Hi I'm a big fan of this game and decided to start running it ,but I have a few questions.

1. How do you do minecart/rocket barrel levels optimally?

2. Is it faster to roll through enemies or roll jump on to them at max speed? (when you have Diddy Kong)

Currently I've been doing demo any% runs but during my usual time of about 4:51 I have noticed my load times in total are 7-8 seconds longer than the world record. I've been playing on digital if that helps answer anything.

1. You need to have just a good start and ending. On minecart stages main rule is to jump over every uphill and ride downhills (even though some downhills are too steep and you go more down than forward). You should look for videos about them.

2. Enemies in this game does have a weird pushback when you roll through them. In some stages (like 1-4) you usually chain momentum bounces on the enemies. If it’s one individual enemy you should just roll through.

We will do LRT (load removed time) for HD when Switch 2 releases, because of (potentionally) faster loads. It would’ve changed any% too much. I’m not entirely sure if it will be done for demo category, but you should ask from Leah.

Ok Thanks

For this game and also the Demo Version, it's faster to put the game in the "Switch's memory" instead of your SD card, as this will otherwise result in the slower load time's you've mentioned. Then you'll automatically get faster loads. If you have further questions about this game, its mechanics or the speedrun in general, you're welcome to join the Discord server ;)

One last question I have noticed higher players doing their jumps short and low with minimal air time (when jumping out of a roll) is it faster than high and long jumps

There's no difference between your ground and air speed most of the time - the main thing to know is that each roll you do costs about two frames (four with Rambi), which is the main thing that influences the way you move, including jump heights. Sometimes it just works out better to do a small jump in a given section, or it doesn't matter either way and players just prefer to do small jumps.

A note about Switch 2 as it was brought up in this thread a little while ago: at the moment it seems like our plan is to split the boards between Switch and Switch 2 for full-game and Full Worlds, at least for now. It's prohibitively expensive at the moment and any measures to remove loads are very time-consuming, especially for longer categories, so it wouldn't be fair to "require" people to get it.

In the rocket barrel levels the players were able to start the barrel rocket really quick but I can’t figure out how to do it

I'm pretty sure you just spam the B button to start the rocket barrel fast (that's what I do)