Donkey Kong Country

Once upon a time there was a deal made between two video game companies to work together, one was a game developer that was ahead of the game, the other was the flailing king of the entire medium. For a while there in the late 90's it was the partnership between Nintendo and Rare that showed what a video game could be. Though they developed many games, many good games, there was one that stood out as the best, I do believe it was one of their first also and from what I understand video games would not be the same after it.

Yes, I'm talking about Donkey Kong Country, the coolest game around during my childhood/adolescence, a game that I always wanted but was too poor to buy. I did play it many times, I had it on loan for a while, but I was never able to actually buy it. Until now that is. Thank you eBay.

What made this game so good? well lets remember that at the time it came out (1994) Nintendo was the king, the Playstation was about to take the thrown for a variety of reasons: dissent, cheaper cd games, more mature titles. You name it. But the SNES was offering games that looked so much better than the traditional PS fare. The SNES, a weaker machine than the PS or the Saturn, was capable of giving us games with characters that looked like moving action figures, the gameplay was smooth and fun while the CD consoles had to deal with polygons and load screens.

This game eventually franchised out into a few others that progressively introduced new characters. Though the monkey (or ape) protagonist changed the gameplay remained the same. Fifteen years after the original came out the fun that is to be had playing the original also remains. I got the game yesterday and have logged in a few hours now. Its easy, but its difficult, I dont really know how to describe it. I dont think I need to describe it, I'm sure everybody has played it and understands.

It doesnt take rocket science to play it, too many new games require one to read books and make decisions and wander around a vast state on a hummer. How friggin unnecesary, how grating! I understand that games have to evolve, I even understand that we tend to romanticize things from our childhood but that does not take away from the brilliance of this game.

Besides, they never could improve it. They came out with a DK for the N64 and it wasnt as good, in general Nintendo moved towards the same crowd that the PS had before realizing they couldnt compete and deciding to go back to making kids games. But for a while Nintendo was in a dark place, it appeared doomed, the relationship with Rare soured and they went over to Microsoft, never to return.

So this wasnt the normal eightbitter post. It wasnt a game review because there is no need to review a game like Donkey Kong Country. Everybody knows it, everybody loves it and even if they dont I simply assume that they do because it was so big during my childhood. Anyway, I'm just glad I finally have it.