Hey, I've just found this thread and hit near home. I'm 35 and I work full time as a school teacher and I know how difficult is to find time to practice/stream/run. I never got really serious about speedrun until the last 2months where I had a long holiday and I was feeling kinda bored and since I really didn't want to work in the house I spent time playing old NES games. I choose short games that can be practised for 1 hour or 1 1/2 hour a day and they don't require much investment. Right now for example, I'm running Donkey Kong Jr. which is a 1:30 seconds game and I practice at night probably for 1 hour, which is "me" time. I know it's hard when you have a family but if they support you and love you they will understand your new hobby. Just go for it!

Hello, my name is Ben and I'm 35 years old and I started running DKJR because it was one of the first games I ever played on a famicom clone back in the 80s.

So I submitted my PB which is 1:48. I've just started speedrunning 1 month ago and I'm pretty much a newbie in lots of aspect and I have some general questions regarding DKJR strats. I have watched all the videos and I noticed that there's a "path" already set for most of the screens.

My questions regard enemies and their patterns. I've noticed that enemies in screens 1 and 4 are somehow random, sometimes it benefits the run and sometimes you just need to press reset because you're going to lose seconds waiting for the enemy to move away. Do you have any strat regarding this? I reset a lot because I make a good run from 1-3 just to found enemies blocking my way in screen 4 making me lose seconds trying to get the last key.

I've noticed screen 2 and 3 are more about timing and input memorization. It took me a long time in screen 2 to get the first jump right (you have to move right away as soon as the level starts) but then I have to move to the vine, go up and then do a lot of presses to the right before the bird appears. I can't really pull off that trick. I'm practicing but there's no case. Are you guys using a different version? I'm using standard (J) version on emulator and it seems the bird always get me in the space between the two vines.

On screen 3 I've watched in the videos that they can make a really difficult passage between the blue enemy and the red one without getting touched. I can't pull off that one neither making me lose seconds. I've tried to emulate what's on the videos but I just can't. Is there any trick for it?

Basically those are all my questions. I love your runs and I love the game.