Beating Donkey Kong 64 with as Few Tags as Possible

It's the argument I've heard so much over the past few years: if Donkey Kong 64 allowed you to switch Kongs at will instead of using the Tag Barrel, it'd be a much better game. I'm not arguing that, but it got me thinking about just how much you need to use the Tag Barrel. So let's try to beat Donkey Kong 64 with as few tags as possible.
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TIMECODES
00:00 Intro
01:02 Rules and definitions
03:19 Up to Key 1
03:51 Up to Key 2
06:33 Up to Key 3
09:12 Up to Key 4
10:50 Mid-challenge roundup
12:07 Up to Key 5
15:59 Up to Key 6
18:36 Up to Key 7
20:28 Key 8 and beating the game
24:17 Getting 101% completion
27:21 Conclusion

[@GigasGMX]

Honestly, the tag barrel itself is fine. The problem is the decision to make Colored Bananas and Blueprints kong-sensitive, creating this really annoying situation where a collectable is *right there* but you can't pick it up because it's spray-painted the wrong color.

[@atkingofhearts]

Completely agree, though I don’t mind the blueprints as much as I do the bananas. It’s so frustrating to have to haul back to a barrel just to collect a few bananas. Even worse if you’re forgetful like me and have to remember where they were in the first place.

[@LucosPlays]

The Tag challenge was really interesting i wasn't expecting it to be SO LOW it's actually impressive and it really makes routing different and i really wanna try it out and see if there's a way to actually lower the count even more or if 40 is the most optimal number. Great video Cloud!

[@j_c_93]

Personally, I include turning off the game and reloading to play as DK a tag. I mean, it's even more time consuming than just going to a barrel, so it doesn't really deflect the tag barrel criticism.

[@CloudConnection]

@Big Baller that's a fair point, although this video wasn't really meant to address or confront the Tag Barrel criticism, it was more just a fun thought experiment

[@j_c_93]

@@CloudConnection understood. I'm not trying to take away from your video. It was great.

[@6kirigiri9]

tbh it is possible to beat it without really tagging anyone, the any% speedrun is crazy insane and i recommend you check out the wr run ( i know its supposed to be casual, but you really can just beat the game with donkey kong)

[@saithvenomdrone]

I remember really really loving DK64 as a kid. I never beat it. I was very close to the end, but was missing 1 Golden Key. Going back to it, the game is definitely intimidating in terms of tedium. But during the age of my youth, where I only got new games once a year for either Christmas or my birthday, the amount of playtime of a game like this was a dream come true.

[@mathewpercy3292]

You weren’t close to beating it.

[@saithvenomdrone]

@@mathewpercy3292 Pretty sure I was. I was in the last level, Hideout Helm. And there was a Golden Key behind some glass that I never figured out how to get.

[@orangeslash1667]

@@saithvenomdrone Fun Fact: You can use Lanky Kong's stretchy arms to bypass the B lockers and enter the next world.

[@selfaware7617]

I agree we only had so many opportunities to get a game in this era. We didn't have jobs or money. I think honestly I only had 17 or so games by the time the console's lifespan was over. Played them as much as I could. The mini games mostly suck but what else did we have to do besides keep replaying them until we won

[@Sentay0]

Just hearing the rules makes this massive game seem all the more daunting

[@Jcm19995]

Omg so daunting , is the game fun this way ?

[@josewilhelm2717]

It's satisfying how the banana fairy counter increases at the exact moment as the camera takes the shot and the snapshot sound 5:56

[@MrBizznessMan]

This definitely feels like it could be its own Speedrun Category. I know that some games have low% runs where you try to get as little as possible. But this could be its own any% category with as few tags as possible. Even if its not faster than the actual any% speedrun.

[@TheRTDZ]

The fact that 37.5% of the tags are only needed for the final 101% stretch illustrates what’s so frustrating about the tag barrels: it’s not fun to tag in another character when the only reward is ten coloured bananas.

[@EmperorZ19]

Yeah. IMO, tagging anywhere isn't a perfect solution, since navigating the level as each Kong is often a meaningfully different experience, but having to comb the entirety of the level five times really sucks. I'd be happy if they just got rid of the concept of colored collectibles. Needing to switch because your Kong doesn't have the necessary abilities is one thing, but needing to switch to a specific Kong just because the game says you have to in the most arbitrary way possible, that's just stupid.

[@orangeslash1667]

@@EmperorZ19 Rare's original intention was for the game to be 2.5d, but they knew it would look as cool the pre-rendered sprites of the Country games. So they took the Banjo Kazooie approach. This explains why Nintendo hired Retro Studio's to make a 2.5 DK game.

[@Nintendotron64]

@@EmperorZ19even beyond the color coded collectibles, there’s a lot of missions the game outright restricts you from even attempting because you just happened to stumble in with the wrong kong. Or even just collectibles arbitrarily blocked by a specific character’s switch. THAT is what is frustrating about DK64: the fact that it not only asks you to jump through a lot of hoops to complete its tasks…which aren’t even very interesting to complete in the first place.

[@christiangledhill4848]

Gloomy Galleon is my favorite world!

[@parksyist]

The research that went into this nustve been immense brilliant content well done

[@starckie]

You need way more subs and views. Great vid, as always

[@rossbolin1023]

Keep up the interesting vid concepts & vid quality man! Easily one of my favorite KZbinrs right now

[@JaredTVW]

This just goes to show that people are unnecessarily harsh on how “bloated” this game really s and how “much backtracking” is necessary. I played this game not unlocking Tiny at all until Castle and if you beat the boss with her, she is technically a ghost character until you jump into the tag barrel, in which case the game treats her as being unlocked. But you can still collect her coins and bananas, you just cannot see them on the world map. This game is awesome and I feel people are so down on this game.

[@VideojugadorIrritado]

Impressive how you remember everything and make the best choices.

[@CloudConnection]

Believe me, this wouldn't be possible if I wasn't taking feverish notes and routing out a game plan! I did play this game twice, once on emulator to test a route as I made it and again on console to record it. By the time I recorded it, I definitely had quite a bit of the game memorized.

[@leethompson-kolar6333]

Maybe I’m missing something, but you collected far more collectibles than you needed for minimum completion. I can’t say if that altered the outcome-you understand this game and challenge better than I-but it felt like more work than necessary to me. Hearing the 101% tag number was pretty satisfying, though, so fair enough.

[@IsabelRodriguez-jt8tg]

I also thought he was just going to collect the minimum required to beat the game 😅

[@lkjkhfggd]

​@@IsabelRodriguez-jt8tghe did get way more stuff than needed to beat the game, but at no point did that cause more tag barrel changes, so it doesn't change the end result.

[@zero-zs8sm]

i know that DK64 gets a ton of flak nowadays, but honestly despite it's flaws, i still think it's a great game. and this is coming from someone who didn't play the game till about 2 years ago.

[@jimlyons9251]

Thanks for this man. So entertaining ❤

[@Pugweenee]

Amazing video as always! This and the Banjo backtracking video have been some of my favorites. Keep up the great work and you'll earn yourself one big GB and if you're lucky maybe some CB too!

[@CloudConnection]

Thanks so much dude! I'm really proud of this and the tooie video!

[@lkjkhfggd]

Just played through the game 101% first time as an adult and first time without a strategy guide. Simply having to tag out is not a big deal when the barrel is super close by, such as in Hideout Helm, or in the Fungi Forest lobby. The issue is when the game puts multiple items in the same room that is somewhat far away from a tag barrel and multiple kongs have to enter the room and grab some different thing. In this situation, there's no challenge or anything interesting about walking back to the barrel and coming back over and over. They may as well have put a tag barrel in that room. The other issue is when there are random colored bananas sitting on a path that does not lead to anything. Gloomy Galleon, Fungi Forest, and Crystal Caves had this. Basically, you have to switch characters just so you can collect only 5 colored bananas because the bananas themselves did not lead into an event that the kong was needed for. This felt annoying.

[@mjevans4321]

My playthrough was based on 100 percenting each level as one single kong then switching to the next kong and so on. Rather than switching kongs constantly

[@Lugmillord]

When you first entered Crystal Caves, you then switched to Diddy before going to Creepy Castle. Couldn't you have gone to Castle ewith Chunky first? Are there any benefits for that? Maybe a tag less for the boss door.

[@iliya1933]

I love this idea. I’d like to see this be done with any switch that isn’t forced (forced switches being what you mentioned in some specific boss fights), so restarting the game to be on DK isn’t a way to “cheat” the switch number getting lower. Either way, though, this video is awesome.

[@MemeNess]

Early Gang. Always down for some DK64 content.

[@arcuscotangens]

I knew it! The next time someone complains about the tag barrel, I can tell them that no true gamer would ever need it more than 50 times to complete the game.

[@omegahaxors3306]

A backtrackingrun could be a pretty funny speedrun category. The timer only goes up whenever you're going back to switch characters. Instead of optimizing for total time played, you're optimizing for total time wasted.

[@Kanonji77]

Yeeeeaaah new content on awesome games ! I’m so glad :D

[@UncleT4life]

Interesting stuff glad to see the tag barrel get more respect. This game as a whole has been greatly underrated in recent years

[@rescuteax]

This defo needs more attention 👍

[@Znernicus]

I think at 13:37 instead of tagging tiny for the lobby GB here, it would be better to minimize your tags required to get key 5 and go straight into Chunky as your 3rd and final kong for opening key 5. If you can get 100 cbs in fungi with Lanky, Diddy, and Chunky, which I believe is all doable, then you can get key 5 one tag earlier and open access to caves and castle. you will have the opportunity to get that aztec lobby GB in between collecting caves & castle bananas for diddy and then tiny

[@Znernicus]

Another big improvement would be taking each kong to collect cbs in both caves AND castle before switching off. As key 6 is not required to reach castle, and you already have plenty over 80 GBs by the time you grab key 5.

[@schafer_andrew]

leet

[@brutusmagnuson315]

I swear, if the entire game was designed like Creepy Castle, it wouldn’t have been so malignes

[@MagillanicaLouM]

Wonder if it's been tried before. Considering how much of a complaint the tagging is, you'd think this would be a common kongmunnity challenge

[@jacobs.9661]

This makes me both excited and scared to stream DK 64 someday. Scare-cited as it were.

[@JitteryJackanape]

I was shocked I guessed right on the money with 25. I was way off for 101% though guessing 70. I'm shocked you can do a ton with the first 3 kongs that early.

[@commandercoldbird1777]

A better optimized route after forest. Chunky clears all he can from caves and switch to diddy Diddy clears all he can from caves and clears castle, ending with the ballroom. Switch to Tiny. Tiny clears the ballroom and the rest of castle, and cleans up everything else she hasnt gotten up to this point, and goes up onto the ship and gets her saxophone pad and banana fairy up there.s Reset for DK DK cleans up everything he hasnt gotten up to this point. Fight the caves boss and switch back to Chunky Chunky cleans up his forest, caves, and castle bananas he was locked out of. End with moving the rock on dk isles that's blocking lanky's instrument pad. Switch to Lanky, Play the trombone to summon diddy's barrel by the forest 😢 clean up all of his bananas up to this point. Go into the kutout fight and use the free switch to tiny to make it back up to the top of the ship. Hideout helm as normal Since diddy finished hideout helm, he can get his blueprint from caves and the 2 bananas from his jetpack barrel by lobby. Doing it this way significantly reduces the overall number of tags you nees to do when you go to cleanup after K. Rool. If my math is right, youll have 198 GBs, 3500 CBs, 20 fairies, 39 blueprints, 40 banana medals and 9 crowns.

[@commandercoldbird1777]

If you combine this route with the suggestion from somebody else to switch to dk mid aztec, you 101% the game in only 32 tags, as opposed to 40.

[@ujkloin]

This challenge with glitches seems like the most interesting thing ever, since a lot can be skipped with clipping including ALL COLORED BANANAS! Ballaam or someone could make a video on that

[@natalieeuley1734]

I think my play style meant I didn't tag as much as most people make it sound like you have to. Thinking about it, I didn't even try to play optimally and looking at this, I'm pretty sure I tagged less than 60 times while playing the game. Except for Helm, I definitely didn't change characters more than about every 10 minutes most of the time. Even though Caves, for example, makes it so that you should want to do every character in the igloo and then every character in the cabins, most of the DK 64 levels, including Caves, are pretty small and it is easy to do all of a character's stuff in one level, as you show in your route. One other easy thing to see in your route is that Galleon is the worst level for character switching and Japes requires basically none. Galleon was the hardest level for me to get through and Japes was the most fun, so I think this also justifies to me how my play style and game opinions line up lol. Anyway, I would love to see more challenge and optimization videos like this for games. I'm pretty sure routes like the 101 or NLE route don't really see tagging as much of a cost because of how fast and convenient it often is and backtracking is more expensive in a speedrun context. But challenges like this one are far more about just pushing a game to its limits, and that's fun.

[@parksyist]

If id known all this I'd have definitely played more often

[@ezrathefirstlionkeybladema4229]

This was basically a Professor Oak Challenge

[@Inutsu]

Hello! I was surprised by the results of this challenge!

[@PEZhead5432109876]

At 5:24, instead of going straight to tiny, couldn’t you have reset to get back to Donkey for free and opened the Llama Temple first? Seems like that would be more efficient

[@CloudConnection]

You actually make a good point. I did originally plan to switch out to Donkey after Diddy's initial run in Aztec to open the Temple, although when I was routing that, I was NOT counting DK tags as free. (I was initially hesitant to add that rule, and since I did my routing figuring that I wouldn't allow it, I realized that switching to Tiny in Aztec was more favorable for the tag count if free DK tagging was banned.) I didn't pursue the DK Aztec route any further, so with the updated rules, it very well could be more efficient in the end. I'm gonna have to route out the full game once again to see if this is actually more optimal, mind you. I've routed up to Key 4, and so far, it's just as optimal as the Tiny Aztec route. (UPDATE: Actually, it could be more optimal as you'd have 4 tags by Puftoss instead of 5.) But you've piqued my curiosity. When I have the free time, I'll keep working at it to see if this saves any tags!

[@loganmason1846]

I don't know if this helps but you should be able to damage boost to the #5 banana teleporter in Aztec as Diddy. This'll give you all the colored bananas you said you needed. This should remove at least one tag barrel

[@kevinbuchanan67]

I'm currently going through this, and i don't even know if it's any fun... I'm thinking it's not

[@Kira-qp5ll]

CBs nuts.

[@SvartUlv9]

Great video! What about trying this challenge, but without backtracking? Can it be done?

[@Fools_Requiem]

this was of playing seems to be a more efficient way of playing. Just play the game with a specific Kong until you can't collect more items instead of swapping back and forth a bunch. Though, I'd do everything I can regardless of number of swaps just to clear the Factory as early as possible. I hate that level.

[@Clodd1]

After all these years, im still deciding if I love or hate DK64 or something in the middle. If I could remake the game I'd change so many things, just to start off, I'd definitely cut out the five Kongs, letting only DK and Diddy and for god's sake resize the enemies so they could look proporcional.

[@swagdoll420]

This may be a late comment, but I'd like to say, as somebody who already loves DK64, Tagging Anywhere makes the experience a LOT better. Once you try out a Tag Anywhere mod (whether on its own or for the Randomizer,) it's hard to go back to Tag Barrels.

[@lunaitc]

I'm not convinced that going all the way back to the starting area of the game is actually a superior option to using a tag barrel in the level. If anything, it seems more tedious and unfun. This feels more like malicious compliance with your own rules than anything else.

[@abyssiondeportergil5404]

There is actually a mod for tag anywhere. And It makes the game so much better, oh my god 🤣. If you can dumo your cartridge ROM on your pc to apply the patch, i recommend it

[@Acceos]

How much Tags are possible if you use Glitches like the Lanky Kong Glitch where you can enter all Levels?

[@LaCazaLP]

You know. I would argue running through the same level 5 times with a different Kong...kinda is backtracking lol But i can see why its not as bad, cause you get so new parts of the level at the end of the day. So yeah. But it can be annoying as a new player who doesnt always know where to go.

[@pokemonfreak6669]

I've never been able to beat this game because I've never been good at the Original DK games.

[@jknifgijdfui]

i still dont think dk64 should let you swap characters on the fly you might as well not have seperate characters at that point id rather the game not have character specific collectibles the fun part of collectathons is collecting stuff and the games sheer amount of stuff would be far less daunting if you didnt have to run through every area at least 5 times with each kong

[@newdonktimes2034]

Just beating the game with 25 was a lot lower than I expected. 101% with 40 was something i figured could probably happen. Still hate that beetle and rabbit

[@Blade-hf9po]

Joke's on all of you. This is how I always played this game. 40-50 tags sounds just about right.

[@arthurpietrogarcia1057]

I Never understood the argument about the d-pad character switch, if you can switch characters at any time, what the point of having collectibles specifics to them, Rare drove themselfs on a corner with the character specific collectibles since going back to a tag barrel is annoying and switching with the d-pad is boring.

[@WolfmanArt]

Has DK64 been ported to the NSO? I really want to play this!! Along with Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie!!

[@TheJ13579]

Unfortunately no.

[@WolfmanArt]

@@TheJ13579 What about Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie?

[@LucosPlays]

@@WolfmanArt only Kazooie as of right now

[@WolfmanArt]

@@LucosPlays Y'know what? That's good!! I never played Banjo-Kazooie on N64, so all the more to get the N64 Emulator for Switch!!

[@parksyist]

Virtually none in it ? 😮

[@moonstoneuniverse8516]

Funny story I was really into the periodic table as a kid and mixing elements so I was like what if you combined Potassium and Gold…. This 😂

[@ArmaKiri]

What

[@connorl3124]

@@ArmaKiri golden Bananas

[@Sleepdeprivedkitty]

You scare me sometimes

[@cartervoltfire4933]

Ha, Cb

[@Leedleleedle101]

2:59 I’m guessing you’re uaing an emulator then

[@CloudConnection]

Nope; the game has cheats built-in

[@dsmoothb]

Saving and quitting to change into ddk should count as a tag. The question is what is the fewest times you can switch characters before beating the game. So if you have to quit the game you're still changing characters so it still counts. It doesn't matter if you're going into the tag Barrel to change characters or if you're quitting the game to change characters if you have to change characters it counts

[@justafan9206]

Second

[@boozalm3715]

Hearing Cb's and Gb's about 50 times in 2 minutes drove me insane, didn't finish this garbage

[@APootisBirb]

This really do be a 5GBs, 100CBs, blueprint N°X, and medal N°X-2

[@benbriggsmusic]

I swear I just watched all your videos like 3 months ago and here I am running back the hits 🫡