As far as I know, this was the very first video game I ever felt excited for. I remember during a trip I took with my family to NYC we stopped at the Nintendo store and I vividly remember saying "I can't wait for this game to come out" to my mom. It's odd, really, I had never even played a Donkey Kong game before and didn't even know what it was about but I was excited for it? I don't know I was like 10 and I barely even played video games much at that age. Regardless, my mom bought the game for me when it came out and you just know I was so amped to play it. I think I beat the first level and then put it down for roughly half a decade.

This habit sucks, by the way, I have a tendency to not abandon games entirely but rather finish them long after I made the purchase. I rarely finish games I buy close to when I bought them. Anyway, jump to I think May of 2018 when they released the overpriced port of this game and I was at a Gamestop when I happened to see it. I remember having a weird connection to this game, it was one of those games where I stopped playing early on but I always felt the urge to come back to some day. Which doesn't make sense because if you want to play the game then just play it right? Yeah so I bought the game again with me now having spent 110 dollars on this 15 hour platformer determined that I would beat it this time. And I beat the first world and like one level of world 2 and stopped yet again. I'd put it down this time for 3 years which now makes me in possession of a game I'm more than willing to play for 7 years. I still don't understand.

One night in 2021 I was laying in bed scrolling on my phone like I usually do and I stumbled upon a video of the game. To be more specific, it was a video of Busted Bayou, one of the three silhouette levels in the game and it just... filled me with nostalgia? I've sunk at this point, MAYBE 2 hours into the game in total from years ago and I'm nostalgic for it? I did some more digging and I ended up listening to a bit of the soundtrack for it. Somehow from years back I recognized Windmill Hills, the song for the first level of world 2, the farthest I ever got. To say this song amplified my nostalgia I was already feeling would be an understatement. I planned to start the game when I woke up the next morning.

And so I did. In the morning, I started a new file of the game for the third time. It felt different, I've never felt a hankering to play this game as much as I did today. I played through the first world and put the game down. This time for just a few hours though. I had a pool party at my friend's house today. I'll spare the details and just say I got the worst sunburn of my fucking life and soon would start to really feel it. Anyway, I got back home and holy shit I felt like continuing the game. It's a miracle. I played through world 2 and my god it clicked. Felt like that one Danny Devito gif. It was the first rocket barrel level I had just beaten and I sent a message to my friends saying "God dude this game fuckin rocks."

I keep breezing through the game all the while I'm in the worst pain of my life because my entire upper back and shoulders are covered in burns, I swear to god it was the only thing keeping me sane during that time. I think I played exactly two worlds per day for 3 days and the pain just got worse. Then when the pain settled a bit it started to itch and my lord I wanted to off myself. Anybody who's gotten a bad sunburn will know. Anyway, on the third day of playing this game I finished it. All levels with all puzzle pieces and KONG letters including World 7. I knew something right away. This was my favorite 2D platformer of all time and later would become my favorite platformer in general. What could initially be chalked up to recency bias remained as my opinion of the game only grew the more I played it. The seven year wait was worth it. It's like I always knew I'd love this game but I just had to let it sit.

Story time over. With my favorite games, it usually takes more than just a fun game to completely win me over. Completely out of the game's control obviously but it's the memories of what I was doing during that time that really solidify its place among my favorites. At the moment, I was miserable and almost ironically so. Suffering from a sunburn while playing a game all about taking your home back from the arctic? Yeah real funny God I'm laughing so hard. But reminiscing on my experience, it really brought out the best of the game. It's supposed to make you feel good and it succeeded.

But I'm not a game designer. I'm not gonna dissect each level to see what really makes them expertly crafted because that's not my thing. The game's just really damn fun man. I know it's a bit overstated but the platforms being organically woven into the scenery? It's things like that which make me feel like I'm playing a game that had care poured into it. The world makes sense in a video-game, over-the-top fantasy kind of way, you know? And as I mentioned previously, the music in most of these levels? If this ain't one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time then I don't know what is honestly. In a game with like 60 something levels, to say that probably half of these songs have been stuck in my head at some point or another speaks volumes to me. The game's not very difficult to me anymore so it's one of those games I can really just relax to. Trust me, it doesn't take a lot for a video game to catch my attention. I just want them to be fun, plain and simple. I'm not gonna be like "See, games don't need a crazy deep story or thought-provoking characters to be good! Thanks Nintendo!" or anything like that because those things are always welcome. But it's a game about a dumb gorilla and his family against a barrage of penguins. The game really just needed to be fun to be good. But it's underselling it to just say it's fun and has great music because a lot of games fit that description. It accomplishes something that not many games can do. It makes me truly happy to play.