Donkey Kong Country…Returns

The first time I heard news of this game was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, of all places. I will admit I didn’t keep up with E3 that well, other than there was some stuff going on about Harry Potter and the 3DS, but those are different apes entirely (haha, see what I did there?).

When I heard them say, “we’re going to play this game” and saw the screen in the background, I was in shock! I had no idea that a worthwhile DK game was in development. I'm still moping about losing my DK64 cartigride and spent a fair amount of last summer playing the original Donkey Kong Country to make up for it.

...and I’ve had my SNES since I was probably 6 or 7, and never had I gotten to the final boss, King K. Rool in the game before. I was tickled. Really, I was just thrilled with the game overall, because it wasn’t so difficult you didn’t want to play it, and it wasn’t so easy that it was boring. What really got my attention for this game was the art and the graphics. The pre-rendered sprites and the beautiful sets blew everything else out of the water in 1994. It was design like this, colorful, imaginative and all and all just good-looking art that originally made me want a career in video games.

Of course I loved the characters as well, and the general gameplay (racing through nature and using parts of the course to advance from point A to B, like the vines and barrels) that made me keep buying Donkey Kong games. I had DK Country and Diddy Kong’s first game for the SNES, one game for the old black and white Gameboy that I’m quite fond of, and then DK64. The original was most definitely my favorite, though I liked the length and complexity of DK64 just as much.

Though the plot of these games might not have always been the best thing (DK, hire some security for your damn bananas if you must), King K. Rool was always a favorite villain. Who would have thought to put crocs up against apes? The games were heavily linked to nature and really, to a certain degree believable. Animals are territorial and are protective of their stuff, and animals fight out in the wild.

So as for this new game…



The geekiness center in my brain just explodes. How many new Zelda games have we gotten in between DK64 and this? At least a couple, right? Donkey Kong was due for a new adventure game. I didn’t even bother with DK Jungle Blast because I’m leery of buying specialized controllers, and the controls plus game just didn’t seem very fun at the time. Then Nintendo started pulling DK out of Mario Party as a playable character, so it seemed like the ape just fell off the radar for a while. Thankfully come November 21st, we’ll be reunited again.

But I’ve got a couple qualms upon watching the demonstration on Late Night. Though it’s nice and traditional, why…is this game for the Wii…a side scroller? The articles I’ve read go on and on about the entire game being rendered in 3D. Why is it I’m not able to explore in every direction, including that third dimension? Boo. Third dimensions tend to make things more interesting and far more open. Red Dead Redemption is being celebrated because of its massively open map that lets players do whatever they so choose. Zelda’s Twilight Princess was so very open. DK64 had a pretty big home world map too, if I recall correctly. Although I suppose if this game wasn’t a side scroller, a lot of that “traditional” feel would be gone. (Also I am reminded that the New Super Mario Bros. was quite a nice game and it too was a side scroller.)

The second potential issue I see is the difficulty of the controls. Maybe it’s just because Jimmy Fallon is a bad gamer or he’s just getting acclimated to the Wii that this looks like a problem. But having to stop and thrash the Wiimotes around to break a crate open or beat up on an enemy seems distracting and difficult and like another enemy could easily come up and kick your tail because you’re not moving when you’re shaking the remote. I dunno. I’ve not actually gotten to play it myself. And then again, I guess that’s what we get for it being on the Wii—the interactive gaming system. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a whole lot of point to this reboot, other than cooperative playing and better graphics, I suppose.

…one more. You took the Kremlings away? Nintendo! I shake my fist at you. Bowser’s been around for sixty trillion years. How dare you axe another beloved villain of the reptilian persuasion?

In the end, I’m sure this is going to end up on my Christmas list and that when I do get my hands on it, it will be the cause of some extreme nostalgia.