Amazing how a little PB will re-ignite some excitement for a game, eh?

I was having a ton of trouble getting motivated to play DKC2 the last few weeks. I had done a few runs, but none of them went well - my best run was a 46:3x that actually died on the final hit to K Rool (because I stopped paying attention). Most of the rest were closer to 50. My goal for the tournament was to be consistently around the 43ish time frame - so naturally that was a bit discouraging.

Finally, last night, I decided to just suck it up and do some practice. I spent an hour and a half working through some of the tricks that had been causing my runs to die - or just things that were hard in general. And then, sure enough, first run out of the gate (not counting W1 resets) gets me a 5 second PB - only my third 42 ever.

So now I'm excited about the game again. Even doing all the practice was pretty fun. So from now on, I'll be doing 30 minutes to an hour of practice before runs each DKC2 stream. The way I like to practice is to try to hit the hard tricks (Vine Clip, Wrong Warps, Eagle Pits, etc...) 10 times in a row. That way I'm not only doing them, but I'm doing them consistently. Then I'll run through the level 2 or 3 times to make sure I can hit it in a more realistic setting. As Vince Lombardi said, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."

In those practice segments, expect work on:
*Luckjaw
*Topsail
*Glimmer's (the end, but really the whole thing)
*Krackhead (gap rolls and whole level)
*Vine Clip
*Brambler
*Mudhole (WW and whole level)
*Rambi Rumble (big boi - i've been messing it up lately)
*PCP (damageless)
*Web Woods (eagle pit, full level)
*Arctic
*Windy (the 3 major skips, specifically)
*CLC
*Toxic (all of it)
*Screech's (I've never been consistent at the race skip)

Ok that's basically the whole game...

As I mentioned, my goal before the tournament is to be consistently in the 42-43 time frame. As for the event itself, my only goal is to just make sure to win the races I'm supposed to. Sneaking a victory or two from someone with a better PB would be nice, but even if I don't, it's no big deal. Also, somehow I'm in the JRTA3 marathon. 4-way race vs namux, kigou, and v0oid. that's a pretty big spread of skill levels, so I don't expect it to be that close. but pretty exciting all the same. I'm submitting to Scrubathon, as well.

In other news - I've started looking into Banjo-Kazooie. Really, really fun. I'm putting together an FFM file (which allows you to start the game with most of the moves already learned) and have practiced some speed tricks already (Termiteless stuff and Gobi clip, specifically). Not sure when you should start expecting runs, as it's a pretty big game.

Ok - that's all! First speedrun-focused pastebin in awhile, but I had a good bounce in my motivation.