38 replies to this topic

[MegaManFan]

(This review originally posted in the Game Boy Central forum of the message boards at VintageGamer.net. See the URL in my sig for more information!)

Continuing my ongoing series of GBA reviews, the latest installment is Donkey Kong Country. If you weren't a gamer in the mid-1990's you may not remember this series debut on the SNES, but for many of us it was quite a shock. At the time the images in 2-D platformers across the board were relatively flat and one dimensional, without too many frames of animation; RARE took that creativity tree and shook it fiercely until we were dizzy from being hit by coconuts. When the blurry vision cleared, one was staring at a video game with incredibly lush backgrounds, vivid foregrounds, and characters both good and evil alike animated enough to be their own Saturday morning cartoon (and eventually, it was). The sound, the music, the gameplay, and most of all the 3-D modeling and animation of Donkey and Diddy Kong pushed the SNES beyond what people had perceived were the limits. Quite honestly the first time I saw the game I had a hard time believing it was running on a Super Nintendo - I had to look at the console, look at the screen, look at the cart in the console, look at the screen again, and just be agog. Of course if it wasn't fun to play all of that greatness would have just been window dressing on a bad platformer, but the first installment if not the two that followed it as well deserve recognition as among the best platform games ever made.

Fast forward to 2003. 3-D modeling in 2-D platformers is rather passe now (the standard as opposed to the exception) and RARE as a company has abandoned it's once stalwart ally Nintendo to join hands with X-Box (I wretch thinking about it). Yet this title still remains part of the Nintendo library, and they can exercise their full rights to port it to any system they choose - and so they chose Gameboy Advance. Given the GBA is and always has been a miniaturized SNES, that's a logical and good choice. The upside is that even though what games are capable of has long since passed Donkey Kong Country by, it still looks, plays and sounds as vividly beautiful as it did in 1994. But nostalgia doesn't surplant the ups and downs of this port, and there are a few. On the plus side I actually find it's easier to control the "DK switch" from one tag team member to the other with the GBA sp left shoulder button, and similarly easier to control running with the right, than it was to do so with the original SNES shoulder buttons. Of course, Metroid Fusion gave me a lot of practice, so I'm probably biased. On the minus side, some degree of resolution is lost from the big screen version, meaning a few visual effects (such as the popping DK balloon when you lose a life) had to be cut altogether; though I admit the amount of detail they managed to keep is impressive. Still, you'll notice some occasional blurring when the GBA refresh rate lags a bit. I'm not talking as bad as original Castlevania or Super Mario Land on ye olde Original Game Boy, but you may still notice it now and again.

Now the press kit and the promo packages for this game promised "enhancements" from the original, and these are a decidely mixed bag. Two new mini games are included that you can either play seperately or during the adventure mode. "Funky Fishing" is pretty good - it's a spin on the old Atari 2600 "Fishing Derby" with nicely done graphics and responsive gameplay that rewards you for reeling in several at once and penalizes you for being sloppy and catching the wrong aquatic life (or even worse, ocean pollution). The "Candy Kong Dance" though bites the big one. Played Space Channel 5? Played Parappa the Rapper? Now imagine mixing those two together, only getting it horribly horribly wrong. The timing is impossible to master - you'll punch the keypad right when you think it's on, only to be told you're way off. If you mash the same key several times as the one you're supposed to hit comes across, you'll get either one decent or one "PERFECT" hit but still be penalized for all the unnecessary extra keys you pushed. After being told by that bitch Candy you have two left feet for the umpteenth time, you'll either want to hurl your GBA across the room or beg DK to rip her arms off and slap her in the face with them - too bad it's not an option. Other non mini-game features include a photo scrapbook (updated on certain enemy combo kills and hidden game items) and a "stat log" that shows you what percentage of each level you actually completed.

Bringing a game like Donkey Kong Country to the GBA was long overdue, and for the most part Nintendo got it right. If you were a fan of the original you'll be pleased by this adaptation; which is not pixel perfect but does capture everything fun and right about the original to an excellent, somewhat frustrating (like the SNES version) and highly addictive degree. If you've never played it before now, you'll probably be impressed by this title even more. If you're a fan of platforming games and own a GBA, I'd rate this one a must have. Overall, it's an 8 out of 10.

[Ze_ro]

I think I'll wait for Mario & Donkey Kong... I never much cared for the Donkey Kong Country games for some reason. When they actually took out Donkey Kong himself as a playable character, the whole series got even worse, since the other characters were really lame.

--Zero

[King Atari]

The first DKC was definitely best, I'm going to pick it up for GBA. When I bought it when it first came out in '94, it was the most amazing thing I had seen at the time.

[MegaManFan]

I'll admit I thought it was strange at first that Donkey Kong was the hero as opposed to the villain, but since he had been the "star" of the arcade games I actually thought it was an interesting evolution of matching his well known name with a well designed game; so ultimately I said "Why not?" If wrestlers can switch face to heel and back again, so can game characters.

[jsoper]

I was just reading an old segabase article the other day that was talking about the 32x launch. The press asked the Sega guy if he was worried about the competition from Donkey Kong Country and he said no but he did congratulate the competition for "releasing one good game this year"
Guess we all know how that story ended

[King Atari]

Wasn't it DKC that prompted Sega to release Vectorman? VM did use the same style graphics, though the end result wasn't as lush or memorable as DKC.

[Stein]

DKC I thought was one of the best video games ever written, I'm a fan no doubt I played it at least twice thru from beggining to end... but the sequels just didn't do anything for me.

DK's no villian, he's just a big dumb ape who wanted a little female companionship once DK Jr. came out the roles were reversed, Mario was the bad guy and the two apes were the good guys...

[Yar]

If you follow what Cranky Kong says, you'll learn that he is in fact the Kong from the original Donky Kong, with the DK of Donky Kong Country being his Grandson. Just had to make sure you have it straight

I loved Donky Kong Country games, the third being my favorite. DK64 bites the big one, however.

[Nintendo Penguin]

I never played the third one, but I loved the first two. I still have the promo VHS nintendo sent me for the original. The second one was great.

Yes, DKC was what spawned the rendered graphics craze and inspired Vector Man.

[Bivotar]

Quote

DK64 bites the big one, however

I thoroughly enjoyed DK64. The variety of playing as different Kongs was fun. The final boss fight was hard (have to beat him with each Kong) but very memorable. You can even go back and play some early Rare computer games, and a nice arcade version of the original Donkey Kong.

I don't think it bit "the big one" at all. But it's not really comparing apples to apples to look at DKC and DK64 (very different games).

[kisrael]

Bivotar said:

Quote

DK64 bites the big one, however

I thoroughly enjoyed DK64. The variety of playing as different Kongs was fun. The final boss fight was hard (have to beat him with each Kong) but very memorable. You can even go back and play some early Rare computer games, and a nice arcade version of the original Donkey Kong.

I agree. The game was a bit heavy on the collecting side, but was very polished overall, with a lot of variety in the different boards.

I particularly admired the ability to go back and redo any beaten boss fight, which really are the "money" parts of most games. I wish Metroid, Zelda, et al would throw that in as a feature.

I wrote a boss-only FAQ for this game, introducing strategies that I hadn't seen in the other FAQs, but it was rejected at GameFAQs.

Anyway, I jammed through this game w/ a guide in like 2 1/2 days STRAIGHT...at the end it messed with my 3D perception a bit, I'd walk outside and the buildings next to the street would look a bit too tall, and cars would seem to recede too quickly as they went past...it was odd. I've had recreational chemicals that have had less of a noticable effect.

[Yar]

I can see why you enjoy it. I don't think it's really a case of "this is a bad game" as it is "I just don't like the way this particular game plays". I found that playing as the 5 kongs just got too slow and tedious. There were some great puzzles and elements, but the gold bannanas, and blueprints and fairys and the multicolored bannanas just got on my nerves. Maybe I just have ADD

[Nintendo Penguin]

Okay, so some people like it and some people don't. Is it worth getting for my 64? I never played it before and now I am curious.

[Stein]

to me it comes down to dk64 is 3d, and I don't like most 3d games (they make me motion sick). So basicly there has never been a port of a classic game to 3d that I like. Some people love them seeing it as the natural evolution of gaming.

If you like the whole DK theme and you like new 3d oriented games, you *should* like dk 64 it does look pretty damn cool.

If not, I wouldn't bother with it...

[kisrael]

VintageGamer said:

Okay,  so some people like it and some people don't. Is it worth getting for my 64? I never played it before and now I am curious.

Well, you can get a sense with this thread:
Pluses: Very cool bosses, good level design, the original DK and JetPac (early Rare game for this one old UK system) Minuses: an awful lot of collecting, some inherent goofiness.

My suggestion would be to play through it with a FAQ or walkthrough or guide of some sort.

Also, is this one of those games that required the expansion pack? Make sure you have that if so.

[Ze_ro]

My little mini-review of Donkey Kong 64:

Graphics: 8/10 - Nice, but not as good as I expected. Since this thing needed the expansion pack, I was expecting to be blown away, but I wasn't. It's definitely no Conker. However, the graphics are good, and get the job done. Things are smooth, but seem a little sluggish compared to Mario 64. There's not much pop-up, although it happens occasionally. Camera angles could have been better, but they were much better than Mario 64 (I've never seen a 3D game that didn't have some problem with camera angles). Levels are nicely detailed with little things like butterflies moving around and such. Nice animation, and good models for the characters. Many of the items to pick up are obviously not 3D though... they're very noticably pre-rendered, and they look bad because of it.

Sound: 9/10 - Goofy tunes (The intro is especially bad, but in a funny way), but they fit the game well. Very similar to the music and sounds from DKC. Much of the music changes when you're in different parts of the levels (for example, if you enter a cave, the music changes to sound more appropriate). Characters make noises like grunts and such, but don't generally talk at all, even in the cutscenes. You get speech bubbles instead (King K. Rool seems to be an exception).

Gameplay: 6/10 - The gameplay is actually very good. The characters have a wide variety of moves, and all handle differently. You actually get more moves for each character as you go on. The game also commonly jumps off into mini-games, much like DKC did. Sometimes these are timed "get the coin" type things, and sometimes completely different, like whack-a-mole Kremlin games. Some of them are fun, but I usually found them to be somewhat annoying, and diverting from the game (I thought the same about the way DKC did them though, so your milage may vary). The main problem with the gameplay is that everything is so forced about it. A lot of your characters moves can ONLY be done when you're standing on a button that specifically tells you to do the move. Like, you'll see a button with a picture of a guitar on it... so if you're playing as Diddy, you can play your guitar there, and it'll do something (what it actually does is usually not obvious, which is also a problem... but it never does something bad, so just do them all). However, you can't play any other instruments on there or anything else. So, instead of having "context sensitive zones" like Conker has, you get different types that you have to meet character requirements to activate. Also, everything in the level has a color to it. It's either yellow, red, blue, or purple. It's color indicates what character it's meant for... yellow for Donkey Kong, red for Diddy, etc. Anything that isn't the color of your current character cannot be picked up. This means that if you find a patch of red bananas, you'll have to backtrack until you find a change barrel, then change into Diddy, and find your way back to the bananas. This may not sound so bad, but the exhaustive collecting gets irritating after a while. This and the "buttons" just serve to force replay ability in a very artificial way instead of actually making things tricky. For example, instead of making a guitar button that you have to use to break down a wall... why not just make any character able to break it down by standing in front of it and playing their instrument? Anyways, the game is fun if you can get past this aspect of it. If it wasn't for this, I'd probably have given this a 9/10. Oh yeah, and the bosses are pretty cool... except that you're forced to fight them with specific characters, which is kind of annoying (... again, forced)

Control: 8/10 - As I said before, every character has a different set of moves, which gradually grows as you get farther in the game. Of course, moves like climbing trees and jumping are common to every character. Every character has a musical instrument, a "special move", and some form of projectile... all of which are fairly easy to use, and all of which require various forms of "ammo" (although ammo is rarely an issue). In many cases, there will be obstacles that require a certain attribute to get past... perhaps you'll have to walk on your hands as Lanky to get up a certain ramp or whatever. There's also weird extras like banana fairies that you have to take pictures of with a camera... the game keeps track of how much you've found, and every level has the same amount of stuff. You change characters by jumping into "change barrels" that are located around the level (Yes, this means you often have to backtrack to change characters). There's also save point barrels where you'll start after dying.

Overall - It's a fun game, and would have been a great game if it wasn't for the forced collecting. If you don't mind the collecting, and you're a Mario 64 fan, you'll probably love the game though. It has a good theme, there's LOTS of stuff to do, so there's a good chunk of replay here. The characters aren't as lame as games like DKC3. However, don't get your expectations too high, because the game really doesn't seem like it makes good use of the expansion pak... especially not when games like Conker seem to blow this game away without using it at all. If you can find it for a good price, I'd highly recommend it, but if you don't already have an expansion pak, you might want to think twice.

I guess that wasn't very mini after all...

--------------------------------------------

I'd also like to say that I never much liked Donkey Kong Country... perhaps I'm the only one, since everyone else seems to love it so much. I'm not even sure what I don't like about it... the graphics are good, the sound is good, and the gameplay is solid... maybe it's the speed that I don't like or something, but I'd rather be playing Super Mario World.

--Zero

[Nintendo Penguin]

Thanks for the input.... if I see it at a good price I will pick it up, but I am not going out of my way to get it.

[Vic George 2K3]

Donkey Kong 64 is a little too complex for my enjoyment, though I did like how they handled swinging across on vines.

[Ze_ro]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that DK64 actually has some multiplayer modes too... but I've never really played them, so I don't know if they're any good or not.

--Zero

[kisrael]

Ze_ro said:

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that DK64 actually has some multiplayer modes too... but I've never really played them, so I don't know if they're any good or not.

So so. I remember two; one is a kind of brawl in a small arena, kind of interesting, and the other is a mediocre FPS shooter. Nothing to write home about, and I think the Boss Battle replay feature plus original DK and JetPac outshine it.

[Ze_ro]

Having original Donkey Kong and Jetpac in there is pretty neat... but don't buy this game just for that... it's totally not worth it. You also have to play halfway through the game before you unlock the two games, so keep that in mind.

--Zero

[Zloch]

I liked DK64 when it first came out. I got bored by it's repetitiveness about half way through it. The game seems like an excuse to string a bunch of mini games together. The mini games are a blast but I don't like the whole "collect everything" mentality in recent platform games. If you can get it for under $10 I say go for it.

Speaking of $10, I just played DKC on my SNES for the first time. Wow! I love it! $10 well spent (I bought an unopened copy on eBay). I missed this when it was first released because I was away at college and had no money or time for games. The game still looks and plays great! Rare's finest hour (that and Goldeneye).
Sean

[kisrael]

Zloch said:

I liked DK64 when it first came out. I got bored by it's repetitiveness about half way through it.
[snip]
Speaking of $10, I just played DKC on my SNES for the first time. Wow! I love it! $10 well spent (I bought an unopened copy on eBay).

Yeah, DK64 is better w/ a guide I'd say, just to make the collecting less tedious.

Amen about DKC...in particular, it's a fun game to play w/ a non- or semi-gamer, you can help 'em along. I did that with an ex-girlfriend and w/ my Aunt. (the first hardly played any games, though my Aunt gets pretty good at various puzzle games like Tetris and its derivatives.)

[bergbros]

How is the GBA version compared to the Gameboy Color? Looking at Gamerankings, it seems that the reviews for the Color version were better than the GBA. Are both versions really the same? If you have one, do you really need the other?

[MegaManFan]

I can't imagine the GBC version being better, visually, musically, or playably. If you have to get one, go GBA all the way because it's going to be as close to SNES as you'll get.