Thanks, Aqua. I guess you only played one version of CK and one (the US) version of DK, right? Because several things you mention only hold for certain versions of CK.(posted 9603 days ago)Certain versions of CK have: Pieces of the beams missing (including one below the second hammer on the 25m), on both the 25m and the 75m, but others have not, which make the ones I mentioned first slightly harder. The slightly harder versions will also have: Fast conveyor belts starting at L=02, but, in return, those versions allow you to put down the hammer (which I personally don't find very useful), and, finally, those slightly harder versions will not allow you to walk past Kong on the 100m; on the easier versions, you can walk behind Kong on that top layer.
As for the barrels level, the 2nd hammer is not inaccessible, regardless of which version of CK you play. In one of my recordings (I think it is the one for ckongjeu), I show that the hammer can still be taken...
I don't think the barrel cycle on DK makes it any harder, really, but, yes, the fact that I can't be safe on a ladder does cause me some problems (BTW, this only goes for the US version of DK; in the Japanese version of DK, you can still "hide" on a ladder), not really because it makes it a lot harder, but because I have to kick the habit of climbing halfway up a ladder and waiting there.
Another difference between DK and CK is the "jumping through the floor", which is not possible on DK, but that does not bother me too much; I didn't learn that trick until I had played CK lots of times already, and the only time I really used it from then on was to get through the barrels level on the time-limited L=22.
The conveyor levels: It depends on which version of CK you talk about. Some have the slow conveyor belts, others have the fast ones starting at L=02. Yes, there are more fireballs on DK, but that does not make it a *lot* harder, because you can still control everything you do. On the CK versions with the fast conveyor belts, you have to make a "blind" jump to get to the final ladder. I have never found a way to reliably tell if a "cake" (as I use to call them) will appear (although if one "cake" has just passed and another hasn't appeared within a certain amount of time, you can be fairly sure it's safe to take that jump). On the slow versions, and on DK, the fact that you can run the other way on a conveyor belt helps a lot, because you never have to take a blind jump to get to the final ladder, and, if you pay attention, you'll always have time to stop running and jump over a cake if one should appear.
Elevators: Yes, on all CK versions, the elevators come in sets of 3, while on DK they come continuously; this makes DK *slightly* easier, but I haven't quite figured out the rhythm of the springs on DK, which makes it harder for me. On CK, the hardest elevator level actually is L=03!!! Up to and including L=03, the springs come continuously and the time in between them gets shorter going from L=01 to L=02 to L=03. Starting at L=04, the springs come in pairs, and the gap between two pairs of pairs is larger than the gap between any pair of single springs on L=03.
Rivets: Apart from visual differences (the invisible hammer on CK after having taken the lower hammer, the fireballs having "tails" on DK), I don't feel any difference between CK and DK.
Now I have played the US version of DK a few times and have gotten used to the strange order of the stages, my main problem is the rhythm of the springs on the elevator level; I am not too concerned about the conveyor belt level, and I am starting to get used to not automatically hiding on a ladder on the barrel levels, which only makes it a little harder than CK (especially the CK versions in which the second hammer is so hard to get).
Ben Jos.