Random: Speedrunner Takes Donkey Kong Run To New Heights By Beating The Kill Screen – Nintendo Life
GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpNintendo LifeGuestLogin or Sign UpBut wait, there’s more!44 years after its release, you’d think that the speedrunning community would have pushed the Donkey Kong arcade game to its limit. But, as it turns out, there are a handful of extra levels hidden behind the game’s long-assumed unbeatable kill screen. All you’ve got to do is beat it.That’s the challenge that was recently undertaken by Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Kosmic. In a 29-minute YouTube video, the Mario pro explains that Donkey Kong’s US arcade release (the one used for competitive play) maxes out at the first barrel stage of level 22. This comes as a product of a glitch in the game’s bonus timer algorithm, where the game will prematurely end after just 400 bonus points have passed — nowhere near long enough to make it all the way to Pauline at the top of the tower.Now, this was (understandably) assumed to be the game’s natural end, but, inspired by a Discord message from another DK speedrunner, Kosmic worked out that you could hypothetically use another glitch to overcome the premature kill screen — fighting fire with fire, and all that.The glitch in question is one that allows Mario (the artist formally known as Jumpman) to eternally climb the screen thanks to some coordinate manipulation on a broken ladder. If you could ride this exploit all the way to the top, he’d theoretically make it before the dodgy bonus timer expired.Booting up the game in an emulator and using frame advance to slow things down for frame-perfect inputs, Kosmic got to work climbing DK’s tower in this weird, floaty manner. And it works.The speedrunner made it past level 22’s first barrel stage and progressed through a further five stages to get to the 22-6 rivet stage. There are no broken ladders to exploit on this one, so things naturally wrap up after you’ve nabbed six of the eight required rivets and you’re hit with the definitive final kill screen.You have to get very lucky (like a 1/1024 chance level of lucky), but it is possible. Ah yes, Kosmic also flags that he only managed to do it thanks to the frame advance slowing things down. If you were to try it in real-time, you’d have to move the joystick back and forth 24 times per second, which ain’t happening.But heck, an additional five screens on a 44-year-old game? That’s a pretty wild discovery. Bring on its 88th anniversary so we can finally see someone hit level 23…The true Original Edition”There’s a kill screen comin’ up!”What do you make of this discovery? Climb down to the comments below and let us know.[source youtube.com]About Jim NormanJim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since.Comments 29Speedrunning is a magical world. I’m not one to try it myself as I’m the slow type of gamer, but I love watching speerunning videos. There’s so much hard work and talent to be admired in many players! And exactly because of their dedication, some games will always be kept relevant, just like Donkey Kong, which was considered “done” in terms of new possibilities. Nice!Pretty cool and kudos to Kosmic for figuring it out!This was a seriously fun watch!!Unfortunately doing this on the real arcade machine seems impossible.@rvcolem1 Which is why this is meaningless!Any tool assist on anything but the original equipment doesn’t count!If they are doing this, than why not write a script to lessen the points so they can continue on?This was really interesting, especially the breakdown on f the logic and reasons from r the kill screen. Thanks friend r highlighting this story.That sounds like a Kosmic achievement….I’ll see myself out.Big news for billionaire bio hackers, you can cheat death for a few more screens. Just need to figure out how to live in a DK emulation, advance your frames and waggle your joystick at an unbelievable rate.Sound like straight out of a Wreck it Ralph scriptI remember watching his og kill screen run and he said he was so high. forgot about the whole how high can u get thing and thought he just smoked or something lolInteresting video. Congratulations on achieving this. I admire people with that kind of dedication and patience. Also great, that Mister Harrist was credited, rest in peace.Is there a way to play donkey kong „US set 1“ on the switch? is this version available on arcade archives?@lovesushi Don’t take my word 100% for it, because I really don’t know for real the diffferences, but according to the information on The Cutting Room Floor, the International version in the Arcade Archives release is the US Set 1. At least, I’m going by the fact that it says all the other versions don’t have a Trademark symbol and the US Set 1 does, which the International ACA version also has.@Spider-KevI think this is more of a proof of concept. It shows that this is hypothetically possible. It doesn’t earn any awards or anything, but reveals an edge case that exists.Showed the kids KING OF KONG a couple of weeks ago. They were surprisingly invested. Will have to tell them about this new way to ‘beat’ the kill screen!@Kiwi_Unlimited @Spider-KevThe trick is well outside the limits of human capability, even more so on original hardware. It’s not a proof of concept of a real world idea, it’s a neat thing you can do in MAME. But it’s hardly “meaningless”. Uncovering mysteries and overcoming barriers is a core essence of the human experience, and what Kosmic did here is amazing.Sure, it doesn’t impact the Kong high score run, but it’s an interesting discovery which he turned into entertaining content, and there is always the possibility that what he’s uncovered about the code and hardware can lead to other discoveries in the future.A true King of Kong! @WhiteTrashGuy if you liked KoK, you might wish to consider watching Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade as well. Lots of fun if you love(d) the arcades!@Rentaro Careful! Silly ol’ Billy Mitchell might sue!Always love seeing new discoveries in retro games and Donkey Kong is my second favorite arcade game! Can’t believe its already that old…@bimmy-lee If you waggle it more than twice, you’re just playing with it 🤭@KayFiOS you’re right we wouldn’t want to disturb the self-proclaimed “Video Game Player of the Century” !@Antraxx777 – Yeah, this requires 22 times per second more than that!@KayFiOS Milly B¡tchell can go get his ass in the sea.@Spider-Kev I see it as being different, since a TAS demonstrates techniques that use an unmodded game and could theoretically be done on real hardware- you’d just need to be a robot with superhuman speed and precision to pull them off….or would you? Some techniques are first thought to be only viable for a TAS, and then someone either does the impossible, or finds a more human-friendly workaround to achieve the same outcome.@Antraxx777 Shake it once, that’s fine.Shake it twice, that’s okay.Shake it 24 times per second…As impressive as it is, I will never understand why someone would spend years on a single game just to set a record. Same thing for glitches and exploits.@Rhaoulos Why anyone would research a game to such an extent that it consumes their lives is a fair question to ask, but to answer that, we need to talk about parallel universes. 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