Its advancements were the product of mere technological trickery, yeah, but the indelible memories left by them were anything but illusionary.
"Where did the big ape go?" my friends and I would always wonder. "Why is it that Donkey Kong, one of Nintendo's most iconic characters, hasn't made a meaningful appearance on one of the company's systems in over seven years?"
It was one of the era's most enduring mysteries.
Donkey Kong, whose debut title ruled arcades and inspired a generation's-worth of platformers across a range of systems, had been missing in action for the better part of the NES' life, and none of us were sure why, exactly, that was.
I mean, sure: We all agreed that Donkey Kong 3 was pretty forgettable, and we regarded it as an inexplicable demotion for the barrel-tossing icon, but none of us ever went as far to think that the game's commercial and perceptional failures were so bad that they needed to spell the end for the entire brand. Surely, we thought, Nintendo's former marquee character deserved more from his creators. He deserved a better fate than being shunted aside and treated as an irrelevant holdover and relegated to token cameo appearances in the congratulatory ending scenes from games like Tetris.
At times it seemed as though Nintendo was purposely disregarding its famous mascot's importance. The best evidence of such was the company's announcement of its new racing gaming, Super Mario Kart: Here we had a game whose cast was purported to include all of the Mario universe's biggest stars, yet Donkey Kong, one of the most recognizable Mario characters in history, was nowhere to be seen! For whatever reason, Nintendo decided, instead, to include his son, Donkey Kong Jr., who had been absent from the scene for an even longer period of time!
I had nothing against Donkey Kong Jr. (I was, in fact, a big fan of his Saturday Supercade short!), no, but it was inexplicable to me that he could make it in over his father, who was far more popular!
In retrospect, it's clear that Nintendo's true intention was to delicately reintroduce the Donkey Kong brand and precondition us for its revival, but back then, in 1992, we didn't know enough to discern what Nintendo was actually up to. Rather, we perceived the move as the company continuing to distance itself from "damaged goods," and that thinking worked to erode our confidence in the Donkey Kong character and convince us that maybe his star had indeed permanently faded.
That was the main reason why I was so apt to instantly dismiss the upcoming Game Boy version of Donkey Kong. I knew almost nothing about it, yet I was quick to label it a throwaway effort--a quick-and-dirty down-port of the arcade classic--and a weak showpiece for the Super Game Boy. Because Nintendo had conditioned me to believe that Donkey Kong had become a second-rate character and was no longer worth taking seriously.
To my surprise, though, Donkey Kong turned out to be an amazingly expansive reimagining of the arcade original and a top-tier puzzle-platformer in general, and I wound up falling in love with it. But even then, the message that it conveyed to me was that nothing had changed: the title character wasn't really a star worthy of attention. He was, rather, still just a supporting player at best.
And that's why I wasn't particularly in Nintendo Power's announcement that Donkey Kong would soon be returning to action as the protagonist in his very own SNES game: the curiously titled Donkey Kong Country, which was riding closely on the heels of the recently released Game Boy game. Logically its releasing in proximity should have worked to its benefit and allowed it to garner my immediate interest by feeding off of my fondness for the stellar Donkey Kong '94, but it simply didn't. I just couldn't get excited for it.
I'd been trained to think that Donkey Kong was a supporting player, so I wasn't able to see any appeal in him as a lead character in a video game. "I mean, how in the world can you build a fun and interesting action game around a character whose skill-set includes remaining stationary and rolling barrels along the ground?" I questioned in a skeptical manner.
From what little I'd gleaned, Donkey Kong Country was being promoted as a graphical marvel and an astonishingly transcendent technical powerhouse, but when I looked at the accompanying screenshots, all I saw were visuals that appeared to be pixelated, garish, and lifeless. They were genuinely advanced- and distinct-looking, sure, but they weren't jaw-dropping enough for me to consider plunking down $50 (or asking my parents to do so) to see them displayed on a TV screen!
I was highly aware of the fact that Nintendo had proven me wrong many times in the past, but still I just couldn't envision a scenario in which Nintendo could convince me that Donkey Kong was a compelling enough character to carry a large-scale, big-budget 16-bit video game even if it was the most graphically impressive game ever made.
Quite simply: Donkey Kong Country didn't excite me in any way, so I had no regrets about deciding to pass on it.
In fact, Donkey Kong's funky-looking platformer was the furthest thing from my mind on the random autumn day in which I reached into the wall-mounted mailbox beside our house's front door and pulled out an unexpected item: a boxed VHS cassette whose cover bore conspicuous-looking artwork.
"What the hell is this?" I wondered, having failed to immediately make the obvious connection.
The tape's sheathing displayed sharply rendered, vibrantly colored foliage, and its front side's upper-left portion contained an image of Donkey Kong clutching onto the Nintendo logo. His likeness was a match for the one I'd seen in Nintendo Power's preview art. "Curious," I thought.
The text directly below read, "Enter the Jungle . . . Nov. 21st," and seeing it was what made the light bulb finally go off in my head.
It was easy to guess that the tape was promotional material of some type, but still its sudden appearance in my mailbox left me with some questions. "Why is Nintendo sending this to me?" I couldn't help but wonder. "Is it somehow connected to my Nintendo Power subscription? And if so, then why is further promotion of Donkey Kong Country necessary when the company has already previewed the game multiple times in its magazine?"
I didn't know what to make of the situation.
At the time, I wasn't particularly interested in watching a lengthy video that was probably going to rehash all of the information that I didn't care to absorb in the previous months, but because I had nothing better to do that day, I figured that I might as well pop the tape into our VCR and do so for the purpose of killing some time.
He was there, I assumed, because it was the 90s, and thus it was a requisite to make a guy of that personality type (sarcastic rocker/stoner) the face of your video-game presentation. (This was the case with pretty much every single one of the era's video-game-themed promotional videos, commercials, and game shows.)
The interviewees explained how some of Country's basic systems and mechanics worked, expectedly, but the majority of the time, they focused on another aspect of the game: the technology that powered it. They talked it up constantly and made sure to note that it was responsible for "the biggest game ever" in terms of megabit count. They revealed that they used space-age computers and "advanced 3D modeling" to render Country's wire-frame characters and its "layers upon layers" of hyper-detailed, breathtaking backgrounds and textures.
And consequently they made it seem as though they'd created the most advanced video game in history!
They were so proud of what they had achieved that they even saw fit to fire shots at "32-bit" competitors and "CD-ROM," which I found to be startlingly bold even though I had no clue as to what either term was referring. The former, I figured, had to be code for "Sega," against which, it seemed, Nintendo was finally ready to retaliate. "It looks as though the company is tired of being targeted by all of those nasty anti-Mario commercials and preparing to strike back!" I thought.
But I wasn't quite sure what a "CD-ROM" was. My only guess was that it was referring to a technologically superior computer of some type (or an "allegedly superior computer," according to the people in this video). (At the time, I was completely oblivious to what was occurring in the computer scene. I hadn't been keeping up with it, so I had no idea how computers had advanced since the late-80s.)
And really, it was difficult for me not to be intrigued by what I was seeing. In motion, Donkey Kong Country looked absolutely amazing! It wasn't the the garish, muddy-looking game that I'd deemed it to be after I finished examining the Nintendo Power screenshots, no. Rather, it was a stunningly beautiful game! Its visuals had so much depth, dimension and detail to them that I couldn't believe that they were being rendered by a 16-bit machine.
Also, the game had the creative spirit to match. There was a ton of unique and interesting stuff happening in every piece of footage. It was enough to leave me standing agape as I watched the action play out.
So much was being shown that it was hard for me to process all of it. I had to watch the video a second time to fully observe and appreciate everything that was going on.
"Supercomputers, 3D modeling and motion-capturing?!" I thought to myself while in a state of astonishment. "I wasn't expecting to see any of that in an SNES making-of video!"
It all sounded incredible!
And suddenly I was a true believer.
But the biggest driver of my sudden interest was actually another factor: Nintendo's zeal in pushing the game. If, I felt, the company was so confident in its product that it willing to send out this promotional video to millions of people, which it had never done for any other game, then it had to be something truly special!
Nintendo had gone out of its way to convince me that the next big thing was about to hit the market and that I'd be missing out big time if I chose to ignore it, and I appreciated the company's ambition in doing so. Its effort meant a lot to me. It assured me of two things: the game was the product of pure ambition, and I'd be treated to a next-level gaming experience if I decided to purchase it.
And for those reasons, I was now all-in on Donkey Kong Country!
I mean, sure: I understood that the video's montages were carefully edited and presented in overwhelming bursts in order to prevent viewers from being able to closely analyze them (and observing, as I somehow managed to do, that the in-game character models weren't quite as detailed as the computer renderings). And I was very much aware that the cringe-worthy interview segments were obviously scripted.
But you know what? They were still able to do the job and sell me on the game in a big way. That's how effective they were.
So Donkey Kong Country, which just minutes before wasn't even in my periphery, had now become one of my most-wanted games. And I was going to make sure to give it top placement on my Christmas list for that year!
And on Christmas morning of 1994, I got myself a copy of Donkey Kong Country, and I was happy to become the proud new owner of the most advanced video game ever made!
I started tearing into it immediately!
My first play-through, as I recall, was all about seeing the game in action and getting a sense of what next-level technology was capable of producing. It was about observing how smoothly the "3D-rendered" characters animated and interacted with their surrounding environments; intently examining the stunning background visuals and marveling over the incredibly detailed, realistic-looking surface textures; listening to and being immersed by the stages' beautifully composed music, surprisingly emotional music; and taking control of Rambi and Enguarde, two of the Kong's much-vaunted animal friends, and being amazed by how they operated--by how they automatically plowed through nearby enemies as if they had minds of their own ("Yoshi never did anything like that!" I was inspired to think as I beheld how advanced the animal friends' AI was).
The experience was, from beginning to end, all about drinking in everything that the game was eager to show me.
What struck me most about Country's "3D" visual style was how it generated an atmosphere that felt remarkably different from the Mario games'. The difference was so drastic that it put me in a position in which I couldn't at all reconcile the two series' aesthetic qualities or imagine their heroes, who were once intrinsically linked, existing in the same universe.
What this meant, I understood, was that Rare had succeeded wildly in providing Donkey Kong a world that was unmistakably distinct. It was a world whose vibe was unlike any other I'd ever sensed. And that was something that I appreciated more and more over time.
That the game played really well, too, was a bonus. (My only gripe was that the controls were a bit slippery and not quite as fluid as the Super Mario games'. I blamed the game's more-restrictive gravity for those issues.)
But honestly, how well Country played wasn't something that really concerned me at the time (it was a Nintendo game, after, so I was sure that it was going to be decent at worst). The purpose of my first play-through, like I said, was to judge whether or not the game's "advanced computer-generated" visuals could live up to the hype. And based on what I'd seen in the first, Kongo Jungle, I could confidently state that they more than delivered on their promise!
Donkey Kong Country looked absolutely spectacular, and as I examined its characters and environments, I was filled with the sense that I was playing and observing the most technologically advanced game that was ever released.
Its visuals were so striking and impressive, in fact, that they had the power to elevate the action and make even standard platforming segments feel next-level.
That's how captivating they were.
One of the early highlights--and another point of differentiation--was my first meeting with Cranky Kong, who had been described as an aged version of the original Donkey Kong. (His true origin was a subject of debate between my friends and I. Some of us believed that the Donkey Kong from this game was in fact Donkey Kong Jr., while others argued that the localization team was mistaken and that Cranky was actually the original Donkey Kong's grandfather. Unfortunately Nintendo never provided us a definitive answer.)
In a game filled with instantly memorable moments, Cranky's nostalgia-fueled rants were perhaps the most indelible of them. It was surreal watching him complain about how easy modern games were, how they used technology as a crutch, and how inferior they were to games from his era--mostly because I was from that era and I felt that he was meant to represent people like me! "Am I that old already?" I wondered as I absorbed his rants.
I didn't agree with his complaints, because I felt that games were better than ever, but still I was amused by what he was saying. I understood that it was all just a silly joke.
Cranky's humor wasn't something that I expected from Nintendo. It was weirdly ironic, and it unabashedly shattered the fourth wall. That's what made it so interesting and so novel.
And it was an element that played an important role in making Country feel so unique. "In this world, anything goes," it told me. "The rules are going to be broken."
It was just like the title screen's tonal shift (Cranky's Victrola-produced, classic-style Donkey Kong theme being replaced by the young, hip Donkey Kong's jammin', boombox-blasted rendition of it) implied: This wasn't your father's Donkey Kong, no! It was something boldly new!
For the entirety of my first play-through, Donkey Kong Country continued to captivate me and put me in a state of awe with its lifelike visuals and its mesmerizing multi-layer backgrounds. Every time I reached a new stage, I felt inspired to hang around its opening area and spend a few minutes intently examining its environments. In every instance, I took the opportunity to get a sense of the surroundings and their depth and imagine what could be lurking beyond the wondrous woodland and glorious mountainscapes that were seen in the distance.
I was, at all times, completely enchanted by what the game was displaying.
And Country contained many such unforgettable settings: lush, vibrant jungles that had varying background accompaniment and an array of beautiful sunset and nightfall themes; wonderfully mysterious caves; creepily lit mines; caverns that were illuminated only by their glowing crystals; winter wonderlands whose backgrounds were formed from majestic mountains; aquatic areas that were filled with richly colored rock formations and undulating hydrophytes; eerie temple ruins; silently wondrous tree-top towns; and elaborately constructed factories.
Each one stuck with me to such a degree that I could recall even its smallest details from memory.
And with its breathtaking settings, absolutely stunning background work, and incredible animation, Donkey Kong Country was able to convince me that it was a transcendent work. It really did feel like a game whose technological advancements were somehow beyond what the SNES was capable of producing.
That's how magical it was.
Then there was one of the game's other strongly defining elements: its music, which I came to describe more as an "enriching ambiance." Because it had an understated presence yet still managed to imbue stage environments with an intense amount of emotional energy. And that was notable because it was a type of conveyance that wasn't common in platformers (usually it was reserved for adventure games, which wanted you to form emotional connections with their environments because you'd be spending so much time traversing and re-traversing them).
The tunes varied in tone, ranging from calming to haunting to urgent, yet they all shared the same strain of underlying melancholia and pretty much told the same story: Donkey Kong's new world was an emotionally complex place. It wasn't just your average cartoon world in which all was cheerful and jolly and happy endings were a given, no. It was a place in which the atmosphere was sometimes sad and regretful.
This became apparent to me the first time I heard the game's underwater theme: the appropriately titled Aquatic Ambiance. It was a powerful tune, and it had me firmly in its grasp mere seconds after it started playing. As it reached my ears, all I could do was put the controller down, listen intently, and explore my feelings and wonder why I was suddenly being overcome by a feeling of yearning.
"This isn't the way it's supposed to be," I thought to myself in that moment. "Platformers aren't supposed to make me feel sad!"
But there I was feeling reflective as I played Donkey Kong Country, which had unexpectedly invaded parts of my consciousness that I thought were off-limits to games of its kind.
I listened to the beautifully composed underwater theme for about two to three minutes, and in that time, I attempted to figure out what it was trying to tell me. Solid answers proved to be elusive, but I didn't care. Because I concluded that it made more sense to simply let the tune wash over me and take me wherever it wanted to go. "It's better to just clear your mind and enjoy the emotional journey that the tune takes you on," I came to think.
Aquatic Ambiance quickly became my favorite of the game's tunes. It was an absolutely sublime piece of music, and I loved listening to it.
There were times in following when I'd pop Donkey Kong Country into the SNES and work my way to its fourth stage, Coral Capers, for the express purpose of listening to the underwater tune and letting it reverberate throughout our den. I'd let it play for a half hour or so and use it as accompaniment to my art-based activities and generally invite it to influence my thoughts and feelings.
And, of course, it was among those that I taped with my tape recorder and listened to regularly. (Admittedly, the TV's speakers did more justice to it, but still, I was willing to sacrifice some audio quality for the ability to listen to the tune in other places.)
And other tunes like Life in the Mines--a quietly evocative piece that was heard in the dreary, sparsely lit mine stages--had a similar power. I made sure to record all of them, too, and listen to them regularly.
So Donkey Kong Country's music, it turned out, was just as important as its visuals when it came to creating immersion, evoking feelings and motions, and stirring the imagination.
But the differentiation didn't end there, no. Rare further distinguished Country from competing platformers by eschewing the standard iterative-style level design and instead building almost every stage around a newly introduced, uniquely crafted gameplay mechanic (a stage's playfully alliterated title gave you an idea of what that mechanic would be).
The result was a game that was always throwing new things at me. There were stages that challenged me to cross long gaps by blasting my way from one floating, directionally-pointed barrel to the next; hop across wildly swinging ropes, Pitfall-style; push tires around and use them to tactically bounce over obstructions; activate specially marked Stop/Go barrels to switch on the lights and thus cause troublesome rocky kremlings to temporarily hibernate; dodge and flee from giant gnawty-controlled hamster wheels; climb across series of one-way ropes (vertical conveyors, basically); and ride along on on-rails platforms that you had to continuously power by obtaining inconveniently placed fuel barrels.
And those were just a few of the many ideas and mechanics that the game put in display.
There were also the dreaded minecart stages, of course, but they were limited in number and thus very much tolerable. There were only two of them, and to Rare's credit, it differentiate the second one by designing it to where you advanced by jumping from one cart to the next rather than riding a single cart all of the way through. This kept the idea fresh and further showcased the company's ambition to always try new things and refrain from simply iterating on existing mechanics.
I was among the many who struggled to complete the minecart stages, but unlike everyone else, I didn't think that they were the worst, no. For me, that honor was instead reserved for the blizzard-besieged Snow Barrel Blast stage, which was hellishly constructed and capable of demoralizing the player. It contained one of the most maddening sequences in gaming history: an endlessly long barrel-blasting segment in which you had to advance via barrels that spun rapidly and swayed wildly, and a lot of them even did both at the same time! And it didn't help that the segment was visually noisy in a way that evoked feelings of panic and stress.
This was the kind of stage that could wipe out your entire life-stock in hurry, and certainly it did that to me a number of times. That's why I dreaded it more than either of the minecart stages.
Donkey Kong Country had a few stages that were like that, in fact. Any one of them could destroy you if you didn't know how to handle its challenges.
Had it not been possible to save at almost any time, these stages would have earned Country the honor of being one of the most frustratingly difficult platformers ever released!
What Donkey Kong Country did during its endgame was also memorably distinctive: After you defeated the reptilian King K. Rool, fake credits began to roll!
It was immediately obvious to me that something was wrong with the listing, which was comprised entirely of kremling foes rather than actual staff members, but I didn't know what, exactly, its appearance meant. "Is the game actually over?" I wondered. "Did I do something wrong and accidentally trigger a bad ending (or 'bad credits')?"
It turned out, of course, that the fake credits were a ruse designed to trick me into letting my guard down and set me up for a last-ditch ambush at the hands of the still-conscious King K. Rool! And it might have worked as intended, because I recall dying during the fight's final phase. But it also could have also been the case that I simply blew it. I'm not sure, really.
The only thing that I can say for certain is that I found the playing of a fake-credits scene to be a delightfully bold and creative way to transition to the final phase of a boss battle. It was unique and interesting, and neither my friends or I had ever seen anything like it before. It was so notable, in fact, that it was one of the first things that we discussed about the game when we met up in class on the first day back in school (we all happened to get it as a Christmas present).
The K. Rool battle's other memorable element was its musical theme, Gangplank Galleon, which started with a whimsical-sounding intro that was designed to make you believe that the fight would be a laidback, easy affair. Then, after sucking you in, it promptly turned ominous-sounding and let you in on a terrible truth: Things were about to get really serious, and you were instead going to have to engage in an intense struggle!
That was one of the best examples of how the game used its music to tell complex stories and play with your emotions.
The battle, itself, was long and drawn-out, and it really tested my patience. I got frustrated with it because I tended to die in the late-second and third phases and resultantly have to slowly and painfully repeat the entire fight! And that was a drag.
I was annoyed, also, because K. Rool had kept finding ways to nick me with jumps. At one point, his propensity for doing so started to border on obnoxious!
So no--it wasn't my favorite boss battle. But even then, because the fake credits scene and the musical theme were so memorable, I still came away with fond feelings for the endgame as a whole. I felt that it was one of the best parts of the experience.
I was feeling a bit miffed in the moments after the fight ended, yeah, but as soon as the ending theme began to play, my negative thoughts faded and I fell into a state of calm. That shift occurred because the ending theme was one of the most absorbingly pleasant and wistful pieces of music I'd ever heard, and I couldn't help but succumb to its power. I was happy to let its soothing tones wash over me and make me forget what the K. Rool battle had put me through.
The ending theme also set the perfect mood for rumination. As I listened to it, I did what felt appropriate: I reflected upon my experience with Donkey Kong Country and wondered about where Nintendo was going to take the series from here.
It seemed to me that the music was hinting at the series' future. It had an air of closure to it. It made me think that Donkey Kong Country was the end not just for the Donkey Kong series but also for the SNES. It was the swan song for both.
But that couldn't have been the case, I thought, because, if anything, Country had just proven that the SNES had a whole lot of life left in it. It had so much more untapped potential. "So this can't be the end," my sense of logic told me.
As far as I was concerned, the next generation of Nintendo consoles could wait. We didn't need it yet. Donkey Kong Country and the technologically transcendent games that it was likely to inspire would, I was sure, vitalize the SNES and keep it relevant for a few more years.
And that's exactly what happened. Games like Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Doom, and the Donkey Kong Country sequels came along and fueled an additional two years of 16-bit excellence and helped the SNES to have a strong final run.
So what the music was more likely telling me was to enjoy the remainder of the ride. "Savor what's left of your childhood and this special moment in gaming history," it was saying, "and go on creating memories that you'll forever hold dear."
That, ultimately, was what I interpreted the tune's message to mean.
For my friends and I, Donkey Kong Country had strong staying power. We returned to it regularly in the years that followed, and in that time, we continued to derive great enjoyment from playing it, looking at it, listening to it, and absorbing its wonderfully unique vibe.
Rare's technological wonder was one from a core group of SNES games (a group that included Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, NBA Jam, Mega Man X and Super Metroid) that we were sure to play at every opportunity: during the after-school hours, on quiet summer afternoons, and at any point in which we were craving some reliably fun platforming action.
It was a true go-to game and one of our all-time favorites.
That it was loaded with secrets was another reason why we spent so many hours playing it. We were always looking for more of them, and our desire to do so was largely driven by Nintendo Power's "Classified Info"-style pieces, which made it seem as though the game's glowing exterior was concealing nothing short of the secrets of life. Each of us wanted to be the first to find all of the hidden bonus rooms, earn a 100% completion rate, and obtain the mythical reward that was apparently waiting for anyone who collected every item in the game.
Sadly, though, none of us were able to uncover all of the game's secrets (party because none of us were crazy enough to actually attempt to collect all 4,000-plus bananas).
I wasn't prepared to call Donkey Kong Country a masterpiece because, quite simply, it wasn't as quite as good as the genre's best entries. Also, it had a few annoying flaws (which I'll talk about in a bit).
But still I considered it to be one of the most purely fun platformers ever made. And what it lacked in polish, I felt, it made for with its enchanting ambiance, whose tones were so powerfully evocative that it was worth playing Country just to absorb them and enjoy immersing yourself in the wondrous atmosphere that they created.
Country was one of the best at visual, musical and environmental conveyance, and that was the true source of its strength.
These days, it's normal for Donkey Kong Country to be instantly dismissed whenever its name pops up in conversation. If you praise it in any way, you're likely to be met with synchronized eye-rolling.
And if you've been on the Internet since the early 2000s, you probably know why that is. It's the same old story: Some guy whose opinion is, for whatever reason, valued above all others' arbitrarily decides that the game is "overrated," and then the rest of us have to spend decades listening to his mindless followers parrot his message and continue to doing so until it becomes absolute "truth."
The culprit, of course, is usually a jaded games journalist or one from YouTube's large array of emotionally stunted angry game reviewers.
Those of their type have taken it up as a cause to tear down the "overrated" Donkey Kong Country because they see its popularity as direct assault on the underappreciated Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and Shigeru Miyamoto's work in general. And the stupid part is that this nonsense derives from a Miyamoto quote that was mistranslated and taken completely out of context. In some old interview, he stated that gamers were likely to overlook a game's shortcomings if its graphics were really impressive, which is, admittedly, an accurate observation.
But he was speaking generally. He wasn't targeting a specific game. Still, though, the aforementioned halfwits were quick to assume that he was talking about Donkey Kong Country, and they twisted his words to mean "Donkey Kong Country is mediocre, and people only like it because it looks good."
Miyamoto has since made his true feelings known (he likes the game), but predictably, the anti-Donkey Kong Country crusaders ignore such reports and continue to base their opinions on a largely fictionalized quote from the mid-90s.
To them, there's only one thing that I can say: Donkey Kong Country isn't "overrated" at all, no. It's rated just fine. It isn't, as you believe, a cynically conceived, substance-free mediocrity that was designed to prey on people who only care about shiny graphics. What it is, rather, is a distinctly styled platformer that seeks to entertain and inspire players in unique ways. And it does that while being high in quality.
It has its flaws, of course: Characters hitboxes are sometimes indiscernible. It's hard to tell where platforms' bounding boxes end. The boss battles are stupidly simple. There's a lot of annoying "Gotcha!"-style level design. And, quite intentionally, the Kongs are positioned so close to the screen's edge that you have almost no time to react to incoming enemies.
But those flaws don't prevent Country from being an exceptionally fun, highly enjoyable game. None of them stop it from achieving greatness (but, admittedly, they do diminish its quality a bit and downgrade it to merely high-tier).
People like to call its pre-rendered graphics "dated," but I don't agree with their assessment. I think of its visuals more as "remarkably distinguishing." Because the fact is that nothing else on the SNES, or any other 16-bit system, looks like Country or evokes the same types of feelings and emotions (not even Vectorman, no). How it looks and feels is what makes it so unique and special.
And even if I never played it again, it would still always stand out in my memory for how it challenged my perception of what a platformer should look and feel like and inspired me to think about games' aesthetics and musical qualities in wonderfully new ways. I would never forget why I'm so fond of it.
I agree that its two SNES sequels are objectively better games, but for a number of reasons, they don't resonate as strongly with me (though, I can't deny that Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has an elite soundtrack and some outstanding visual themes). They do more with their technology, sure, but they also fall into the trap of introducing too many collectibles and an abundance of uninteresting secondary characters (like the Brothers Bear). And as a result, they take a lot of the focus off of the platforming and place it on excessive item-obtention, grinding, conversing, and other unnecessary extracurricular.
I'll take the original Donkey Kong Country's simple, straightforward action over that kind of stuff any day.
Also, Rare loaded up the sequels with all of that extra content, yet, inexplicably, it somehow forgot to include one of the most important elements: Donkey Kong, himself! How the hell did that happen? How did he not make it in as a playable character?
It's his series after all. His name is in the title. So where in the world is he?
His absence is mystifying. It'll never make any sense to me.
So maybe it's true that a lot of what Nintendo and Rare told us about Donkey Kong Country's technology was an exaggeration. Maybe it was all smoke and mirrors and Country was actually just a plain ol' 16-bit game hiding behind the veneer of graphical techniques that were impressive, yes, but not nearly as "advanced" as advertised.
But really, that wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Video game companies were always overselling their games with fancy-sounding, largely deceptive terms like "state-of-the-art high-resolution graphics" and "blast processing." That's just how marketing worked.
At the time, we couldn't see behind the curtain, and there was no Internet to explain the trick to us, so it was understandable for us to think that video games probably were made by magical quantum supercomputers in a floating castle somewhere in Japan. Because that's what we wanted to believe!
Not knowing how our games were actually made was half the fun. It was what gave them their alluringly mysterious aura.
And that's why, decades later, we still view Donkey Kong Country the same way. We see its technologically "advanced" visuals as one of the greatest magic tricks the industry ever performed and fondly recall them for that reason. Because they really do have the power to convince us that they were created by revolutionary next-generation technology.
I'm no longer the type of person who would go out and buy a game based on the promise of its technology, but still I reject the notion that technology-centered games can't be special and have long-term value. Because I know that if I become a soldier in the graphics-versus-gameplay debate (which is basically just disguised system wars) and militantly stand with the group that claims that the latter element is all that matters, I'll be putting myself in a position in which I'll be potentially shunning games that have the power to delight and inspire me in ways that I couldn't have imagined before.
I'll be potentially robbing myself of this era's Donkey Kong Country and all of the amazing memories that I'd gain from playing and experiencing it.
I'd be tuning out the profound message that I received from Donkey Kong Country's poignant ending theme and making a decision that I'd surely live to regret.
No comments:
Post a Comment