Donkey Kong Country Week: The Kongs

Half the fun of talking about Donkey Kong Country series is its being indecisive about who you play each game. Although all of them are called Donkey freaking Kong Country (freaking, mine), only the first one stars the titular gorilla. Then the sidekick from the previous game takes the starring role in the next, and then the sidekick from the next game takes the starring role in the next next, and Donkey Kong’s appearances become fewer.

I don’t know how Rare got away with this. If this were any other gaming franchises, you bet people will be complaining all over message boards. BAWWW NERO! BAWWW RAIDEN! BAWWW APOLLO JUSTICE! BAWWW AXL! BAWWW SHADOW! The funny thing is that each of those games gave its lead sufficient time to develop before switching to another. DKC didn’t. Maybe no one heard much whining because Internet weren’t very accessible yet.

(Apollo Justice can die in a fire.)

Donkey Kong

Someone I follow on Twitter (@T3h_Kaiser) has been saying that Donkey Kong being a grown-up Donkey Kong Jr. is a lie cooked up by Rare. It’s like telling me that everything that I believed in was wrong! I’m now back from my shanty where I cried my hearts out, and is ready to debunk his claim. Because clearly it is he who was lying and wrong.

So. Donkey Kong Jr wore a tank top and a diaper. DKC’s Kong goes full-commando, and is naked if not for the tie. How could a conservatively dressed toddler grow up to be such an indecent gorilla? Really simple. He must have watched some Madonna after-midnight MTVs. Or maybe bought Prince’s Lovesexy. At least he does it with class. Hence, the tie.

And why did he go from round-headed to having this pointy hair? It must be the grunge rock, which were peaking in popularity during the early-90s.

See? Rare did not lie. Also, I just wasted time stupid-writing.

Donkey Kong from DKC gets cool points for being the first lead, and also for being the only Kong (besides Cranky) remotely tied to the Donkey Kong arcade classics. The powerhouse of DKC, he can effortlessly raise a barrel above his head, and his stomp devastates even foes who wear head protections. He can even dig up hidden bananas by clapping the ground. He’s hardcore, so don’t mess with him. And don’t go telling him he’s not legitimately Donkey Kong Jr or he’ll beat you up real bad.

Best moments: Everytime he defeats a muscular foe and the player inevitably thinks that Diddy couldn’t do this. In co-op mode, the first player (who plays Donkey) sneering at the second player (who plays Diddy) for getting the short end of the stick.

Worst moments: Getting kidnapped. Twice. So much for being the powerhouse, huh?

Diddy Kong

As I hinted while talking about Donkey Kong, Diddy gets major disadvantage for not being as powerful and useful as his partner. He’s supposed to be the Robin to Donkey Kong’s Batman, but when he becomes star in the second game he still gets outclassed by his sidekick Dixie Kong. To shoehorn another comics reference, imagine Dick Grayson becoming Batman and Damien Wayne as Robin still outdoing Batman at everything. I’m perplexed by why Rare never gave him unique abilities. He might be more mobile than Donkey Kong, but then again it might only be my imagination.

So what is Diddy’s handicap? His lack of strength. While most foes can’t resist Donkey Kong’s stomps, the bulked-up and the fat ones are immune to Diddy Kong’s. Which means that unless Diddy has a barrel or is riding a destructive animal friend, he has no way of defeating them.

For this, my brother and I would often use Diddy Kong as Donkey Kong’s shield. Whenever we find the duo in predicament, we would switch Donkey Kong out and offer Diddy to the gods. This we call “Sacrifice of Diddy”.

Best moments: Well, I guess after more than 15 years, Diddy Kong will finally make himself reliable. In DKCR, he wears a jetpack. Damn.

Worst moments: Every time he steps on a bulked-up crocodile, bounces back and falls into a bottomless pit.

Candy Kong

Question. Why would monkeys or gorillas have womanlike blond hair covering the “furs” on their head? And what’s with the Kong’s fascination with blondes anyway? Donkey Kong has this ultra-creepy and gigantic Candy for a squeeze. At least Dixie and Diddy look like a legitimately sweet couple, inasmuch as primate couples can look sweet.

Candy lets you save your game while saying cloying things such as “Honey Kong”, then blowing a kiss at you. Will creep out anyone but furry fanbases. Monkey-furries. Yikes, I hate myself for thinking those kind exist. Appears only in DKC1. Has a Dance Dance Revolution like minigame in DKC GBA remake.

Funky Kong

Yea he’s a sunglasses and bandana wearing surfer monkey dude. His barrel plane lets you go back to earlier levels. Useful for when your lives are depleted and you need to restock.

In DKC3 he becomes a mechanic and he will constantly upgrade your boat so that you can drive it to previously unreachable parts of the map.

He usually has a funky BGM. Because he’s funky. Clever, right?

Cranky Kong

The original Donkey Kong has grown old and became a curmudgeon who tells you how much better he and his games are in his prime. Dispenses obvious advices in DKC, will give you hints on every level in DKC2, is your sole competitor (and a sore loser) in a ball throwing minigame in DKC3.

Wrinkly Kong

Teaches school on DKC2, then retires in DKC3 and spends her days exercising, sleeping, and playing Ninty 64 (and you can hear the Mushroom Kingdom theme from Super Mario 64). She works as the in-game tutorial and the save spot. Dies off-screen after the end of DKC3, and becomes a ghost. Wow, this is depressing.

She is (was) Cranky’s wife. Has she always been named Wrinkly, even when she was 17? Hey, I like posing needless philosophical questions.

Dixie Kong

She’s Diddy’s beret-wearing ponytailed girlfriend. Sidekick in DKC2, lead in DKC3. She must have mastered the art of hair-fu because she uses it to raise barrels, when Diddy can’t even lift barrels above chest level (that wuss). She can also use her hair as a whip. Millia Rage from Guilty Gear must’ve learned a few tricks from Dixie.

But there’s more. She has this cool and very useful ability of making herself glide by spinning her hair like it’s chopper’s blades. So while her physical strength equals Diddy’s, she has better survival skills.

Best moment: Being the star of DKC3.

Worst moment: Cries when she loses. Because girls are tear-ducts! Gender equality!

Swanky Kong

He lets you play minigames so you could get yourself some swank and thus his name is oh dear this is so stupid why am I even writing

Has a game show where he asks DKC2 related trivia in DKC2, and a carnival game booth in DKC3. Also has a terrible Sonic rip-off 3d tunnel minigame in DKC3 Advance.

Kiddy Kong

Kiddy Kong almost makes up for Donkey Kong’s absence. For a toddler, he has a rather impressive strength, and is capable of destroying even the bulky looking foes. He doesn’t have the “pound the ground for bananas” ability, but those aren’t a necessity anyway. To make up for that, he can skip on water, and you can roll him and have Dixie stand on top of him like he’s a circus ball (excepting a few places, neither those are very useful).

Best moment: Skipping on water for the first time. Can you think of any other games that let you skip on water? Exactly.

Worst moment: Dixie cries, he WAILS. Because babies are wambulances! Age equality!

Brother Bears

Technically not a Kong, they treat you as a chore machine in DKC3.

Banana Bird Queen

Also not a Kong. She will help you defeat Baron K Roolenstein if you find every Banana Bird.

Donkey Kong Country Week: The Games

Among the many retro-revivals that the Wii has enjoyed in 2010, Donkey Kong Country Returns (DKCR) is the title that I’m most hyped for, no small feat as NBA Jam Wii also came to tug my nostalgic and basketball-loving heartstrings. I planned all along to begin my Donkey Kong Country retrospective posts today and I seem to be sticking to the plan so far. My original intent was to write a week before DKCR hits stores, as a way of anticipating it, but I got a few details mixed because instead of getting released next week like I initially thought, it’s out today.

With the confession of my failures out, I’m gonna start talking about Donkey Kong Country (DKC).

DKC is one of the few videogame series that I hold close to my heart (or is it many? I have to evaluate this later). Back in 1994, my brother and I didn’t have a SNES, so when we had a videogame fix we would head to a store where we can pay to play a videogame of our choosing for a limited time. In one of those sessions, we were seated next to someone playing DKC. It struck me as a surprise that Donkey Kong, formerly Mario’s foil, now has his own platformer, and a really beautiful one at that. All to my design, I got a SNES along with DKC months later, and it would become a game I would enjoy over and over again.

Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Country and I didn’t get off a good start. I don’t mean to say I hated this game initially; it felt more like the game hated me. I was a seasoned Super Mario Bros veteran by then, so I reckoned, its being platformer also published by Nintendo, that I would breeze through it, deftly avoiding any obstacles with my dexterous Mario-trained hands (I would since then learn that Nintendo only published the DKC series and had nothing to do with their creation, which is handled by Rare). Was I wrong. In as early as the 2nd world (of 7) the game would hand me my ass many times. I even saw the game over screen in that darned mine-cart level. And then in that snow barrel-blast level. And then in that factory level with flaming oil drums. This was a challenging game and it would take my brother and I 3 days of non-stop playing to beat what is essentially a 2-hour game.

This was also a game of marvelous beauty at the time of its release. Its use of pre-rendered 3d gave its detailed characters and lush backgrounds beauty then unparalleled. I remember my dad, a baby-boomer who usually doesn’t care about videogames, would usher house guests to our game room just so everyone can marvel at how far videogame presentation had gone. If its property enticed me to buy it, then so did its visuals. It was a stuff to brag about, to SNES what the original 1st-gen Optimus Prime was to toys. People may laugh about them now, DKC for how dated it looks and Prime for not being very posable, but they were legitimately cool back then.

Anyway, the Donkey Kong in DKC, as it turned out, isn’t the Donkey Kong who kidnapped Pauline for Mario to save. That Donkey Kong became DKC’s Cranky Kong, and the Donkey Kong here is the junior Donkey Kong from the time when Mario incarcerated his dad (It was a phase, he was in college! Mario has since then sworn off gorilla cruelty. Oh wait, there’s Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Forget I said anything to defend that jerk.) In DKC, the Kongs store a huge array of bananas, guarded by Diddy Kong who is so rad he wears a cap. He isn’t rad enough to prevent K Rool’s army of crocodiles from stealing the bananas though. Pride hurt, he joined Donkey Kong, now sporting a tie, in a quest to reclaim their bananas, with nary a cutscene about vengeance because videogames, then, don’t overindulge in pretentious tales about light dark heart darky lightness.

Of all the 3 DKCs, the first one is the most straightforward platformer, to the extent that you can say that it’s a jazzed-up Super Mario Bros. They share the sole objective of reaching the end of the level, along with other gameplaysimilarities. You hurt enemies by stomping on them (in DKC you can also hurt them by using a roll attack). You collect 100 bananas for 1up. You can access bonus rooms. There are some differences, notably the barrels, which the Kongs can pick up and throw (and occasionally ride on), and some of which act as cannons that can blast the Kongs across different places. Another element unique to DKC is the tag team. Tag team, though, isn’t adroitly executed in this game because having a partner only means you have additional “health” before losing a life. You can play two player co-op, but since only one Kong can be active any given time, the player assigned to the inactive Kong can only be spectator. Each Kong has his quirk, and I will discuss this in an upcoming post. Like Super Mario World, there are animal friends assisting Kong. Think Yoshi, but five of them with individual traits. The animal friends prove to be the game’s strengths because they give a refreshing way of playing platformers, and it didn’t hurt that they made you feel powerful. I will also discuss the animal friends in another upcoming post.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

Donkey Kong Country 2 (DKC2) is considered by many as the highest point of the series, and it’s easy to see why: most of DKC’s kinks has been ironed out. Tag team matters now as either Kongs can boost the other to unreachable places, which is vital for finding many bonus areas. The bonus areas have been repurposed as farming grounds not for 1ups as they were in DKC, but for tokens required to unlock a secret bonus world.

Playing DKC2, it’s immediately clear what motif the game is going for. While DKC had a jungle feel, DKC2 opts for a more pirate theme, and it was blatant with it. The game encourages treasure collections, which would start an (unfortunate) trend for collect-a-thons. The enemies wear pirate hats, wields cutlasses, and had hooks for a hand. Even the story, what little it has, is pirate-like. Donkey Kong is kidnapped, and it’s up to Diddy and his girlfriend Dixie to get him back along with, yet again, their stolen bananas. Just how bad is Diddy at standing watch over Kong’s bananas anyway? Why is he still the hero despite his repeated follies?

DKC2 is leaps and bounds better than DKC in everything: the visuals more inspired, the animal friends less nerfed (compared to a few from DKC), and the music more dramatic. With its collection aspect it also offers more incentive for replays. Fan of the game will be turning every areas inside out looking for bonus areas, or grabbing DK coins as bragging rights. Hey, you can even try to beat Mario in no. 1 spot. (Could this be a precedent for Xbox 360’s achievement points?)

My only beef with DKC2 is that I wish I had a way of playing Donkey Kong instead. Of all the Kongs in DKC, I found him most memorable. Alas, DKC would be the last time in the trilogy he’s playable. He would sit out again in DKC3.

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble

Diddy Kong also sits out in DKC3, because his folly has now cost him an absence. King K Rool has abandoned his Captain Hook stint to become a… scientist named Dr Baron K Roolenstein? Wow how does that work? I don’t mean to discriminate, but aren’t pirates too roughnecked to be inventors, even if only to devise pillaging robots!

The enemies have again been redesigned, some of them now fitted with mechanical parts. Also, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong have yet again been kidnapped. Why can’t they look after themselves for once? You think after getting past DKC they would learn a few skills on looking out for themselves. In any case, the duo you use now compose of Dixie Kong and Kiddy Kong, Dixie Kong’s gentle giant of a cousin.

Perhaps it’s becoming clear that I am not putting much effort into writing about DKC3, and for that I’ll give you a good reason. DKC3 is the most forgettable game of the trilogy. When examined as a standalone product, it’s above most platformers of its time, but against DKC and DKC2 it felt uninspiring. DKC is challenging, and while I had less difficulty with DKC2 because of my experience with DKC, I still died a few times there. DKC3 is cakewalk even amongst other platformers, and you have to cheat your way to make it hard, otherwise only the bonus room locations prove to be tough.

What worked against it is how much the feel has changed. Both DKC and DKC2 relied heavily on twitchy reflexes, and DKC3 didn’t, so players were less thrilled in beating DKC3. The laid back tone and the care bear families may have turned people off because no one cared for them. Part of the blame also falls on player fatigue. Approach DKC3 as a platformer and you’ll get a game that’s fundamentally the same as its predecessors, but not as exciting.

I get what the developers tried to do in this game. They added greater focus on exploration and puzzles. They remade the world map to be more dynamic by fitting in fetch quests that would unlock different areas. The player had to analyze in-game clues to find the Lost World and even free banana-birds from every crystal caves to get the true ending. So when it comes to longevity, DKC3 would surpass both games because of its heavy exploration. The player should analyze every region of the maps to get the most out of it.

DKC3 sold the worst among the trilogy and underperformed under stiff competition (including Nintendo 64 titles), leading Rare to abandon their 2d platformer endeavors. SNES would soon be retired, and DKC fans would wait until 2010 to get DKC’s next offering, developed by Retro Studios in hopes to recapture the delight from Kong’s finest hours.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any videogame will by itself spring a few nerd arguments. Does Ryu fight better than Ken? Is Aeris or Tifa the better girlfriend material? Does a homoerotic tension exist between Snake and Otacon? For Ace Attorney, the most recurrent one is whether Phoenix Wright or Miles Edgeworth is the better character. Whenever a Team Miles guy loses the argument, his last resort would be to state that Miles hadn’t starred in his own game. By making Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (AAI:ME), Capcom gave Team Miles what they wanted. Perhaps he is compelling enough to carry a game on his own, and can issue an ultimatum to Team Phoenix that he should’ve reigned supreme in their hearts.

A Miles game would work with minimal effort by making it similar to a Phoenix game, excepting one twist in the formula. Like Phoenix, Miles would have to work as both an investigator and as attorney. Unlike Phoenix, his goal is for the court to find the defendant guilty.

What Capcom actually did was take Miles off of courtroom and then give him the role of a detective who argues with people at key moments. Is this change praiseworthy or cringeworthy?

After four games, Ace Attorney’s formula is beginning to grow stale, so Capcom shouldn’t be faulted for trying to make it different. The most noticeable change apply in the investigative portions, where the player now sees his/her  character in third person as opposed to the predecessors’ first person. Instead of pointing a cursor to different objects of the screen, one would have to drag Miles around for him to interact with objects and with people.

But really, all these are cosmetic changes. You’re still doing the same thing from four games before, i.e., collecting evidences and interrogating witnesses/suspects. Your interrogation would frequently transition to a verbal battle, which plays like courtroom testimony but with the noticeable lack of courtroom and that lovably naïve bearded judge’s inappropriate cracks. This can happen at a moment’s notice, which is quite unlike the previous game where investigation and courtroom portions are demarcated, as are the story’s current mood - mellow and expository for the investigation, high stakes for the courtroom. Here, the mood can swing whichever way, any time.

Oddly, that didn’t work in this game’s favor one bit.

The foremost defining trait of Miles Edgeworth is that he’s a prosecutor, as Phoenix a defense attorney. Is it unreasonable to expect his game to play on his profession’s strengths? No, but Capcom disagree, so instead of giving him actual prosecutorial work, they had him play a detective, despite characters like Detective Gumshoe or professional menopauser Ema Skye already fulfilling that purpose. In fact, the original plan was to make Ema Skye the star of Ace Attorney Investigations. But fickle as they were, Capcom used the framework for her game to someone who is not a detective. Miles’ lawyering is never prominent in the story, and for that it suffers a loss of impact. I never got the sense that anything he does here matters, because even if he finds a person guilty of murder, what’s to stop the murderer from hiring an attorney that would acquit him/her, unless if Miles follows the murderer through to the courtroom? By the time he does that, the credits roll, which means you never get to play the renowned prosecutor as a renowned prosecutor, ever. All a tease.

AAI:ME stumbles even as a detective game for being only ostensibly different to previous Ace Attorneys, which didn’t sell themselves as games where you play detective. Only one trait - his ability - sets Miles apart from his peers. While Phoenix has a gem that can see through lies, and Apollo Justice a bracelet that senses suspicious body languages, Miles has “logic”, which is his way of stringing observations together and seeing if they make sense. Phoenix and Apollo do that automatically, but with Miles the player is required to tell him “hey, the window is high. Look, a ladder! Now to use logic to tell Miles that WE CAN CLIMB THE LADDER TO GET THROUGH THE WINDOW!”

The fifth episode of the 1st Phoenix Wright game and the entirety of Apollo Justice had more thorough detective works, as they require players to turn every collected evidences inside out, analyzing not just their surfaces but also using various gadgets to scan traces of blood and fingerprints, among other things. Even the many CSI videogames, which many review outlets rate lowly yet I consider underappreciated, fare better as detective games. In AAI:ME, nothing is done with the evidences picked up along the way besides rotating them in 3d.

As a game starring Miles Edgeworth, the only thing it manages to do is to get me more annoyed at the titular protagonist than I expected, and I fault this for two things. The first is that Miles does not have Phoenix’s humor, which makes his inner monologues not as entertaining to read. The second relates to the first, in that Miles, frankly, is a bit of a jerk. I constantly have to read his thoughts about how obsessed he is with perfect cases, which leads him to respond horribly to those who get on his way, even if they may have meant well. His biggest victim? Dick Gumshoe. I can only stomach so much berating of Dick before I start wishing I could reach into my DS and give Miles a little beating. Upon reaching the last part of game, I was so sick of Miles that I had to consult a FAQ just to get it over with quickly. The saying “overfamiliarity breeds contempt” applies here. Miles is not as endearing as his mystery.

The story claims to interconnect every chapters of the game — a series’ novelty — but that’s done only ostensibly. The game repeatedly tells the player how the crimes from cases 1-5 are connected, but one never sees what motivates the other characters to commit murders for the sake of the big bad guy. Yet, the game ends by reminding you again that they are related, in case you’ve forgotten. We know that, we just don’t know why.

Characters old or new aren’t very engaging (look, it’s cheeky girl with thief now instead of cheeky girl with spirit channeling, cheeky girl with science, and cheeky girl with magic!), with the fake-proverb quoting Wolverine-lookalike providing the sole, genuinely funny comic relief (and boy, that was his only shtick). Neither Miles nor any of the returning characters develop. As a result, the story amounts to nothing but a glorified Scooby Doo episode - hey, let’s get some beloved Ace Attorney characters reunited so that they can solve yet another batch of murder cases! If Ace Attorney games could enjoy minor successes, what’s to stop Capcom from pumping out lazy sequels of more Scooby and Friends detective time? As it were, Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is already in the works, coming to a store near you next February so you can enjoy watching more of Miles and pals’ random irrelevant escapades.

So Miles fans, I’ll be seeing you at Phoenix Wright vs. Professor Layton. I’ve always been Team Phoenix anyway.