É sempre bom relembrar esse jogo que marcou toda a minha fase de Super Nintendo, antes de minha irmã trocá-lo por um teclado... Sobre o jogo, quando eu era criança, achava ele mais divertido. Não que ele tenha perdido essa característica, mas hoje, como adulto, percebo algumas partes extremamente irritantes e mal planejadas, de certa forma. No entanto, não se pode culpar o jogo, considerando a época em que foi desenvolvido. Ainda assim, é frustrante chegar quase ao final da fase e ser forçado a retornar ao último checkpoint lá na pqp.

Mas nossa como eu macetei esse jogo aqui no emulador hein.... Hmmmmm

Meu irmão era do time do super Mario world, mas eu gostava mesmo de Donkey Kong. E esse aqui é chefs kiss

Passei HORAS na primeira fase de carrinho, farmando umas 100 vidas pra perder tudo tentando passar. Mas passei. (e não fui muito mais longe que isso porque meu PC antigo com o emulador não durou muito)

Mas eu amava!

I decided to at least attempt to finish what I started and played through the original DKC this afternoon. I already owned it on my SFC Mini, so I figured I may as well give it a try and I'd put it down if it got too hard like when I tried to play it a few weeks ago. Roughly two hours later, I'd finished the game with about a 60% completion rate. Getting 101% doesn't actually involve unlocking any content that you don't see through the course of the game normally like the sequels' extra boss fights and Lost World stages, and I've had more than enough snipe hunts for super secret bonus stages in DKC2 to want to bother try and getting full % completion on this game XD. It's still my least favorite out of the 3 games, but not nearly by as much as it was before this playthrough.

The lack of the concretely defined bonus stages that the sequels' use, with their bonus coins and such, and a focus on more fluid platforming through the stages really sets this apart from DKC 2 and 3. I'd go as far as to say that the feel of playing the later two games differs so much from this one that I almost don't feel quite fair making direct comparisons between them as the design philosophy of the sequels vs. the original feel so different. For a Mario analogy, DKC 1 is Mario 2/USA, while the sequels are Mario 3 and Mario World. It's unmistakably the same series, characters, etc., and a lot of the DNA you see in later games is still there, but one of these things is clearly not like the other. Nonetheless, I played through all 3 in succession to compare them directly to one another, so I'm gonna keep doing it here x3

On the topic of bonus stages, DKC1 does have them, sure, and they do add to the completion percentage, as I mentioned before, but their end purpose is different. Where the sequels' bonus barrel challenges are meant to be something to achieve in and of themselves, almost like mini-games using the main game's mechanics, DKC1's bonus areas are primarily towards the purpose of racking up extra lives and you're gonna NEED those extra lives. DKC1 is definitely the hardest of the 3 DKC games. While 2 does have some very tricky stages, particularly the bramble ones, DKC1's love of levels that require many very accurate timings of successive spinning barrel blasts or weaving juuust around enemies makes the whole difficulty curve of the game jump all over the place.

Even as a kid, I had a TON of trouble getting past the game's 6th stage because the barrel timings were just so difficult to get past, and the same goes for the minecart stage (of which there are mercifully only two in the whole game) in world 2. DKC's design is very tight and the game plays great, but the momentum-based platforming, many difficult barrel timings, and many auto-scrolling stages (minecart-based or otherwise) make it really stand out from other Nintendo-published SNES platformers of the time for me. Especially lacking Dixie, so you have no hover to use to help with more difficult platforming sections, you have no choice but to learn the game's jumping and physics to the point where they're second-nature. I finished the game with nearly 50 extra lives this time, but a lot of that is due to not only playing the game in one sitting (this game has save points! Why doesn't it save your lives too? O_o), but also the practice of the series' platforming physics by playing the other two SNES games over the past few days also really helped me achieve what is otherwise an anomaly for me in this game XD

DKC1 has some great level design that begins to peak at the kind of "one level one gimmick" formula that DKC3 executes so thoroughly on, but the lesser focus on different styles of play as well as a much more optional status of animal friends again sets this apart from its sequels. Rambi the rhino and Engarde the swordfish are in this game, but lack any kind of charge moves like they gain in 2. There's also Winky the frog and Exspresso the ostrich, but Winky's strange hop-walking and Exspresso's inability to actually harm enemies makes them very awkward to use, and while Winky wasn't quite as bad as I'd remembered him, I did not miss his presence in later games (Rattly is basically Winky but better, tbh). Squawks is here, but he's only in one stage and just carries your light for you in one stage, and is basically just Glimmer from DKC2 as opposed to mechanically resembling anything of how he plays in later games. All that said, none of the animal friends are ever transformed into or required for any stages, and are effectively treated as powerups to reward the player for exploring. This goes a long way towards making the game largely feel like an exercise in how well you can master how DK and Diddy move rather than a succession of more unique experiences. Not a bad thing, for sure, but it's one more feature that makes DKC1 stand apart from its progeny.

Even on an aesthetic level, DKC1 looks quite different from 2 and 3. The game is still beautiful and the music is great, but I noticed a lot of little differences I'd never noticed in the other games. Barrels, K. Rool, the Kremlings, and even Diddy all look just a little bit different than they do in the later games. DKC1 has a much more naturalistic approach to its level and character design than the later games, and it's something that jumped out to me this playthrough more than past ones.

Verdict: Recommended. DKC1 is a great platformer that, while not quite the same as its sequels in overall design philosophy, it a game that is tons of fun in its own right and one I learned to appreciate more this time around. I definitely prefer the design of the later games rather than the strict platforming of this game, but I see the appeal now in a way I didn't before this playthrough. The main thing that keeps this from getting a higher recommendation is the difficulty. This first venture for DK & crew has a noticeably higher barrier to entry on that regard, and I would recommend it more to people who like difficult platformers or fans of 2 and 3 rather than a more universal recommendation as I can more easily give the other two games in the trilogy.