I've been eyeing this game on the Wii U VC for quite a while now, as it's a game I have a lot of nostalgia for from when I was a kid, and I finally picked it up the other day. I really wish it were on the SNES Classic instead of the first DKC (or as it's called here "Super Donkey Kong"), but that's a personal preference. This is my favorite of the original 3 DKC games and I had a really good time playing through it. I wanted to say I'd beaten this game before, but the final boss and ending sequence were totally unfamiliar to me. Although beyond that, this is definitely the first time I've ever taken the time to get all the bonus coins and DK coins to do the secret final boss for a 102% finish (I only had to look up where one bonus room was ^w^). It took me a little under 6 hours to do.
I honestly thought that it'd be nearly impossible to try and find all the bonus rooms and DK coins myself, and I was really happily surprised I only needed to look up where one was in the end. A lot of the way they're hidden seems for more adding replay value than just spicing up the way you can play them through the first time (like how Yoshi's Island does its collectibles). Some of the designs of them feel a bit filler-y for sure, but most of them are properly good challenges.
I definitely got a new appreciation for Diddy this time playing the game. I always prefered Dixie as a kid, because her hover made the tricky platforming SO much more easily navigable, but this was basically the first time I'd REALLY tried to utilize the jumps you get if you "spin" off a ledge, and I think that made using Diddy a lot easier and less dangerous. Diddy is certainly faster, but especially when replaying bits of the game to get the collectibles I missed, I noticed the characters don't control all that differently at the end of the day, which I was fine with.
While I will say that, from a design perspective, having a light & a heavy character like DKC 1 and 3 do provides more opportunities for ways to hide hidden goodies, I'm kinda in two minds about that whole thing. I'm not entirely convinced that the whole "two playable characters who have inherently different abilities that are required to unlock certain secrets/defeat certain enemies/navigate certain obstacles" is an amazing design philosophy in the first place. It means you either need to design levels in such a way that the player feels screwed for not having a certain character, or you need to design them in such a flat and universal way that you end up barely using the unique aspects of each character. Ideally, levels would have interesting methods of completing them using either character in their own special way, but that's often easier said than done. This isn't to throw shade on the other two original DK Country games, so much as it is to say that I believe the "partner as power-up" method that the DKC Returns games use is a smarter way to go about things, generally speaking. I'll also admit that this doesn't have much all to do with this review. Just some thoughts I had I wanted to share that fit tangentially with this post.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. A tough game, but still one of the greats on the SNES. Whether or not it's the best DKC game will always be a matter of debate, but regardless of that, it's still a great game.
I honestly thought that it'd be nearly impossible to try and find all the bonus rooms and DK coins myself, and I was really happily surprised I only needed to look up where one was in the end. A lot of the way they're hidden seems for more adding replay value than just spicing up the way you can play them through the first time (like how Yoshi's Island does its collectibles). Some of the designs of them feel a bit filler-y for sure, but most of them are properly good challenges.
I definitely got a new appreciation for Diddy this time playing the game. I always prefered Dixie as a kid, because her hover made the tricky platforming SO much more easily navigable, but this was basically the first time I'd REALLY tried to utilize the jumps you get if you "spin" off a ledge, and I think that made using Diddy a lot easier and less dangerous. Diddy is certainly faster, but especially when replaying bits of the game to get the collectibles I missed, I noticed the characters don't control all that differently at the end of the day, which I was fine with.
While I will say that, from a design perspective, having a light & a heavy character like DKC 1 and 3 do provides more opportunities for ways to hide hidden goodies, I'm kinda in two minds about that whole thing. I'm not entirely convinced that the whole "two playable characters who have inherently different abilities that are required to unlock certain secrets/defeat certain enemies/navigate certain obstacles" is an amazing design philosophy in the first place. It means you either need to design levels in such a way that the player feels screwed for not having a certain character, or you need to design them in such a flat and universal way that you end up barely using the unique aspects of each character. Ideally, levels would have interesting methods of completing them using either character in their own special way, but that's often easier said than done. This isn't to throw shade on the other two original DK Country games, so much as it is to say that I believe the "partner as power-up" method that the DKC Returns games use is a smarter way to go about things, generally speaking. I'll also admit that this doesn't have much all to do with this review. Just some thoughts I had I wanted to share that fit tangentially with this post.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. A tough game, but still one of the greats on the SNES. Whether or not it's the best DKC game will always be a matter of debate, but regardless of that, it's still a great game.