pretty heavily in DKC, as you will be able to maintain rolls much longer when you don't have to jump across every gap. It also lets you skip some slow-moving obstacles that the game expects you to use, such as ropes and tire platforms.

I'm worried my youngest chimp won't ever learn to fly

There's one more thing that can be done with rolling. It's an interesting glitch called jumprolling (possibly known as the "comfy cozy" roll). Essentially, when you execute a roll on the same frame that you land on an enemy, the game bugs out and sends the Kongs flying -- literally. Upon performing the glitch, Diddy and DK spin in the air as if they were just shot out of a barrel cannon. This continues on until you jump out of it or you run into a Zinger (you are invulnerable to all other enemies). It also stops if you run into an object that changes the way your character moves, such as a minecart or barrel.The jumproll is a lot more situational than the other roll-based tricks. You normally can't roll after a jump until you land on the ground, so it only works in spots that you are able to fall onto an enemy in some way. As such, you are only able to perform it in certain areas, and not many of them are actually useful in a speedrun. There are about 5 jumprolls in the game that can be used to gain time in a speedrun; the amount of time they save ranges from 3 - 50 seconds. The stages these are performed on are Forest Frenzy, Minecart Madness, Tanked-Up Trouble, Misty Mine and Platform Perils. It is not recommended to use them at until your times (for the Any% All Stages category) are consistently below the 39-minute mark.

(Videos of these tricks to come soon)