I have a question for you: Do you have a "happy place" game? When you have had a bad day, nothing's gone right, and you feel dead to the world, do you have a game that you just turn on and suddenly everything suddenly feels like it's going to be okay? Donkey Kong Country is that game to me. Every Donkey Kong Country has that effect on me, but it's most keenly felt with this one.

The story is pretty simple. One dark and stormy night, King K. Rool has stolen Donkey Kong's banana hoard and locked Diddy Kong in a barrel. It's your job to save Diddy and the banana hoard. It is admittedly light on story, but most of the game's emotions are carried in the moment to moment gameplay. This is an incredibly challenging game for first-timers. Sure, I can beat it now no problem, but that's because I have over 20 years of experience playing it. Its difficulty actually enhances the quest. With how high stakes the atmosphere of the levels make it, combined with David Wise's frankly haunting soundtrack, it really feels like a quest into danger more than a simple platforming romp. Some nights, I will just put on Aquatic Ambience from the soundtrack and just contemplate my place in the world. The music and atmosphere of this game make me feel wonderful things that I am not sure I can even put into words.

The platforming itself is a ton of fun. An incredibly high skill ceiling means that it is always engaging, and there is enough mechanical variation to keep you entertained through the whole journey. The same can arguably not be said about the stage variety. They could have called this game "Donkey Kong Cave" for how much time you spend in them. This is one aspect where its sequels have it beat admittedly, but it never really bothered me personally. The same can be said of the bosses. Of all the various bosses in the game, only King K. Rool himself stands out as memorable. Fortunately, the final fight with him is arguably one of the best the Super Nintendo has to offer.

It should also be noted that this game arguably saved the Super Nintendo from losing to the Genesis in North America. While the Sega Genesis did still beat the Super Nintendo in sales in 1994 and 1995, it would prove to be the years that a Sega console would ever be on top in the region. Sega would move on to the Saturn in 1995 in America, more or less abandoning the Genesis, allowing the Super Nintendo to catch up and eventually surpass it in sales globally. The Donkey Kong Country games were a major reason why, and it all began with this one. This game would prove to be the second best-selling game for the SNES, with Donkey Kong, for a few years at least, supplanting Mario as Nintendo's most popular character. A lot of that had to do with the graphics. No one had ever seen graphics like this before. When you play this game on a CRT TV now, they still hold up. With the right filters on an emulator, you can get a similar effect.

This game was a risk that paid off. I am not sure modern Nintendo would trust a third party to handle one of their biggest IPs in such a way. Perhaps they should. With its colorful graphics, interesting and challenging platofrming, excellent animation, and amazing soundtrack that elevates the whole experience into something that is emotional and poignant, Donkey Kong Country is simply one of the finest platforming games ever made, and my "happy place" game. Give it a shot and who knows? It just might become your "happy place" game, too.

Some days I just feel totally braindead, and too tired to dive into a 70 hour JRPG with complex mechanics and more text than, uh... Anna Karenina. Those are the days I pop up Mario Kart.

Now, I will admit, my Mario Kart experience is pretty much limited to Mario Kart 8, 7, and DS; also having experienced some of the Wii game at parties and such, however.

I do know what I love about Mario Kart though, and that is the interactive environments (all the different shortcuts, things that pop up on stage, and the like), and in general just a ton of possibilities and learnable skills that make getting better at the game fun. Hell, even the times I lose in Mario Kart (which have been frequent recently, since I'm pretty rusty), I still have a lot of fun. The adrenaline rush of all the shells being thrown, all the karts being bumped, and the acceleration to the finish line all add up to one of the best competitive/multiplayer game series. When I was younger, my sibling said that "there was always a way back in Mario Kart" (or something like that). Meaning that even if you get into 7th place on lap 2, anything could happen and you could very likely get into 1st place in lap three. This ability for comebacks is really what makes these games shine, in my opinion.

I think the problem with Super Circuit is that it foregoes a lot of the aforementioned things - yet, I can't find a reason to blame it for doing so. Mario Kart on the GBA seems like a tough enough thing to attain. Still, a lot of sacrifices were made for this goal.

The tracks are kind of boring, is my first critique. To explain: I think while the idea of having a static backdrop and a pseudo 3D track is kind of what most GBA kart racers opt for, I also think it kind of takes away a real sense of exploration of these tracks. A sense of landmarks. Luckily, there are environmental obstacles and little graphics scattered about in a lot of the stages, such as Snow Land with all it's penguins. However, it never really breaks up the monotony of the stages.

Of course, I can't imagine any way they wouldn't have static backdrops and integrated some kind of pseudo 3D onto the GBA (kind of like some games did). This would likely not turn out well.
Yet, the theming of the levels was kind of bland - in other games we get stuff such as theme parks, cruise ships, and generally atmospheric areas to explore. I think the problem is this game opted more for "enviroments": swamp, sky, etc. which are kind of basic and not as fun to explore - since they are environments without landmarks or places to go.

Drifting is also kind of miserable, though I can't blame this game in particular, since the F-zero GBA games also control miserably in this way. Maybe (probably) I'm bad at the game, but it is a complete bump-fest and boy is there no sense of sticking to the ground or generally of being able to drift around corners smoothly. In fact, I found my strategy was always to slow my kart when going around corners. This was probably the basic Mario Kart strat before drifting came into play, but still, I don' like it :( (it's probably a me issue).

Super Circuit was a game that I found had kind of a blandness, even a loneliness to it. It definitely doesn't pop out at you, and while a lot of this can be attributed to the inherent difficulties of trying to put a Mario Kart game on the GBA, I think the game can take some responsibility for what seems like a rushed game without much intrigue as far as level theming, fun mechanics and the like go. It is fun, don't get me wrong. I do not want to be too hard on it, but it's just not my first pick for Mario Kart, although I can see myself playing it to wind down.

MonHuns console-team wishes they had even a 1/1000th of the competence Team Omega Force has in actually innovating their franchises and breaking new ground with how extremely well they pulled off this open-world hunting game.

I still liked the first games story more, especially in the expansion but the characters are about on the same level in terms of being likable and very well written. But pretty much every other aspect is a gigantic improvement that it's actually hard to wrap my head around when I started. The new weaps and old weapon moveset changes, the complete transformation of the Mitama system into an extremely fun and open loadout system, the redesigning of the entire map to be open world, the new Demon Hand grappling system, and even the improved and more brutal dismemberment system. Everything's just perfect.

Also, the absolute happiness of seeing Hatsuho again is indescribable but Gwen is definitely best girl here. Extremely sad we'll never get a follow up though.