DKC Atlas Forum

[Phyreburnz]

A few years ago, I got DKC2 for my snes. I beat it and got 102%. The next time, I beat it (and got everything) and got 101%. The next time, I got 100%. Each time I beat it, I lose a percentage point. I believe I've gotten it down in the 80% range. I'm not missing anything. I've talked to all of the Kongs and everything. I have the Kremkoins and DK coins. I remember it reset once, and I got 102 again, but after that the percentage, again, kept going down each time I beat it.

I have no idea why this is happening. I mentioned it on a post before, but nobody saw it (I don't think). Does this happen with everybody's copy of DKC2? Does anybody have an explanation? I looked it up and found nothing. The game plays normally for the most part, a few minor sound glitches here and there. Any insight would be appreciated.

[Simion32]

I remember my old DKC2 cartridge would randomly erase/complete itself on any given start up (random slots too). I used to put the game in when I was younger, and hope it wouldn't glitch.

Is your cartridge used? I thought someone might have done the Castle Crush glitch on my old cart. That could definitely erase stuff or screw up the save system.

Could be either one of (guessing here):
(1) Progressive cartridge bit rot (very unlikely)
(2) A DKC2 glitch caused this (holy crap)
(3) Your cartridge battery is going dead, and the current needed to store the data is slowly diminishing, thus one by one a bit gets "lost" to 0 (meaning nothing collected for that DK Coin/Bonus/etc) and makes your percentage go down by one. Again I don't know if this is actually possible but it's just a guess.

[Markster]

Damn castle crush glitch, it always seems to be the death of all DKC2 cartridges and ROM's, I hope the Delta Game Engine remake of DKC2 will not have the castle crush glitch.

[Simion32]

I hope the Delta Game Engine remake of DKC2 will not have the castle crush glitch.

Well it won't be able to anyway, since it's programmed in C++ and the design will prevent anything awry from happening even if you managed to get Diddy to hold a NULL object.

If he were to hold a NULL pointer or a pointer to an arbitrary memory location, on the other hand, it would most likely crash due to an access violation (which would be a programming error in DELTA, but those will be fixed).

This is kinda what happens on the SNES, except there is no checking mechanism to detect the "access violation". The SNES just keeps on executing code like nothing bad ever happened, no matter what glitch or programming error you invoke. This is why glitching can (sometimes anyway) have such a detrimental effect on the game cartridge.

[Phyreburnz]

My game is used, and I don't know if anyone before me did the castle crush glitch. I know for certain that I have not. I read about the glitch and was afraid to try it, because there's the warning about game erasing and such.

I don't think the battery is going dead. I can play and save without a problem. It's really weird. I mean, I beat it the WHOLE way, like I was on the top of the video game heroes thing at the end and everything. It knows that I have everything, it just gives me one less percentage point each time I beat the game. And, as I've said, it did seem to reset itself once and I was able to get 102%, but the next time it was 101% (that was a few years ago when that happened).

I also find it odd that I was able to get 102% the very first time I played and beat the game. If this glitch (or whatever it is) was made by somebody else doing the castle crush glitch, it is very doubtful that when I got it that it would have either been beaten down to 0% or it reset for whatever reason. It would have been more likely for my first game to have been like 101 or somewhere in the 90% range.

Just for an experiment, I think I should (eventually) beat it until I get 0%, just to see what happens. It may take a few years, though!

I don't know... with the way that it happens, it almost seems to me like it was programmed or something... maybe my cartridge is an older version? I just don't see what could possibly make me lose 1 point each time I beat the game. And it's never jumped around, like maybe I lose 2 or 3 % points... it's always been 1.

[Simion32]

The only other thing I can think of: A corrupted cpu instruction on the cart, maybe?

If a certain code which checks the percentage got corrupted to a decrement instruction; it could well be decrementing a hidden "total possible percentage so far" kind of variable, which then makes it go down by 1 each time the corrupted code is invoked.

Grasping at straws here, but hey, it's a cartridge. There's really no way to tell for sure what exactly is going on.

[aperson98]

@Phyreburnz- At least you didn't encounter the problem I have with my DKC2 GBA cart, it won't save...at all it erases the data every time I turn off the power.

[Simion32]

it won't save...at all it erases the data every time I turn off the power

Your cartridge's SRAM backup battery is dead.

Without that, the game cannot retain any save data (SRAM) and will automatically revert to "nothing" upon loss of power. SNES games are like this.

[aperson98]

After your reply I've read on how the GBA saves data, it turns out that, in fact some carts still use batteries instead of flash memory. The main reason I think they might have done this was because I heard they were cheaper to make then flash memory chips.

[Phyreburnz]

My cartridge, for now at least, has stopped whatever it was doing before. So far, I've not had decreasing percentage, which makes this even more strange to me. I'll keep an eye on it and see if my percentage starts to drop again.