1st 2019 Retro Game Of The Month! - Donkey Kong Country

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Siliconemelons

Avatar of War Slayer
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Happy new year! Let's play Donkey Kong Country for the SNES

This game won out by 1 vote! So be sure to recommend and vote for your games next time! Here at FOH your vote matters!

Do let's make donkey Kong Country great again and eat nanners and beat up crocidilios.

Donkey Kong Country - Wikipedia

Most recent "release" is I belive on the SNES mini.

If you do not have that, standard methods apply of...playing your backup of your carts rom, that you owned and may have somewhere in your closet :)
 
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stupidmonkey

Not Smrt
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First game down and half the way through the second. Going to finish it today most likely then some of the third. Once all are beaten, I'll go back and see about getting 101%+ on each.
 

Siliconemelons

Avatar of War Slayer
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How... gosh I am like 3 stages into the game and I hate it...

This is not a fun game... :(


But I am getting to use my SNES classic :)
 

spronk

FPS noob
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25,379
Is the switch version Tropical Freeze a remake of this game or a completely new game?
 

k^M

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,676
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I remember playing that growing up, and excitement at discovering the animal boxes for the first time hidden away. It's been 15 (?) years for me, but rhino, frog, ostrich and... sword fish? Think those were the first game ones werent they?

Think I liked the second one more by far, if only because diddy was a bitch and pony tail girl was rad. That and riding around on a giant flame spider.

Edit: Tropical Freeze is a new game, I played it for the Wii (if its the same one from about 8 years ago). Wasn't a remake of the original.
 

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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This is one of the all-time great platformers. The controls are perfect, the levels are varied, the graphics look great (even today), and the music is iconic.

It's also one of the only games where I didn't absolutely despise underwater levels.
 
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Szlia

Member
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Garbage game beaten with a lame 47% but I am not going to try and find the missing percents which I assume are secret exits to levels that link to extra levels and things like that? This game is pretty extraordinary in that there is not one single good level in it and not an ounce of enjoyement to be had, at least as a first time player (the speed of the character, its almost nonexistent inertia and its ability to jump instantly after landing possibly makes for some enjoyable dashes through the levels when you are familiar with them). The main problem of the game is that you can't see shit. The size and speed of the character relative to the field of view along with a terrible "smart" camera results in most of the jumps being blind and most enemies spawning in your face. It becomes comical when you realize the jumps are blind in multiple ways. Sometimes you don't see what is ahead, sometime you don't see what is bellow and sometime the character jumps above the screen so he is out of view.... In the end it's almost a farce as there are several levels with dimming lights, flickering lights or with a bird that lights you way, so the jumps become literally blind! As a result, even the dullest of levels (and boy are they served in many flavors of dull) can become annoying and frustrating.

It should be mentioned at this point that even with a zoomed out view that would make the game more playable, the game would still be terrible because it's all about a character that can't do shit. There is not a single interesting gameplay idea in the control of the character. Throwing the barrels could be it, but it's shoddily implemented and vaguely used twice as a core level design element. You would also think that a game released 4 years after Super Mario World would improve on its world map and save system, but nope, DKC manages to make it a different flavor of bad. It's so great to start each play session by going through the first stage of the first level a dozen time to gather a truck load of lives to be sure you will be able to reach the next travel station or save point without worries...

Lastly, while I can appreciate the originality of the assets generation process of DKC - and what '90s nerd is not hit by a wave of nostalgia when confronted with the words "Silicon Graphics" ? - I am left unconvinced by its results (as I do in Super Mario RPG). From an artistic point of view, I find the visual design extremely dubious and from a technical point of view, the resulting sprites look like overly compressed jpeg, probably because of palette limitations that don't agree with the nuances of mapped and shaded renders.


When I dove into my archive to recover my DKC cartridge, I also unearthed the DKC2 one. If I am in a better mood than right now, I might give it shot at some point during January. Donkey Kong Country apologists tend to prefer the sequel...
 
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Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
9,690
3,201
Garbage game beaten with a lame 47% but I am not going to try and find the missing percents which I assume are secret exits to levels that link to extra levels and things like that? This game is pretty extraordinary in that there is not one single good level in it and not an ounce of enjoyement to be had, at least as a first time player (the speed of the character, its almost nonexistent inertia and its ability to jump instantly after landing possibly makes for some enjoyable dashes through the levels when you are familiar with them). The main problem of the game is that you can't see shit. The size and speed of the character relative to the field of view along with a terrible "smart" camera results in most of the jumps being blind and most enemies spawning in your face. It becomes comical when you realize the jumps are blind in multiple ways. Sometimes you don't see what is ahead, sometime you don't see what is bellow and sometime the character jumps above the screen so he is out of view.... In the end it's almost a farce as there are several levels with dimming lights, flickering lights or with a bird that lights you way, so the jumps become literally blind! As a result, even the dullest of levels (and boy are they served in many flavors of dull) can become annoying and frustrating.

It should be mentioned at this point that even with a zoomed out view that would make the game more playable, the game would still be terrible because it's all about a character that can't do shit. There is not a single interesting gameplay idea in the control of the character. Throwing the barrels could be it, but it's shoddily implemented and vaguely used twice as a core level design element. You would also think that a game released 4 years after Super Mario World would improve on its world map and save system, but nope, DKC manages to make it a different flavor of bad. It's so great to start each play session by going through the first stage of the first level a dozen time to gather a truck load of lives to be sure you will be able to reach the next travel station or save point without worries...

Lastly, while I can appreciate the originality of the assets generation process of DKC - and what '90s nerd is not hit by a wave of nostalgia when confronted with the words "Silicon Graphics" ? - I am left unconvinced by its results (as I do in Super Mario RPG). From an artistic point of view, I find the visual design extremely dubious and from a technical point of view, the resulting sprites look like overly compressed jpeg, probably because of palette limitations that don't agree with the nuances of mapped and shaded renders.


When I dove into my archive to recover my DKC cartridge, I also unearthed the DKC2 one. If I am in a better mood than right now, I might give it shot at some point during January. Donkey Kong Country apologists tend to prefer the sequel...
dammmnnnnnn...
tenor.gif
 
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Siliconemelons

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Well Szlia Szlia expressed my feelings thus far... I am only on level 2.

I have never cared for the game or its sequels - even with all the praise tropical freeze I just hand waved it.

Diddy Kong racing however ;) that is a fun game.
 

Crone

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Where's all the people that voted for the game? Where are they?! Damn it!
 

Therage

Vyemm Raider
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I'm more than half way through. I prefer Diddy Kong as well. I don't see the problems that szil sees but maybe because I've beaten it a few times and can breeze through most levels.

I've been really distracted with smash bros though haha. Sorry guys!
 
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a c i d.f l y

ಠ_ಠ
<Silver Donator>
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You old, useless fucks who sound like you've never played video games in your youth. Complaining about blind shit while the shit stain smears of "YOU DIED" ghost a black screen and herald that as the best gaming has ever had to offer. DKC was the Dark Souls of platforming (save Hagane, which was just a bit more punishing). It's games like this that ruined my interest in relentlessly memorizing levels.

It's just a shame I only own DKC2 and DKC3 on SNES. Both being much more challenging (the latter a lot easier to cheese with Dixie's Princess float).

The point of the game was to memorize the levels, and run them more than once to find everything. Assuming you didn't care about just bum rushing to the end.
 
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Szlia

Member
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Yeah.... no. Dark Souls is not a shorthand to say "hard game where you die a lot" and even if it was it would not fit DKC, because that game is not hard, it's just poorly designed. When you die in Dark Souls, 90% of the time it's 100% your own damn fault (even Ron can see that). There lies some of the genius of its design. The game constantly tries to catch you off guard (but it always telegraphs its traps in one way or another) and tries to trick you into becoming careless (after a death you want to rush back to these souls and rushing often ends poorly), but you almost never die to unpredictable surprises or leaps of faith.

Hagane is dramatically more difficult than DKC, but it also has nothing to do with Dark Souls. Hagane is classically difficult. You have limited continues, limited lives, limited hit points, limited invulnerability frames after a hit and, which is a bit more annoying, a very strange jumping/momentum system. Hagane is about getting good or going home. A year ago, it took me five or six well focused play sessions and the help of youTube to finally beat the game. For comparison, my final save in DKC is just under 3 hours and I suspect 30 min of that must have been spent farming lives....
 

Siliconemelons

Avatar of War Slayer
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Ehh Demon Souls "Hard" - you know the thing to overcome, and if there is a "floor falls out from under you, you die 100%" there are signs, DKC stages and enemy placement there is not, its all - memorize the stage and patterns, carry on. That is very different gaming.

The demon souls bad guys are not X Y or Z patterns that need to be recognized and then used against, like thestage and mob placement "traps" in DKC

If the point of DKC is to die a few times and rote memory the stage then its a big game of simon with monkeys, if it is then not to be that and to be a skills based game then all the above mentioned posts issues and more are completely valid.
 

Ehrgeix

Trakanon Raider
182
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The thing I really didn't like in DKC1 was all the random secrets you can't find without doing retard shit like jumping into death pits that kill you on the off chance they actually don't kill you and there's a secret there (no way to know beforehand).

DKC2 was way better, the bananas guided you to secrets (e.g., death pit with suspicious floating banana = safe) and there was none of the rng secrets + better level design generally.