30th Anniversary Log / Review

I had a quick play today, I love how fast paced and responsive Donkey Kong Country is, it's meant for a CRT display with blending perfect for the pixelised Silicon Graphics which I'm personally in favour of.

The ice levels are slippery and sorta suck, don't bother with 101%. I probably last beat it when I got a SNES in 2013 and probably another tmie since, this was a childhood mainstay I'd borrow from family friends when they moved onto the PS2. Maybe I'll try out the rest of the series in the coming years?

An absolute beauty of a game that the developers decided to ruin by making it stupidly (not a random choice of words here) hard. If game makers had arrived to the realization that your marvelous platformer with a masterpiece of a soundtrack could be easy, Donkey Kong Country would’ve been even better remembered, which is saying a lot. But the insistence in making games hard and punishing even if it doesn’t feel good mechanically nor makes sense with the vibe you’re going for has ruined many games, and will doubtless ruin many more.

Anyway the level design is Rare fucking with you in a way that makes the fun go away. I could call it “what if design” because they seemingly went “what if the player runs up with a new enemy throwing barrels at them that they can’t see if they are going slightly fast”, or “what if we put this enemy in the EXACT POSITION the player would end up in regular circumstances in this section ha ha!”, etc. Or I could call it shit design. Because is shit.

Solid 2D platformer with a cool visual style and great atmosphere. The level design is generally solid throughout, and the game introduces a lot of varied mechanics to keep things fresh without straying too far from the core platforming gameplay you're here for in the first place.

There's two things I didn't like here. First is the length. You can beat this in an afternoon, which is not really anything new when it comes to a lot of SNES games, but the levels here feel pretty short in of themselves, which makes the game feel shorter than it actually is. Secondly is the camera. I felt it was just a tad too close to the player in a lot of cases, resulting in several moments where I was blindsided by an enemy or projectile that hit me before I could see it coming. It's not a constant occurence, but it does happen more often than I'd like it to. Just a little bit of extra screen space would have gone a long way here.

Outside of a handful of complaints, Donkey Kong Country is solid and an easy game to recommend for fans of the genre. I might go back to reach 100% completion one day, but I'm satisfied with leaving it here for the time being. Definitely looking forward to playing the second and third games in the future.

i feel no hesitation in saying that donkey kong country is my favorite game from the golden age of platformers; hell, my favorite platformer ever. every word of impossible nostalgia-drunk exaltation spilled from the mouths of nintendotubers over the snes drivel they grew up with is fulfilled in dkc's pre-rendered 3d glory. fuck mario. this is what they told me smw would be like. even the water levels are good. if this game didn't play like a dream- constantly challenging you, but never unclear of its expectations or punishing with its lives- it would still have more style than pretty much any game in its genre released then or now. such technical wizardry was performed here that the game's assets and soundtrack look and sound somehow worse uncompressed. every level is a real place and i want to be there. aquatic ambience is cited incessantly in "greatest ost" lists for good reason. rare's nintendoid output would only improve (see: the sequel to this game), but this will always be their greatest achievement in my eyes. it was here first. it came and it conquered. shine on, you crazy kong.