Why is speedrunning to the DK killscreen not particularly popular?

[Alc]

So I'm just curious, really. I've seen a handful on entries on speedrun.com but there's obviously not anything close to the same interest in pushing time as there is pushing points. Is this because it's just a boring run? Or maybe because the appeal of learning DK is in the subtleties of learning to point push, and speedrunning it just feels like an exercise in chance? From where I'm sitting it looks as though the DK high score is at, or at least approaching, the point where luck/"RNG" is the limiting factor for the highest echelon of players. Have other challenges started to become more popular as this point approached? I can see that a lot of players who have very high scores are also clearly skilled at the other DK arcade games (and Crazy Kong, though that one's more obvious).

[Adam_Mon]

My opinion on this is..

1) The DK community is tiny compared to popular speed run friendly games.

2) Probably the majority of people who start playing this game give up before reaching the KS due to difficulty.
Sunshine Mario, or whatever its called is a fun console game whereas DK is practically designed to steal your money in the arcade by evidence of the early boards.

3) The boredom factor, seeing a little sausage legged f***er running around girders using semi patterned play with a mundane black back drop pales in comparison to colorful console games where you have a variety of levels, music, enemies and bosses that require different play styles and mechanics to defeat.

4) DK IMO seems to be the type of game where the player is almost never satisfied with their score and while Dean, Wes and Lakeman have pushed the limits I think the scoreboard is still in wild west territory. Once several scores reach max out status I think other variations will become more popular like speed running, no kill screen hack , no hammer etc..

To the average twitch viewer who doesn't understand the game it looks horribly boring, It takes a long time playing to appreciate the artistry of high level play.

5) The randomness (imo) is unsuited for speed running,

That said I have on occasion seen Barra, Danman, ethan and xelnia speed running the game  . I do hope it takes off but I just don't think the appeal is there.

Welcome to the forum!

[homerwannabee]

It's Arcade, and speedrunners don't like anything arcade.  A good example is the Punch Out for the NES.  It's a very popular game to speedrun, but Punch Out the arcade game is barely touched.  The arcade game is actually a much funner game to play, but because you have to download MAME, they want almost nothing to do with it.

[QAOP Spaceman]

You could have a fair crack at speedrunning through the barrel and spring stages, but I'd imagine the randomness of getting screwed on the pies and riviots would make trying to get to the end fast pretty frustrating.

Plus,

seeing a little sausage legged f***er running around

gets pretty dull pretty fast.

[Alc]

1) The DK community is tiny compared to popular speed run friendly games.

Given the popularity of KoK I'd imagine a pretty sizeable number of people have given DK a fair crack compared to most videogames. Impossible to quantify, of course. Is the community really that tiny? Seems to me if you've got ~100 people who've KS'd then you've got yourselves a pretty big community.

Probably the majority of people who start playing this game give up before reaching the KS due to difficulty.

Oh, for sure. Roughly how many hours does it take a reasonably skilled/consistent player to KS, btw? Just as a very rough estimate. Or maybe that's a topic for a new thread...

5) The randomness (imo) is unsuited for speed running

Well, I used to speedrun Spelunky, which is a lot more random than DK!

I think on a long enough time scale, with enough attention, almost all videogame speedruns eventually come down to randomness. Once people nail down execution, that's all that's left.

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks man.

It's Arcade, and speedrunners don't like anything arcade.  A good example is the Punch Out for the NES.  It's a very popular game to speedrun, but Punch Out the arcade game is barely touched.  The arcade game is actually a much funner game to play, but because you have to download MAME, they want almost nothing to do with it.

Is it that they don't want anything to do with it, or that the original hardware is inaccessible? The speedrun community has a big hard-on for playing games on original hardware (that's not an insult - or at least, I'm guilty of it too).

[Adam_Mon]

Oh, for sure. Roughly how many hours does it take a reasonably skilled/consistent player to KS, btw? Just as a very rough estimate.

I honestly can't remember this 
I think it takes around 1.5 hours just running boards? Someone here will know for certain.

[Alc]

Oh, for sure. Roughly how many hours does it take a reasonably skilled/consistent player to KS, btw? Just as a very rough estimate.

I honestly can't remember this 
I think it takes around 1.5 hours just running boards? Someone here will know for certain.

I worded that terribly. What I mean to ask was, "how long would it take a new player to reach their first kill screen?". I appreciate that's asking an impossible question so maybe I should be asking how long it's taken people here.

[Adam_Mon]

I've heard the 2 month mark thrown around quite a bit but it certainly took me much longer to KS, I have a theory that if people are already in the classic arcade gaming hobby and have put up scores in other CAG titles they KS fairly quickly compared to those who come in from console or modern gaming backgrounds. It certainly differs, I've heard of people kill screening in a matter of weeks (Marky, Willms). But there have been players who played for years and not KS'd.   

Despite DK looking so minimal and basic there is a tonne of information a new player has to learn like where to stand to avoid wild (heat seeking) barrels at certain times on the early boards and how to pass the difficult LV4+ springs.
Some players chart their progress in the DK blog section but not everyone does this so it's hard to accurately put a number on how long it takes to develop the skills to survive to level 22-1.

[ChrisP]

So I'm just curious, really. I've seen a handful on entries on speedrun.com but there's obviously not anything close to the same interest in pushing time as there is pushing points.

Speedrunning in DK is not popular because how quickly you get to the end is almost inversely-correlated with how much difficulty you are engaging to get to the end.

[danman123456]

Probably the biggest reason is there is simply no guarantee you can make it to the end and it takes so long to get there. This game takes at least a good 70 minutes best case (We think a sub 1:10 is possible). I've finished like 3 speedruns and had several more on a good pace. My best time is 1:16:20 (which sadly i dont have as twitch completely mangled my recordings into like 2 minute chunks so they are gone) and my best pace was best case 1:10 and worst case 1:13 but i died late in the game like stage 18 (Barra had a 1:10 going as well).  Its HARD to do and a lot harder than a normal KS run because you are trying to do things as fast as possible and take more risks on the pies and rivet boards than you normally would. Even the elevator board becomes risky because you need to go right away and cannot wait on a "good" spring. If people tried the score would get to 1:10 in no time tho.

 

So I'm just curious, really. I've seen a handful on entries on speedrun.com but there's obviously not anything close to the same interest in pushing time as there is pushing points. Is this because it's just a boring run? Or maybe because the appeal of learning DK is in the subtleties of learning to point push, and speedrunning it just feels like an exercise in chance? From where I'm sitting it looks as though the DK high score is at, or at least approaching, the point where luck/"RNG" is the limiting factor for the highest echelon of players. Have other challenges started to become more popular as this point approached? I can see that a lot of players who have very high scores are also clearly skilled at the other DK arcade games (and Crazy Kong, though that one's more obvious).

[Barra]

There just isn’t enough people who are killscreen capable. Even at a generous 10% of everyone who has ever killscreened (that we know of) were interested in speedrunning, that’s only 10 people.
Think about how many people have ever finished Super Mario 64 for fun vs how many speedrun it.

Personally I love speedrunning DK and definitely haven’t put as much time into it as I should. It’s on the list. I feel a 1:07.xxx is possible with enough time and attempts

[Barra]

The first step is to create a high score table and put all the known kill screens that were sufficiently short enough into the table.  It's just work.

I guess that would give the impression that more people are interested but certainly wouldn’t be a true representation of the actual amount who care. Could drum up some competition though so not a bad idea at all.

[dnickolas]

I think that fastest start would be a more interesting category, since it’s nowhere near as daunting a task.

[Barra]

There’s a category for fastest start on both speedrun and TG

[danman123456]

I actually think a "perfect" start is quite achievable with enough attempts. You just need RNG for 14 boards not 117. Ive had perfect "lvl 3" starts before and then it went to crap on lvl 4 but I dont have that many attempts at it. Once i get a score i may move onto the speedruns again. Its a good distraction from score chasing. Still im motivated to try Galaga again. I think these comps make people want to play again which is a good thing. Maybe give Barra some competition for a change

quote author=KongTower link=topic=2199.msg34786#msg34786 date=1522711785]Acti

I think that fastest start would be a more interesting category, since it’s nowhere near as daunting a task.

I agree fastest start would be more inclusive.  Speed running through level 4 would open the doors to many more competitors who prefer not to gamble their time away as you must to accomplish a noteworthy final score upon kill screen.

Availability of human time is definitely a weak-link in the ability for humans to continue scoring higher into the future.

An ideal speed-run through level 4 may be approached more readily, but there will never be a "perfect" start when it comes to speed-running, either, I don't think.  There's plenty of chaos in the game's method of producing pseudo-randomness to prevent that.
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