Category description

This category exploits the fact that the palace rooms are secretly connected (see the section about the game mechanics). The idea here is therefore warping from palace room to palace room until level 17 is reached and then rescue the king. This means no hidden items are collected and will therefore give the normal ending when Jack leaves the pyramid.

Level-by-level description

To shorten down the text I will use some references below. Numbers refer to the bomb numbers in the Palace_room_bomb_sequences. The tases for the best ending and the normal ending, are referred to as tasbe and tasne, respectively.

Stage 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Qd_eTinXw
A straight-forward level. There are 6 mighty coins available, of which 4 are equally fast and considerably faster than the other two. It's recommended to pick up these four coins, which will be used in level 17 (and will be further discussed there).

Palace room 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvtk3fZObRo - This method is fairly safe and relatively fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLvEAJCnY8A - From the tasbe. It's a few tenths of a second faster than the method above. There is a tricky jump on the right side that requires practice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQqwDYsEgXM - This is a very tricky route based on the tasbe solution.

Palace room 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h89N8YN-8s - Running between two platforms is actually one frame slower than jumping between them. However, there is a risk of jumping over bomb 10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AQtySiUCVo - This is a variant of the tasbe method. Unfortunately, I have only been able to follow this route on emu and been able to reproduce it on console.

Palace room 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiogaIV3y-c - This is a copy of the tasne method. The tasbe starts out with bomb 24, but that route leads to some close enemy encounters. While it's faster, it's doubtful whether it can be used in real time. In this video, a jellyfish spawned at the bottom. It's quite uncommon for that mummy to drop all the way to the bottom. Some of the other enemy types can not be bypassed by simply running straight to the right. However, since this is so uncommon, I won't list the different ways to deal with them.

Palace room 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z95a02kAtgI - It requires fairly precise timing throughout the room to arrive in the top right corner at the right moment. Too early and the mummy will not drop and too late means there is not enough time to collect the last bombs at the bottom before the enemy hitbox becomes active.
There is a minor enemy manipulation required for this to work. If the first enemy spawn is a skull, it's almost impossible to not lose time and must be avoided. The lobster is not ideal either, but still workable. The other enemy types are fine. Since the previous rooms are cleared so quickly that no enemies should spawn, there is no indication where in the enemy cycle you are when entering this room. The best is to keep track during attempts of which enemy spawns you get in this room. That can then be offset earlier on. For example by pressing A a few times when approaching the exit in room 2. Since there is so much gliding leading up to here, there is no guarantee it will work though. It's just a matter of improving the odds.
The tas methods are not practical in real time.