"Donkey Kong 64" Talkback (Spoilers)

[DBTrilogy100]

Donkey Kong 64 is my favorite 3D Platformer and remains one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games, so consider me pleasantly surprised by the news of it coming to Nintendo Switch Online in a few days.

It may not be perfect (getting the Nintendo Coin, the Beetle Races and dealing with Beaver Bother were tedious, to name a few examples) but I do agree with the sentiment that the game tends to get more hate than it really deserves and agree with the sentiment that it has a lot of charm & personality.

Personally, the abundance of collectibles didn't bother me too much as I enjoy the levels enough to love exploring them and I always utilized the strategy of obtaining all the collectibles in a level one Kong at a time (barring a few exceptions) while saving the 4 captured Kongs' Golden Bananas in the Central Hub for last. It definitely helps that Jungle Japes, Angry Aztec & Fungi Forest are the only levels that can't be completed in one visit (the former two due to not having all the Kongs and the latter one due to needing Lanky's Barrel Ability for the Rabbit Race).

Naturally, I was pleasantly surprised last year with the announcement that DK will be getting a new 3D game in the form of "Donkey Kong: Bananza". While I do consider Bananza to be a good game overall, there are still some aspects that I think DK64 did better than Bananza. As an example, I consider Fungi Forest to be a better forest-themed level compared to the Forest Layer. In any case, I hope it won't take another quarter of a century for another 3D Donkey Kong game to be released.

 

[Classic Speedy]

Playing it again last night, I think I understand why DK64 didn't take the world by storm like the DKC trilogy did.

The Country games were revolutionary in the graphics sense. They pushed the limits of the SNES and might have single-handedly held off some from jumping ship to the 32-bit consoles, at least for a couple years. I don't get that same feel from DK64- it barely looked better than Banjo-Kazooie which would've given players deja vu, and going from rendered character models to, frankly, blocky polygons, would've looked like a downgrade, even if it was more powerful technology.

The same goes for the music. DKC 1-3 had CD-quality music that was atmospheric and took advantage of the SNES's versatile sound chip. By contrast, DK64 always had that sparsely orchestrated, video game-y sound that some N64 games unfortunately had, which ironically sounded less advanced than the SNES.

Then you had the gameplay itself, which admittedly did have some innovations in the character swapping mechanic, but for the most part it had a very similar feel to Banjo, so I can imagine players back then feeling very ho hum about it. I know the "too many collectibles" thing gets brought up a lot when discussing this game- that doesn't bother me too much but I can see why that would be a turn-off to some.

That's not even getting into how the controls weren't as tight as the SNES games due to the finicky camera and some sluggish aspects. I took a few tries just to grab a vine and swing across, as just one example (thankfully, once you're on the vine, if you press the button at the right moment, it's automated to make the next vine. If you actually had to steer towards the next vine, it would've been a nightmare). Also, with the switch to 3D the enemies are in some aspects easier to avoid because there is more space to run away from them in the large levels, plus you can pick them off from afar with the bazooka. I'm not going to pretend the DKC games had amazing enemy AI but you always had to deal with them because they were in your linear path. The same "flow" just isn't here.

I do think the hatred towards it gets overblown, and I'll probably still play through it again but it's definitely not my favorite 3D platformer, and given the choice I'd much rather play the 2D DK games again.

 

[Leviathan]

Donkey Kong 64 was the first game I played when it was new ( I got the green N64 bundle for Christmas 1999) and I can remember noping out around Frantic Factory. That level's a Metroidvania-esque maze of narrow corridors that's much too easy to get lost in, and it was too much for a kid me that was only starting to get into video games.

It was such an unpleasant experience that it took me a long time to revisit it and give other 3D platformers another chance. Playing the rest of the game later as an adult, leter levels aren't as bad or as confusing as Frantic Factory, but there's tons of real jank to be found.

If there's one Nintendo 64 game that deserves a full-on Switch 2 remake, it's this one. Almost 30 years of game design hindsight can really help iron out all the jank.