General Donkey Kong Thread

Agreed, Punch-Out!! Wii is fantastic. I only wish it let you play as the other boxers in multiplayer!

But yeah, Next Level obviously has a lot of love for Donkey Kong. If they do make another Punch-Out!!, my pipe dream is that they'll make King K. Rool—as his boxer persona from Donkey Kong 64, of course—the secret challenger. It's only fitting.

So, I'm playing Donkey Kong Country Returns now and apparently someone on the general Mario thread doesn't want me posting about it there.

I don't get the backlash against New Super Mario Bros, that much, besides maybe pushing the style of it onto the Paper Mario sub series, because I liked them, especially the Wii version which I played Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World beforehand to prepare myself for, right off the bat.

I also played through the entire Donkey Kong Country trilogy prior to this game...mainly to see if Super Mario Sunshine truly qualifies as Nintendo Hard(it does) but I'm back to DK again and just couldn't get into this game for some reason. Maybe it's because I'm just no good at it? The level premises and requirements are all simple enough, but I just keep missing stuff, messing up bounce timing, dying!

Not in danger of game overs or anything, been through too many Nintendo hard games in a row to get one of those early unless it's purposefully Platform Hell, but something wasn't clicking until I got to the ruins. Now I'm seeing all the good things I've been hearing and reading about this game for myself. I'm still missing stuff, messing up bounce timing, dying, but I'm also having a lot of fun. All the mechanics are coming together, the details are becoming more eye catching and I'm find myself playing around more, with momentum, with the enemies, with breakable things...still don't get what was up with that beach boss though. That took forever.

The NSMB series definitely gets some of its flak for spreading into the other sub-franchises like a normative cancer, but they're also fairly criticized for recycling assets and making minimal changes between installments. Each game on its own merit is a good game, though, so it's perfectly acceptable to enjoy them.

As for DKCR, yeah, the learning curve is a little bit higher than a Mario game. And Worlds 1 and 2 are a little bit dull, so that can give a negative first impression. World 3 is good, though, and worlds 5-8 are amazing. World 4 is... either it'll be your favorite or least favorite world. There's no middle ground with it.

I'm firmly in the "favorite" camp, incidentally.

My favorite worlds in Returns are 3, 6 and 7. As for 4, I loved the minecart levels, but the rocket ones can die in a burning hole.

People say the NSMBU series "spreads" to the whole Mario franchise, but I don't think it's so dramatic. Those games look like NES/SNES-era manual art, but in 3D, and I personally like the style. Even the infamous spotted hills actually debuted in Super Mario World.

Also, I can't help noticing that we got shooed out of the Mario thread for talking about Donkey Kong, so now we've come to the Donkey Kong thread to talk about Mario. It's the little things, man.

As for Donkey Kong Country Returns, the only worlds I kind of dislike are the Beach and the Volcano, the former for being boring (which is a pity, since it's the only new setting the game introduced) and the latter for looking and feeling like it belongs in a Mario game.

I like the Caves because each individual stage is good in its own right, but playing so many mine cart and rocket barrel stages in a row can be overwhelming. That's why Crumble Cavern is one of my favorite stages in Tropical Freeze—it's nice to explore a cave "normally," at long last.

I'm gonna have to defend the Jungle, though. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the game. The jungle on Donkey Kong Island had never looked so vast or felt so full of secrets. I remember blasting to the canopy in Tree Top Bop for the first time and being like, "Whoa."

We can talk about how great the world transitions in Returns are, right? There's blasting out of the caves straight to the jungle, stumbling upon the entrance to grand ruins on the beach, bombing a hole into the side of a cave from the ruins, and so on.

Tropical Freeze made up for it by connecting individual levels together, but I feel like it was still missing something since you just take a Barrel Cannon between each island.

Oh, yeah, I love the world transitions. Especially Caves to Forest, where the cavern suddenly becomes a hollow tree, and you burst out the top and it starts playing Forest Frenzy.

I went from, like, 30 banana coins to like, 101 in two levels. I had been purposefully avoiding them, actually, what with every other glass, cotton spore, floor and crate giving you one but then I discovered three successful flip bounces automatically gives you one.

I still like Hoofer, thank you very much, but that last Rambi level was just awesome, so if he never returns I'll be fine with that...all the sudden I want to see Donkey Kong Racing get off the ground.

The bird boss was tough, found a potential Kaizo Trap as I was trying to avoid the fire trail, an Action Bomb and it's dive at the same time while holding a bomb myself, but had more hits left than it did(I'm guessing it's a he, being bright red, but you never know). Now to the caves...

I should mention I haven't played the 3DS or Wii U New Super Mario Bros yet...so that might be why I haven't noticed the recycling yet, but if I don't like it I'll still have "Tropical Freeze" to look forward to.

The bird's name is Stu, so it's most likely male.

Anyway, good luck with the Caves. You may need it.

I call him Bowser anyway.

Savory Stu is a good boss. I also really like Thugly and Mole Miner Max. Really, most of the bosses in Retro's games are top-notch.

That first cave level was harder than anything in the ruins, except the boss. Getting through it anyway, puzzle pieces I got less of too but I never get them all, still missing stuff as usual, but I found enough bananas to replenish the lives I lost. Yes, still dying too. Maybe I'll just have to get used to that, doesn't seem to be changing anytime soon. Didn't miss a single flip bounce though.

I like that they cut back on collectables by just giving you a bonus for the DK letters...or was there always a bonus for those? Is this just the first time the game outright tells you? This game is pretty good about telling you stuff. I also think I enjoyed that mine cart level more than any other in Donkey Kong Country so far...that's not heresy is it? I know it can't be blasphemy because that statement also includes a previous mine cart level in this "DKC" .

DKCR is quite a lot better than DKC1 in general. I'm as big a fan of the series as you're likely to find, and I'm in total agreement. Of course, there are Retro-hating Rare purists, but those guys are dingbats.

And, the other games just give you an extra life for finding all the letters in each stage. While I'm glad the Kong letters do something more useful now, I also think it's kinda weird that completing the harder challenge (finding all the puzzle pieces) gives you a "lesser" reward (sound test and concept art).

And, man, if you thought Rickety Rails was hard, wait till you get to Crowded Cavern.

edited 30th Jun '17 8:48:06 PM by ThriceCharming

I think my main criticism of Returns is that it doesn't have David Wise onboard. Like, remixes of some of his tracks yes, and the music isn't bad or anything but it feels like a step down compared to the first DKC games. DKC 2 has one of the best videogame soundtracks ever imo.

Hey, who doesn't love unending swarms of Zubats?

Most of the original tracks are underwhelming, but the good ones are really good. I especially like Sloppy Sands, Mast Blast, and Sticky Situation.

I think I've done everything but crowded cavern and the boss now. I liked all the levels so far, but liked the Rocket Barrel less than the others. Still, it taught me grabbing enough bananas in the right place can make a puzzle piece appear. I was having that doubt like when I figured out the true nature of blue coins and thought I wasn't going to 100% "Sunshine" but now, I might be able to do it...oh, and I bought Squawks. I thought he was an item that gave you balloons and got confused as to why he wasn't showing up in my inventory, so I hardly bothered collecting bananas in bombs away on account of all the extra lives. Maybe that was a mistake, but Squawks can find me a puzzle piece later.

I love the segment at the end of Bombs Away with the circular piece of track.

But anyway, try Crowded Cavern. It's fun.

I didn't really die more in Crowded cavern so much as I didn't collect very many bananas so my live were not replenished. It wasn't even the swarms that were the problem, it was that big one chasing me.

Didn't expect [[spoiler a train]] to be a boss. I figured out how to get multiple hits on the end of level barrels but not on the end of boses tikis yet. But the monty moles are done. Now it's apparently piranha plants.

Up next is the forest! There's an interesting stage in there...

By the way, have you tried getting all the KONG letters in a world? There's a nice reward for that.

You don't need to spoilertag, by the way; the game's, like, a million years old.

edited 2nd Jul '17 10:54:22 AM by Anomalocaris20

I saw someone else use the spoiler tag, but no, haven't been that diligent on KONG letters. But I'll keep it in mind.

Forest kind of confused me. Knew it couldn't be a temperate forest, what with the tropical setting and three levels it seems to be the same ecosystem as jungle, with a stronger focus on the top than the bottom. That's just fine, I loved all the stages so far, Cling And Swing, Flutters Away especially. Almost got all the puzzle pieces in those. What I thought were piranha plants seem to be the same snappers seen earlier, the fishing variety excluded of course. I thought DK was king of the jungle, it's weird there's this plant not only able to eat him but seemingly adapted to eat him specifically.

"Jungle Beat" had you fight Dread Kong on branches. This would be the ideal place for a rematch, but I already know he's not going to be the boss.

Seconding that you should get all the Kong letters. You'll miss out on a lot of good stuff if you don't.

Also, the boss of the Forest is mechanically interesting but it's one of those things that don't look like they belong in a Donkey Kong game. On the other hand, Returns is probably among the most "fantastical" in the series, so maybe it's appropriate. At any rate, the Forest is one of the best parts of the game, so enjoy it!

I don't see what's wrong with the boss of the Forest. I really thought the design and strategy were both brilliant. Besides, there was a similar boss battle in DK 64 with Pufftoss, only there you had to Pass Through the Rings instead of pressing luminiscent buttons.

Also, I really liked the following world. Cliff. The last time I had played a video game with a Prehistoria world was with the final Nintendo-era Rare games (Banjo-Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Star Fox Adventures).

The Cliff is amazing. In fact, I think it might be my favorite part of the game, although it also has the single hardest stage in Donkey Kong Country history (Perilous Passage).

Actually, if I had to rank the worlds of Returns, it'd go:

• 1. Cliff
• 2. Forest
• 3. Ruins
• 4. Jungle
• 5. Factory
• 6. Caves
• 7. Golden Temple, including all Kong Temples (Putting this in spoilers since someone is playing the game for the first time.)
• 8. Beach
• 9. Volcano

You disliked the volcano? That was one of my favorites. Very good "final world" setting that does a lot of stuff most lava worlds don't do.

My least favorite is the beach for being somewhat bland, though it does have a few good stages in there.

edited 3rd Jul '17 11:33:11 AM by Anomalocaris20