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Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."


Videos:
================

Episode 01 - A Solid Start


Episode 02 - Minecart Levels


Episode 03 - Sword Face


Episode 04 - Chill Music


Episode 05 - The Ice Caves


Episode 06 - Winky Level


Episode 07 - Skillz


Episode 08 - Underwater Madness


Episode 09 - Fuel Shortage


Episode 10 - Turn Off the Dark


Episode 11 - Alden Kills Drew


Episode 12 (Finale) - The Kredits



================

Back in 1994 the war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis was in full swing. Nintendo wanted something that would blow the competition out of the water and they hired a talented but at that time relatively unknown British developer to handle the mammoth task. As many of you probably know that developer was Rare, the company that would go on to create the games that account for 96% of nostalgia in 20 - 30 year old gamers. In the early 90s, when the Super Nintendo was first launched, Rare didn’t put out many games (they focused mostly on the Battletoads franchise), but instead put much of their resources into growing their technology. This left them one of the most technologically advanced developers around and when Nintendo was looking for something that could knock Sega’s socks off, Rare answered the call. Nintendo was so impressed by their 3D CGI technology that they purchased a 49% stake in Rare and made them a second party developer. When given access to Nintendo’s library of IPs, Rare chose to revive the Donkey Kong franchise, thus Donkey Kong Country, the second best selling game on the SNES, was born.

Donkey Kong Country was very unique in its visual style. From a technical standpoint it functions exactly the same as other SNES games, all the action happens in a 2D plane and all the characters and backgrounds are 2D sprites. However they used their impressive 3D CG technology to render each background and each frame of animation, resulting in a game that looks convincingly 3D and blew my 7 year old mind. The visuals of Donkey Kong Country were astounding at the time and it remains a beautiful game even by today’s standards, but that alone doesn’t make this game a classic. The gameplay is extremely tight, both the controls and the level design are top notch. Rare manages to take the very simple controls of running and jumping and create some very compelling gameplay, never having to resort to some Grandia style level segment to spice things up. But enough of me rambling about how great this game is, why don’t I just show you?


The Story So Far...
================

It’s been years since the events of the original Donkey Kong arcade game and the Donkey Kong of this game is actually the grandson of the original, who for the sake of clarity now goes by the name Cranky Kong. Donkey Kong was enjoying a pretty sweet life on Donkey Kong Island when the evil King K. Rool showed up and stole Donkey Kong’s bananas!

That’s… pretty much it. King K. Rool stole your bananas and now Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong have to get them back. It’s time to hit the beat and track down some missing bananas!

================

Characters:
================

The Heroes



He’s uh… big? I dunno, he’s a big, laid back ape that likes bananas. There’s really not much more to it than that. This game keeps things simple, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.



Diddy Kong is Donkey Kong’s plucky sidekick and nephew. Again, not really much more to it than that. He also likes bananas and wants to get them back.



Candy Kong is Donkey Kong’s girlfriend and resident save point master. If you want to save your game, you gotta give Candy Kong a visit.

She also kinda creeps me out…



Funky Kong is the raddest ape this side of Donkey Kong Island. He's a bit of a tinkerer and a super chill bro. He prefers to provide support from the sidelines while Donkey and Diddy do all the heavy lifting. You can use his makeshift airplanes to travel back to worlds you've already beaten. A dude this sick deserves an equally rad theme song.



Cranky Kong was once called Donkey Kong, way back in the 80s. He was the villain and titular character of the arcade game “Donkey Kong” and has since taken a backseat role in the adventure. He offers words of wisdom to his… son? Grandson? (Most games DK is the grandson of Donkey Kong, but in “Donkey Kong 64” he is said to be the son of Cranky Kong… Man I don’t know, I didn’t study ape anthropology).


The Villains



King K. Rool is a crocodile and he… wants bananas. For some reason. I think he just hates Donkey Kong. For some reason.
================

Ceraph fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Nov 17, 2015

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Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 01 - A Solid Start


Hey guys, and welcome back to another LP! As always I will be joined by my good buddy Alden (A440V). I love this classic and I hope you guys have as much fun watching it as I did making it! Thanks for watching!

Digital Jello
Nov 2, 2012

Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!
I actually didn't like this game as much as I should've growing up, but that's because I started with DKC2 before playing the first one (pirates were cool back then). Still, I find it to be challenging enough to rival today's platformers.

I do miss K. Rool though and his big crazy-eye. I think he should've made it in the next-gen DKCs.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Digital Jello posted:

I actually didn't like this game as much as I should've growing up, but that's because I started with DKC2 before playing the first one (pirates were cool back then). Still, I find it to be challenging enough to rival today's platformers.

I do miss K. Rool though and his big crazy-eye. I think he should've made it in the next-gen DKCs.

I agree that the difficulty was a bit prohibitive for me as a kid. I played the DKC games but not a whole lot, I definitely enjoy them more now.

Also I have mixed feelings about K. Rool, I do miss him and it would have been nice if he were included even as a cameo, but it's also nice to get a fresh villain in the series every once in a while so it doesn't end up like Mega Man's "Oh, SURE it's not really Wily this time ;) "

DMorbid
Jan 6, 2011

Hello! I see you.


I remember playing this as a kid, earning 20-30 lives in the first three worlds and then losing all of them in the snow levels. :arghfist::saddowns:

I think I made it a bit further in the Game Boy Color version, but I've never finished this or any other DKC game. 2D platformers and me don't get along very well. I still love the music in this game, though, and even though people like to hate on the prerendered visuals these days I still think it looks nice.

FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

I remember the Nintendo Power teaser video they sent out.

Some Sega goons were trying to find out the secret of why DKC was so awesome. And threatened a Mario Doll with minor inconveniences to force the Nintendo employee to talk.

e: also very disappointed that Funky Kong didn't get a bio. And extremely sad that you didn't provide a bio for Funky Kong's theme. Because it has a live of its own.

FeyerbrandX fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Oct 23, 2015

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

FeyerbrandX posted:

I remember the Nintendo Power teaser video they sent out.

Some Sega goons were trying to find out the secret of why DKC was so awesome. And threatened a Mario Doll with minor inconveniences to force the Nintendo employee to talk.

e: also very disappointed that Funky Kong didn't get a bio. And extremely sad that you didn't provide a bio for Funky Kong's theme. Because it has a live of its own.

Y'know I honestly totally forgot about Funky Kong when making the bios, I am going to go remedy that now.

Digital Jello
Nov 2, 2012

Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!

Ceraph posted:

Also I have mixed feelings about K. Rool, I do miss him and it would have been nice if he were included even as a cameo, but it's also nice to get a fresh villain in the series every once in a while so it doesn't end up like Mega Man's "Oh, SURE it's not really Wily this time ;) "

Good point, I just felt that DKC Returns was really shooting for nostalgia, and it would've been cool to see K.Rool again, even as a cameo. They did, however, surpass K. Rool in the sequel, Tropical Freeze, where the badguys are a bunch of Heavy Metal-themed Viking critters and their menacing walrus chieftain.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 02 - Minecart Levels


It's time to hit up our first minecart level! I must confess I am not overly fond of the minecart levels, they're fun for a while but the difficulty curve of the game always spikes way up on them. This game does have a really weird difficulty curve at times and these minecart levels are largely to blame. It does also just get stupid hard really quickly in the later worlds.

Ceraph fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 24, 2015

Mr. Soop
Feb 18, 2011

Bonsai Guy
I feel like you guys should have put the Turbo Tunnel music on for that stage, you were having so much trouble. :smugdog: Seriously though, those levels are a pain.

Also the audio starts to desync around 11:30, maybe a little earlier. Resyncs back to normal later on though.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Mr. Soop posted:

I feel like you guys should have put the Turbo Tunnel music on for that stage, you were having so much trouble. :smugdog: Seriously though, those levels are a pain.

Also the audio starts to desync around 11:30, maybe a little earlier. Resyncs back to normal later on though.

Yeah sorry about the desync, there was some weird stuttering when we were recording that caused all sorts of problems. I thought I had lined everything back up where it needed to be but it looks like I missed some spots. I will have to go back and triple check the rest of the episodes. It's times like this I wish YouTube let you re-upload and keep the same link.

FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

You didn't get the giant expresso idol at the end of the bonus room. :argh:

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Ceraph posted:

Yeah sorry about the desync, there was some weird stuttering when we were recording that caused all sorts of problems. I thought I had lined everything back up where it needed to be but it looks like I missed some spots. I will have to go back and triple check the rest of the episodes. It's times like this I wish YouTube let you re-upload and keep the same link.

It seems like you desync just around the times you'd snag all the "KONG" letters in a level.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

It seems like you desync just around the times you'd snag all the "KONG" letters in a level.

I figured out what the problem was, I had re-encoded the video files to get rid of the desync issue but then in the project I forgot to actually replace it with the fixed video file. Whoops. Anyways I uploaded a fixed version and updated the link on the videos, sorry for the technical difficulties.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 03 - Sword Face


We start to get to some of the more challenging levels, but I feel like Donkey Kong Country hits a sweet spot right around here. They start to play with a lot of the mechanics you've learned up to this point and make you use them in new ways, which is always a better way to spice up the gameplay than just introducing an entirely new gameplay mechanic. We start to see the levels play with the barrels and the climbing ropes a lot, which makes for some really fun segments.

Mr. Soop
Feb 18, 2011

Bonsai Guy
Been waiting for a certain death so I could make the joke. *ahem*


"That Claptrap's a maniac! WHY'D HE BITE ME?! :bahgawd:"

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Mr. Soop posted:

Been waiting for a certain death so I could make the joke. *ahem*


"That Claptrap's a maniac! WHY'D HE BITE ME?! :bahgawd:"

Oh my god, this is amazing and you just made my day.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 04 - Chill Music


I love the sound design in this game, everything from the stage music to the sound when you land on a kremling. The music is not only catchy but it also always fits thematically with the level you're in. The sound effects are super satisfying and make what is already a fun mechanic even more fun.

HaroldofTheRock
Jun 3, 2003

Pillbug
That was really interesting when you started talking about the tones used in the snow stage...the music captures the idea of being cold so well. I assume most of the credit goes to the composer but it really gives a vibe of good communication between departments and a unified vision. To be honest I'd put this game in mid-tier as far as SNES platformers go, but you can tell there was a lot of talent making this game.

Digital Jello
Nov 2, 2012

Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!
The music in DKC is very hypnotic and definitely portrays its surroundings well, although me personally, I found the snow theme to come off as more eerie then what you'd expect for a winter wonderland.

Also, I must be getting my DKCs confused; I could've sworn you fought the big hornet boss with Squawks the Parrot, and had to spit poo poo at him. I like your vids, they're definitely a trip down memory lane :allears:

*edited because my grammar sucks

Digital Jello fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Oct 29, 2015

Hoss Corncave
Feb 13, 2012
I was never any good at the DKC games, but I appreciated them and how impressive they really were. My friend was really good at them though, and managed to complete the first two completely with everything gotten. It was the only way I was able to see the K. Rool battles at the time, and his reappearance in the hidden world in DKC2 was pretty unnerving.

The music and sound in the games is also really well done, and I appreciated your analysis on the sound design in the snow stages. Also, you mentioned Retro Remix Review. They did a version of Gambit's theme from Spiderman and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge. That was a pretty terrible game, but the music was brilliant. Tim Follin was an amazing composer.

Mazed
Oct 23, 2010

:blizz:


I remember in 6th grade there was this die-hard Sega kid in my class.

He had such a meltdown when this game came out. :smuggo:

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 05 - The Ice Caves


We've got an extra spooky update for you on this Halloween! ...Okay, that's a blatant lie, there is nothing spooky about this update. Unless you count the difficulty curve of the ice world, in which case it is absolutely terrifying.

Crowsbeak
Oct 9, 2012

by Azathoth
Lipstick Apathy
Loved this game, just got it at a pawn shop for 15$.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Crowsbeak posted:

Loved this game, just got it at a pawn shop for 15$.

Awesome, $15 is well worth the price of admission in my opinion.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 06 - Winky Level


We run into a new animal today, Squawks, who follows the player through the level Torchlight Trouble and lights the way. I think it's a pretty cool mechanic, but I could definitely do without the light flashing the camera every time you turn around.

Crowsbeak
Oct 9, 2012

by Azathoth
Lipstick Apathy

Ceraph posted:

Awesome, $15 is well worth the price of admission in my opinion.

Now to find a under $50 dollar copy of Link to the Past.

Do you think you'll do DKC2?

Crowsbeak fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Nov 3, 2015

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Crowsbeak posted:

Now to find a under $50 dollar copy of Link to the Past.

Do you think you'll do DKC2?

We will definitely be going DKC2 at some point, but we have a couple other games we wanted to do first (some of them are also made by Rare), so it's hard to say exactly when we'll get to it.

StupidSexyMothman
Aug 9, 2010

Squawks is an interesting mechanic, but it's more annoying than anything else IMO. I think the light flashing every time you twitch back and forth is far more of a threat to you than the darkness surrounding the cone of visibility it provides.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

oldskool posted:

Squawks is an interesting mechanic, but it's more annoying than anything else IMO. I think the light flashing every time you twitch back and forth is far more of a threat to you than the darkness surrounding the cone of visibility it provides.

The cone of vision mechanic can be really cool if done well, but I totally agree that the light flash really detracts from the experience in this instance.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 07 - Skillz


It’s interesting how Donkey Kong Country can simultaneously make you feel like you are the greatest gamer in the world and also complete garbage. That’s actually one of the reasons I like playing challenging games, because when you do finally overcome the obstacle it’s that much more gratifying.

Digital Jello
Nov 2, 2012

Now I have a machine gun. Ho! Ho! Ho!
One of the biggest challenges of the first DKC, for me, was the fact that Diddy had such a hard time dealing with the fat Kremlings (from the latest update) and the Scharzenegger-looking blue Kremlings. As you stated in the video, it becomes almost impossible for Diddy to solo a stage at this point without DK, because of them. Yet, they mostly eliminated this from the sequels.

Mr. Soop
Feb 18, 2011

Bonsai Guy
Yeah, that fat/bulky Kremlin mechanic is just a little too much. In a level like this it has a weird shoehorning effect for how they want you to complete the stage because of how they appear halfway through.

10/10 for "WHAT IS IT?" btw. :allears:

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 08 - Underwater Madness


Our level progress has slowed to a crawl as we hit not only an underwater level, but also a minecart level! The underwater level was much harder and it’s really one of the only things I dislike about this game. The fact that you can’t swim in a straight line makes maneuvering very difficult. That combined with the fact that you can no longer turn around on a dime makes this level extremely difficult unless you have the entire thing memorized. I never really get that feeling in other levels, even when I screw up it feels more like “oh, I see what I should have done, I just didn’t do it right” instead of “HOW IN THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO DODGE THAT?!”

Bellmaker
Oct 18, 2008

Chapter DOOF



I'm pretty sure DK and Diddy can roll into the Army Men to kill them. Most enemies besides Klaptraps, even.

Not the buff jocks, though.

Bellmaker fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Nov 7, 2015

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Bellmaker posted:

I'm pretty sure DK and Diddy can roll into the Army Men to kill them. Most enemies besides Klaptraps, even.

Not the buff jocks, though.

You are in fact correct, unfortunately it's going to take us a couple more episode before we catch up to that enlightenment, though. Thanks for the heads up!

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 09 - Fuel Shortage


This episode is interesting because we encounter two new level mechanics, but oddly enough the level we had more trouble with was more fun to play.

The first level has this mechanic where the lights go on and off every couple of seconds and everything, and I mean everything, except for the kongs goes completely black. Not only is this mechanic difficult to deal with, but it's also visually jarring and downright unsettling. We did manage to beat that level with relatively few deaths, though.

The second mechanic we see is the reprise of the moving platform on a track mechanic, but this time with the addition of a fuel mechanic. The fuel of the platform constantly goes down and you have to pick up the barrels of fuel in order to keep going. It's actually a pretty fun mechanic, the barrels are all placed close enough together that running out of fuel is never really a problem unless you miss one. It gives you another goal to shoot for while playing the level and sometimes the barrels are even hints as to where you need to be to avoid an obstacle. Overall I enjoy it, it just so happens to be in the last world and in a very difficult level.

Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."
Episode 10 - Turn Off the Dark


We see the reprisal of the on/off barrels, but this time instead of being like red light, green light it controls the light in the level. It feels similar to the fuel mechanic in that if you keep up a good pace and hit all the barrels you won't really run into a situation where you're out of light. Managing to do that, however, is easier said than done.

Hoss Corncave
Feb 13, 2012
If that Klaptrap had gotten you at the end, I think you guys probably would have screamed.

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Ceraph
Feb 26, 2013

Say, "fuzzy pickles."

Hoss Corncave posted:

If that Klaptrap had gotten you at the end, I think you guys probably would have screamed.

I think there would suddenly be a smashed window in my living room and a broken TV on the curb. Not saying how things ended up that way, but... well you get the picture.

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