New Donkey Kong Bananza Speedrun Exploit Lets You Straight Up Fly

Two days ago, YouTuber Nicro shared a technique he discovered that’s become known as IFAT—which stands for “infinite fast aerial surf turf”—and that has fundamentally changed the speedrunning landscape for the game. The new move is predicated on the pre-existing double AFAT ( “aerial fast air surf turf”), which is executed by essentially grabbing a chunk, jumping, surf turfing, then cancelling and re-entering the surf turf, all in rapid succession. In Nicro’s words, the IFAT is: “ZL into ZL into jump plus attack, over and over again, in a very precise rhythm.” The IFAT basically chains AFATs forever, which allows Donkey Kong to soar into the heavens and straight to the speedrunning finish line.

The new tech allows many segments of Donkey Kong Bananza to be skipped entirely, with a few hard-coded exceptions. The IFAT move is “incredibly difficult” to perform due to the precise nature of the inputs required; in his video, Nicro shares eighth-note triplet beats, set to 210- and 215-BPM, that he made as guides for practicing the move. In spite of the IFAT’s complexity, the top-10 speedrunning record was set six times yesterday alone, as reported by Polygon. 

But it’s not all fun and games. Nintendo has a history of patching out speedrunning tricks in Mario Odyssey, and it is possible that the game-breaking movement tech of Odyssey’s successor can be fixed in an automatic update once Nintendo catches word that players are engaging with their game in a way the company didn’t intend. Only time will tell if Donkey Kong’s beautiful angel wings will remain unclipped; but in the meantime, fly high, brother.