Today is December 22nd, just 25 days before the release of DKCRHD. We're getting new trailers for the game, and speculating about how the game will work (and why the visuals are oddly disappointing...). There will likely be a lot of activity upon release, so I highly recommend joining the Discord server if you plan to play it.

I am very pleased to announce that the boards have been created in advance, and are in safe hands (shoutout to SRC staff). There will be a one-week embargo on submissions, just in case there's anything in the game that we don't expect and need to address (and to ease the pressure on mods for the first week). Do have a look now and follow the boards if you're interested: https://www.speedrun.com/dkcrhd

In other, more important news for DKCR Wii: the revised version of LRT has now been implemented for Any%. Back in October, I realised that loads also occur on the results screens, particularly affecting physical runs (as is the trend). This was something that needed to be addressed, as the timeloss can add up quite a lot when there are 50 of these screens to deal with. I researched some other possible sources of loads to make sure I got this new version correct; a rogue load at the end of 7-R and an additional load in each shop are also accounted for now. With some other adjustments to the timing to correct oversights, here are the overall adjustments to the LRT times. This will hopefully be applied to other categories (All Stages and Full Worlds) soon :)

Any% now finally has load-removed timing implemented. This is something that a lot of people have wanted to see for a long time (myself included), but it took a while for us to get there. It was always known that load times were quite different across consoles, but the exact time difference wasn't really known, so nothing could be done to the leaderboards to accommodate it.

The issue became a bit controversial when michael_1985 set Any% times that beat the former WR by JXD, but only when using RTA timing. Michael played on USB Loader GX, which can provide much faster load times than any official version of the game, but nothing was done about this at the time - ultimately, his run stayed on top of the boards above JXD's for a very long time. Unfortunately, JXD's WR never got a lot of the attention it deserved because of this (not to discredit Michael's run, as it is still very good).

While this is the main reason why people wanted LRT to be added to the boards, it was obviously also important to resolve the differences between official versions (mainly between physical and digital versions). Timeattack made an autosplitter in May last year that removed level entry/exit loads, and the animations on the map after beating a boss. This gave us a good idea of the load times of the top 4 Any% runs. Unfortunately, loads ended up being a lot more complicated than we realised, so a lengthy manual retime process was the only way it could be done. So I did that.

I've spent a lot of time recently working on a spreadsheet to help me with retiming runs, and also spent a lot of time actually retiming the top 6 Any% runs. I'm now happy with how the spreadsheet is, so I've added the LRT time to these runs. The main rank change as a result of this is that Michael has moved down to 4th, boosting me and JXD up to 2nd and 3rd respectively. I'm aiming to eventually retime all sub-1:35 runs for Any%, all sub-2:20 runs for All Stages, and high-ranking Full World runs.

In addition to this, it seems best to disallow USB Loader GX for all runs, going forward. It's highly unusual for a Wii community to have allowed it for so long, and it can clearly produce unrealistic load times as it has for Michael (though interestingly, Fonzoide's run on USB Loader GX actually had the slowest loads in the top 6). However, now that they have been retimed without loads, and because they are important and high-ranking runs, their runs are being kept on the leaderboards.

This is an update I've wanted to make for a long time, so it feels great to finally have it done. I will continue to work through the other sub-1:35 Any% runs, then retime obsolete PBs, and then move on to other categories. The spreadsheet is publicly available so that runners can see exactly how their loads are broken down, and how their runs compare to other retimed runs. Please take a look if you're interested: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZmpV8Gg0GrmaTuwgaLebVkP5gFgJMaRylEtPB-3_wi4

A few changes have been made here. Following a vote that was strongly in favour of this change, 100% has been renamed to All Stages (in line with DKCR3D and Tropical Freeze). Additionally, All Puzzles and File Completion (yes, really) now have readily accessible leaderboards. These categories have been asked about for a long time, and with some recent activity in both, it's about time they had a place on this page. I have also added All Puzzles to the Full World categories.

All Puzzles sits between All Stages and 200% on the full-game leaderboards. Mirror Mode has been changed to a miscellaneous category for now, but if people want it to be a main category, it could be changed back. File Completion is undoubtedly a miscellaneous category by nature; it's the most extreme category this game has to offer, and isn't something to be taken lightly. There's a non-zero chance that TA timing may be allowed for it in the future, but more runs would have to be done for that to be considered (currently, only two people have a time).

I am also very pleased to announce that some community members have come together to translate this game's rules into other languages. Currently, we have translations for German (by myself and LetsUigi56), and French (by Yoshibaud and Sorendo). If you are able to contribute any other languages to this, we would greatly appreciate your help!

A major change will be coming to the Any% boards in the next week, so expect another news post for that when it happens.

Emulator has been allowed for full-game runs, and the leaderboards have been split between Console and Emulator to accommodate this. This has been done after a vote in the Discord server, in which every voter indicated that they support Emulator being allowed.

The specifics of how it will be implemented are not entirely clear yet. A basic set of requirements for Emulator runs has been made, but these are definitely subject to change in the future, when the leaderboards fill up a bit more.

It is also not currently clear if this split should apply to every leaderboard for this game or not. Most voters indicated that they didn't want level leaderboards to be split, but this could be done exclusively for levels that use Death Abuse (due the advantage Emulator provides when the timer restarts). Individual world leaderboards were not included in the vote, but will probably be split soon as they are timed with real time.

It may have taken us a bit longer to make a decision on Emulator runs, compared to other Wii communities, however we hope that this will now allow for more people to get into DKCR.

Mirror Mode now has its own leaderboard as a full-game category. This consists of completing every level in Mirror Mode (essentially the second half of a 200% run). This can be compared to the existence of Green Stars as a category in SMG2. This will hopefully serve to create more interest in 200% in the future!