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.

Everything people remember Goldeneye for being, Perfect Dark actually is. There's an intriguing mix of cyberpunk and X-Files alien espionage in the story, and the weapons are a lot of fun to use. The sound and music are excellent. Between this game and Banjo Tooie, Grant Kirkhope had a career defining year in 2000. Graphically, this pushes the Nintendo 64 to its absolute limits, and it shows. Even with the expansion pak, sub 20 FPS is common when there's a lot of action on the screen.

If you can get past that though, this game is feature rich. The campaign is long and engaging, and sadistic in its difficulty when you're playing on harder settings. The campaign can be played in co-op, or you can have up to 4 bots in co-op with you as well. It has a pvp campaign mode as well called counter-operative, where player 2 takes control of an enemy character. Even modern games don't do that. Combine that with a multiplayer mode that can be played with bots or up to four players across multiple different match types, and you have a total package of a game, and about as much fun as you could have with a first-person shooter in 2000. I wouldn't recommend playing this on a Nintendo 64 though. While I'm used to first-person shooter controls on the console, I also grew up with it. I know it's a tall order for most people, especially with those previously mentioned frame rate issues. I would instead point you to the remake Rare did for the Xbox 360 in 2010. That version fixes the frame rate issues and it's also compatible with the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X. If you don't have an Xbox console, some nice people did an unofficial PC port in 2023 that you can play instead. I will link the github at the end of the review for you to download it.

I feel like this game is incredibly slept on, given how much hype Goldeneye gets even now. This is better in every single way than Goldeneye and is the real best console FPS of the era.

Github for the unofficial PC port:
https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/perfect_dark

Dare I say it: best racing game ever? Though the Metacritic score doesn't reflect its quality, this is the most fun I have ever had with a racing game.

Variety is the word of the day Setting a racing game in Australia was an inspired choice. We got beach racing, desert tracks, city street racing, racing towns, racing in rainforests, racing in industrial parks, and if you get the DLC, racing in snow and in fantasy Hot Wheels tracks.

There's over 500 cars to choose from, and the difficulty, control, and feel are all just right and completely adjustable if you are struggling. The graphics are incredibly beautiful. The team apparently spent some time in Australia taking reference photos just to make sure the skyboxes were right. The effort did not go to waste.

The soundtrack is an eclectic blend of genres, and you can always use your own music. The aforementioned variety is on display with the kind of racing you can do, too. You got high speed racing, truck racing, dune buggies, you name it, this game probably has it. Depending on how you adjust the settings, you can play it like an arcade racer or make it as simulationist as you want.

Other Forza Horizon games have come and gone since this one, but for its variety in setting and race types, its perfect difficulty curve, and just how fun it is to control, I think this is the best racing video game ever made. Give it a shot!