Want to chime in to say that there is a simple way to increase the Banana counter to go up to 999 (resetting to 0 at 1000 bananas). So a 999 banana count run could work. I haven't looked much further into it, but perhaps it also might be possible to make banana bunches count as 1 banana instead of 10, which allows for "more" bananas to be collected within a run. If there is any interest I could post a dkc-1.0 version with the simple 999 banana counter to [dkcspeedruns.com]. Credit goes to (I believe) Mattrizzle on [dkc-atlas.com].

EDIT: I only now realize that, even as a meme category, it would be restricted to emulator or flash carts if used in the way I described, so probably not feasible since some people might only have hardware.

Man thank you so much. It was just a couple days ago I was messing with how to force that 1.3B lapping bonus rather than leaving it to RNG. I can't wait for my replacement controller to get here so I can get back to practicing.

II've been practicing my Rookie runs and have been focused almost solely on mastering each tracks layout and drive patterns without giving too much thought about collecting Money Powerup$. I'm starting to wonder if I should put more effort into collecting those MP$ even at the cost of route efficiency since I'm noticing a lot of high-ranking runs get upgrades faster than me. I'm having trouble getting under 56 and suspect this might be the problem. Any advice on money and risk v reward would be really appreciated, thanks!