Looks like I'm in the same boat as a few others. The only thing holding me back from getting some decent DK scores is learning how to retreat. I once tried a save state to practice the technique but it didn't help. I just ended up getting dizzy watching the springs bounce.
Does anyone have a suggestion as to the best way to learn this?
This is easy to say but hard to learn. After you run over to the left side, park yourself about as far to the right as you can without the rivets hitting you. Some crowd it more; some less but the key ingredient is to always be in the same place or you'll never learn the timing. I like Mario to be slightly to the right of the yellow elevator top.
When you see a long, high spring, head right and start taking in (as best you can) the next spring. If it's short, just don't miss making a quick turn up the ladder and you'll be surprised how easy it was. If you screw up at all in getting on the ladder or if you can tell that it wasn't a short spring, go back to that safe spot and try again. I've even been partway up the ladder and still made it back to the safe spot alive and well.
Here comes the harder part; give yourself time to learn this. Some say that they do better not worrying about all this and just let it flow. As a former teacher, I can tell you that it takes lots of repetitions over a period of days or weeks to get your reactions trained so that it feels natural. There are two kinds of learned psychomotor responses; one in which you're conscious of what you're doing, the other when you just react. Conscious response means you're processing info r/t and your mind will play a little trick on you; it erases the time gap required to "think about it" from your consciousness and you'll swear you left on time--but you were late.
What you need to do is develop what's called "conditioned response". The processing happens at a deeper level. A good example of this is kind of cool to watch. Next time you're driving down the highway, look at your hands. You'll see them making very subtle adjustments of the wheel to keep your car going straight. It'll start to feel weird... like "who's doing that??!!" You're not conscious of the car's incredibly slight left to right movements, yet you're correcting for those. And it's just happening.
The problem for many people is they won't allow the time needed to turn playing DK (or any video game) into a conditioned response. Think about when you first got behind the wheel of a car. You knew you had to correct... you knew you were weaving around a little. But it took time before you not only didn't need to think about it... but your subconscious is responding with uncanny subleties to the most minute inputs from your eyes.
So in my book, the single biggest things to remember are to be in exactly the same place each time and then... cut yourself slack! Conditioned response isn't hard wired into a human brain for quite a while.
God I'm wordy. Sorry!
