Breaks are now permitted for 200% and File Completion across the three DKCRs. This is in line with what many other communities have done by now; the delay here was down to low activity in these categories (one 200% run in 3D and nothing in HD as of writing :P), rather than actual opposition to the idea. A Timing label has been added to these categories, which does not affect the rankings in any way but merely shows whether breaks were taken (TA) or not (RTA).

For DKCR, 30 minutes of breaks have been allotted to these categories. For DKCR3D and DKCRHD, 200% has also been given a 30-minute break pool, while File Completion has been given 45 minutes in 3D and 60 minutes in HD, due to the extra levels in both and Turbo Attack in HD. This pool can be drawn from however and whenever you please, and as many or as few times as you want. A break is initiated by pressing the Home button and is ended the same way. All of this is also in the rules, of course :)

There is general consensus that this amount of breaks is fine right now, especially given that all runs currently submitted to these categories were done with no breaks, but if demand (and activity) increases in the future, the allotted break pool could be reviewed. For now, this is a necessary step to make these highly intimidating categories more accessible.

Following a majority vote in favour in the Discord server, additional leaderboards for Time Attacks without Dixie have been created. These are listed under the miscellaneous Time Attack (No Dixie) boards for each world, which can be accessed by clicking/tapping the arrow to the right of the category names, to show miscellaneous categories. The advantage of having a separate category is that we can be as subjective as we want when deciding which levels actually need a Dixieless leaderboard; currently about a quarter of the levels have one, and World 4 happens to have none right now. This will of course be updated as more levels are confirmed to be faster with Dixie. Submissions are also now open to all leaderboards again and will be verified as usual :)

With this remake celebrating its first anniversary a few days ago and seemingly having been forgotten by Nintendo soon after release, nobody saw this update coming. For those who don't know, a massive update was dropped out of the blue last night, featuring (supposedly) faster load times, a brand new mode (Turbo Attack) and, most significantly of all, Dixie Kong as a second partner Kong.

That last point in particular has completely shaken things up, in much the same way Funky did to our sister game Tropical Freeze. As of writing, new timesaves are constantly being found with Dixie and the game will never be the same again. All of this, of course, begs the question: what will be done to the SRC boards? Well, two non-controversial changes have been made so far:

• Turbo Attack has been added to the boards.

• The requirements for File Completion have been updated to additionally require getting all gold medals in Turbo Attack. This has made the zero prior FC runners very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The elephant in the room, and the most important thing that is up for debate, is whether Dixie and Diddy should be split in Time Attack (and possibly Turbo Attack). The game does not save Dixie and Diddy times separately, but undoubtedly Dixie completely changes things, and it would be a shame to have to say goodbye to a lot of Diddy records that people worked hard on. There is a poll currently ongoing in the Discord server, which is leaning towards splitting the boards as of writing this.

Splitting the boards, however, will come with a few oddities due to limitations here on SRC, mainly regarding:

• levels that don't have barrels at all;

• levels that do have barrels, but no meaningful differences between the Kongs (e.g. 6-5);

• the 'Default' barrel setting (oscillates between both), which seems highly unlikely to be used in a WR as Dixie almost universally outclasses Diddy, but we can't rule out

A lot of discussion will likely be taking place over the next few days to figure out the best way forward here, including for dkwrs.com and Cyberscore. On the RTA side, we'll soon be saying goodbye to the current records (except for Demo), especially if the loads are indeed faster as claimed in Nintendo's announcement video. ILs with Dixie may need to wait to be approved until we figure out what exactly to do with the boards. We're all frankly shocked an update like this came so late after the game's release to begin with, but on the whole, the new stuff is a lot of fun and we shouldn't let leaderboard woes prevent us from enjoying it.

The Switch 2 released today, and it has a massive impact on load times in DKCRHD - loads used to be almost twice as long as those on Wii, however they are now even shorter than Wii loads. This leads to it saving nine minutes or more over Switch Digital in Any%, and even more in the longer categories (we'll have a better idea of exactly how much it saves in the coming days). On top of this, it seems like the lag has been eliminated or at least significantly reduced.

While Physical and Digital have a major time difference as well (estimated four minutes in Any%), the difference is that it is far easier for a Switch owner to acquire DKCRHD digitally than it is to get a Switch 2. With that in mind, Switch and Switch 2 will remain separate for RTA categories. They won't be separated for Time Attacks unless something other than the load times is found that sets them apart.

We now have a category extensions board for DKCR/3D/HD, shared with the Tropical Freeze community. This has boards for a bunch of category ideas we've had, as well as boards for running both games back to back. Relevant to DKCR is that the rather obscure Fun Patch category for DKCR Wii has been fully migrated to the CE board, as it ended up being really out of place with the other six categories and never got too much attention. Additionally, the categories on the main pages for the DKCRs have been reorganised, with Mirror Mode and 200% being swapped, and Mirror Mode and File Completion being promoted from miscellaneous categories to main categories.

In addition to this, there has been a significant rule change to Full Worlds. Previously, the All Stages/Puzzles categories required you to collect all KONG Letters and also start with the first level and end with the boss (though oddly you could do the other levels in any order). On the Any% side, you were also previously not allowed to use key paths outside of Ruins, Cave and Factory (where they're used in the full run). These restrictions have all been removed. Although these do render the existing runs rather obsolete, keep in mind that a significant rule change allowing for faster times also took place in 2022 (allowing runs from a completed file), and no runs have been submitted since then. One of the category extensions (All Stages NG+) plays into the AS/AP rule change; a run of this category effectively provides you with a full set of All Stages Full World times.

As some players may still want to do these world runs with KONG Letters included, the CE board has categories for RTA-Style Full Worlds, which replicate the conditions from a full-game RTA run. This should also make it easier than ever to submit to Full World boards and hopefully fill them up a bit :)

A demo for DKCRHD randomly got added to the eShop recently, so we now have an additional leaderboard for it here with three categories (Any%, All Puzzles, File Completion). Somewhat of a meme category - go wild.