Yes, that's why I listed the romsets used at the top - not guaranteed for other versions :) I've gotten 200k on the "dkong" romset, but I only sent it to Deca '99 & my copy of the .inp (along with pretty much all of my other pre July 99 inps) got deleted when I changed computers. I'll have to make a new one for MARP sometime I guess.(posted 9604 days ago)The missing beam under the second hammer in Barrels is why I think it's inaccessible - the fall would kill Mario. Any version where the beam is there that hammer should be in play. The differences in Barrels will be more important later on. DK US is very agressive, and likes to throw beanballs (baseball term for a ball thrown at a batter's head) at you if you go through too fast, stop moving for too long, or take the easy path. Not having the holes makes the last two of these more likely, so you'll provoke beanballs more often. The third case is most obvious right before the 2cd hammer ... if you dodge a difficult barrel set by climbing you'll get one thrown at you - usually while you're on the ladder, but if you jump the barrels then climb you'll be ok.
The 5 fireballs are a problem on DK conveyors, but they're somewhat controllable. If you wait a bit at the start you can usually go up the right side without fireball trouble. The biggest aggravation I have is the cement pans (what you call cakes). which is why the fast conveyors on "ckong" give me a headache. I have enough trouble with those on normal speed
The springs, or bouncing girders, is the cruncher on DK. I don't have any trouble (on either CK or DK) until L=4 on Elevators, but on L=4 it gets very hard to tell when you can go up safely. The most common advice is wait two springs and go, which for DK US is worthless. For CK, it looks like "wait for two paired springs to go by and go" is what you're doing - the springs coming in pairs is actually more obvious with the speed throttle turned off (300%+ speed - F10 in MSDOS MAME) than it is at normal speed.
You can't walk into/behind Donkey Kong on Rivets, but that's pretty much it. Yeah, the DK fireballs have tails, but jumping the rivets fireballs is a mistake (or desperation move) anyway so it doesn't matter much.
Barrels gets harder (and you have to do 3 times per building at L=5 and beyond) but it should be ok with practice, and Elevators is a pain for everybody.A detailed explanation of what I do on elevators is in the donkey kong section of my webpage.
http://www.digicron.com/aquatarkus/arcade/index.html
Aqua