Playing Donkey Kong Country online: Kongo Jungle (World 1)

Booting up Donkey Kong Country is the equivalent of an instant time warp. Watching the Rareware (Rareware!) logo appear, followed by a huge, shiny fuck-off Nintendo billboard sign while a 20th Century Fox-esque fanfare plays, I am instantly transported to the simpler times of Christmas ’94. THIS is how you let players know you mean business from the very first credits:

The actual intro of the game is kind of silly, with Cranky and Donkey Kong sorting their generational differences out via the medium of music terrorism: Cranky winds up a little phonogram playing the original 1981 Donkey Kong tune on top of a familiar scaffolding before Donkey swaggers in with a massive boom box (remember, this was 1994…), they have a bit of a fight and then we are treated to some pretty horrific folding and unfolding of a low-res title screen JPEG that nearly destroys your eyeballs.

This ‘special effect’ was already a bit pedestrian back then and it looks just plain odd nowadays. But thankfully Aldara and I are here to PLAY, not for the 16-bit equivalents of a CGI intro.

Just as the main menu screen appears, all the memories from my previous plays of DKC start flooding back. I remember the minecart stages, the crazy platforming of the latter levels and the general unpleasantness of the Kremroc Industries level. To this day, I still have harrowing memories of trying to beat for what felt like AGES a stage called Elevator Antics. It dawns on me that we may actually get horrendously stuck at some point and never manage to finish the game. Until I remember the BARRAL code.

You see, my theory is Rare developers realised they had stuffed DKC with many trial and error stages full of crazy leaps of faith and other nasty tricks, but unlike the sadist programmers of your standard Megamans or Ghouls n Ghosts, they actually took pity on us so-so players and gave us a 50-life cheat code you can enter in the main menu screen using the B, A, R and L buttons of your SNES controller. Aldara laughs, I would say nearly scoffs, when I mention this cheat, but goes along with it. She is a wise woman.

[Note: Aldara and I communicate during the game via onscreen chat as the ZSNES emulator allows to send messages by pressing ‘T’ on your keyboard. We are both very “T” talkative, to the point that by the end of the week we are adding a “T at the beginning of any online conversation like a pair of numpties].

Before we set off, we choose to play in ‘2 Player Co-operative’ mode – I will be Donkey Kong, and Aldara will play as Diddy. We do not actually play at the same time, but one player leads and the other automatically follows until the first one gets hit / swaps places (it’s the former for us most of the times, to be honest).

Welcome to Kongo Jungle

The first world is comprised of 5 different stages (Jungle Hijinxs, Ropey Rampage, Reptile Rumble, Coral Capers and Barrel Cannon Canyon), plus a final boss (Very Gnawty’s Lair). In case you have not noticed, all names in the game are full of terrible, terrible puns and aliterations – it is a British game after all. They love a pun, the Brits. We will be selecting our favourite at the end of each world.

Jungle Hijinxs

Getting to know each other

Jungle Hijinx is probably what most gamers have in mind when they reminisce about Donkey Kong Country: lush vegetation, palm trees and bananas aplenty and one of the most shit-the-bed amazing tunes in the history of video games:

Yes, this track has been overplayed to death and back, but it still sounds like nothing out of this gaming world, particularly when you realise a humble Super Nintendo is generating such atmospheric music. It is the most beautiful 16-bit jazz deluge ever to grace these pair of ears, with the funkiest bass line and some delirious wild sax towards the end. A musical triumph.

Aldara and I are loving our first foray into Donkey Kong’s world. Playing co-op online feels fresh and exciting, but I am slightly embarrassed to say it takes us quite a while to get to grips with the controls. I can excuse Aldara, but I have 101%, 102% and 103%’ed the shit out of the three games in the trilogy twice, and here I am struggling to jump over the first enemy of the stage. I find Donkey terribly slow and Aldara is having trouble with Diddy’s roll + jump combo, which will become essential in later levels. THIS BODES WELL.

We actually spend a good five minutes at the beginning of the stage practising palm tree hopping and accidentally entering Donkey’s banana hoard more times than we should. As a result, we watch this unskippable animation about eight times before we learn how to avoid entering the cave:

What fun.

[IN HINDSIGHT: This is actually a preposterously easy level. Once we have beaten the game, we come back to it to stock up on lives and we pretty much finish it without releasing the forward button.].

As we wrap up Jungle Hijinx, I patronisingly explain to Aldara that collecting all K, O, N and G letters scattered around each level will give us an extra life and she interprets this as a mission statement for each level. Oh, how we will laugh about this from world 3 onwards!

Ropey Rampage

Welcome to our nightmare

Stage 2 and the difficulty has stepped up a notch already – it is night time, there is a torrential rain of pixels and we get acquainted with a couple of enemies and features that will haunt us for the rest of the journey.

We actually get stuck at the beginning of this level for about 10 lives thanks to this little cunt

Honestly, these armadillos have better AI than any Metal Gear Solid enemy: they patiently wait on Donkey and Diddy until they get close enough to attack, then roll towards them much faster than any other enemy or character in the whole game. You can only stun them with a roll/cartwheel attack and you also get knocked back if you do so. If you choose to jump over them instead, the fockers change the direction of their roll immediately and start chasing you from behind. In a game where the characters stay so dangerously close to the bottom left corner of the screen all the time, losing sight of enemies behind you is just assisted monkey suicide. Armies, for this is what they are called, make Zingers, which we encounter later in this stage for the first time, look positively harmless in their stillness.

We also literally bump into our first bouncing tire halfway through Ropey Rampage.

The devil’s tools

This prop allows Donkey and Diddy to jump much higher at the expense of any sign of controller responsiveness. Honestly, it is the most annoying item in the game. Encountering one mid-stage feels more like a punishment than a relief. I may be exaggerating a bit (well I never) but it is near impossible to time your jumps properly when you are constantly bouncing on this infernal item, particularly with input lag courtes of the emulator. Let’s just say we decide to skip whatever bonus is unlocked by using the tire in this stage and we hope our paths do not cross again any time soon. Which means, of course, that the following stage is littered with them.

Reptile Rumble

Might as well jump

I would like to think that, by level 3, we are getting the hang of the controls, but the combination of Zingers + tires provokes our first hair pulls. This level also introduces the concept of the bonus room hidden behind a fake wall which can be broken by crashing perfectly innocent barrels lying around the stage against them. Aldara and I refer to this uncovering as a ‘Trucooo!’ in our silly Spanish chatspeak. In later levels, this is pretty much the only good use barrels get, so we better start practising ‘trucooos’ here.

You can actually appreciate Rare’s craft incorporating two difficulty levels in every level by hiding their bonus stages thus: if you choose to play it on ‘Easy Mode’, you can waste the barrel killing some annoying enemies (mostly Zingers), but if you choose to avoid these enemies while carrying the barrel with you until you reach the fake wall, the game becomes a nail-biting obstacle course (aka Pro Mode). We choose to play Pro Mode, of course, until we get stung by the same Zinger five times in a row.

Overall, Reptile Rumble is another pretty straight-forward stage, save for a final run towards the end where blue jumping Kremlings hurl themselves at you. I let Aldara take the lead for most of the level while I kick back and enjoy this spellbinding polyphony of echoes:

This haunting melody walks the line between cute and eerie and sets the mood perfectly. Hats off to the genius that is David Wise.

Coral Capers

Aldara meets Enguarde

I used to hate the underwater levels in Donkey Kong Country. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any water level in any platform game that I have actively enjoyed. I think the psychological damage of Sonic’s extremely distressing drowning music has a lot to answer for this:

*shudders* I prepare Aldara for the worst… but the worst never really happens because we reach the end of the stage on our first try. I am actually a bit disappointed because I had been bigging up THE IMPOSSIBLE UNDERWATER LEVELS and the result has been a bit anticlimatic.

Not all is disappointing though. The highlight of the level is finding Enguarde’s (not so) secret lair and messing around with him. I love the dude!

Happy fish

Enguarde (oh the puns) is the only animal companion to feature in all three games of the trilogy (I count Squawks the Parrot’s appearance in DKC as a glorified cameo as you cannot even control him). You can see why they brought him back againd and again: he handles like a dream in otherwise very slipperly levels and he can skewer all the marine enemies Donkey and Diddy cannot even touch. The sound effect he makes when he charges forward is also the most beautiful rubbery noise. I think he may be my favourite Donkey Kong Country animal companion.

Barrel Cannon Canyon

Cheats and proud

Immediately after starting this stage I have a 1994 HOT FLASHBACK and tell Aldara, who is leading the charge at this point, to jump on top of the cave we come out of. A suspiciously solitary barrel hanging in the air helps us skip the first part of the stage by barrel hopping in the upper part of the screen, much to Aldara’s mirth. A couple of jumps in between palm trees after this first shortcut we find another barrel that propels us to the mid-stage save point. All in under twenty seconds. I feel like we are kind of cheating on the game a bit because this stage is actually quite fun, full of timed barrel blasting and

nail-biting moments involving Zingers (again) that throw down a sizeable challenge. But I guess the programmers put those shortcuts in there for lazy gits like us a reason…

We resolve not to take the third and final shortcut that would lead us to the end of the stage. I say resolve, but we actually try and fail hard to reach the palm tree where the barrel is, so we have no other option than to finish the level the hard way. I enjoy it all the way through, but Aldara is not a fan of moving barrels and timed button presses. I blame it on her childhood claustrophobia and the marginal lag input of the emulator – characters take a fraction of a second more to answer to our button presses than they would playing on the Super Nintendo. But until Nintendo sorts online Virtual Console play etc. etc. Oh well.

Barrel Cannon Canyon is also the first level to add Rare’s trademarked ultimate fuck-you at the very end of the stage by placing one last solitary enemy milling about near the exit sign.

We lose track of the many lives we concede right on the finishing to these crafty sods through the game. Rare programmers understand our brains are half-fried by all the butt-clenching platforming from earlier in the stage so by the time we reach the end we are unable to process platforming 101 basics any longer and die stupidly at the hands of a single Kremling because of an ill-timed jump. THE DIRTY GITS.

Very Gnawty’s Lair

Not that Gnawty

For an end of world boss, this guy is a total wuss. You only need to jump on his head five times before he is toast and all he does in way of attacking is hop around aimlessly. The fight is over before we know it and we are rewarded with a big fat banana (!). Have I mentioned how much I love Donkey’s winning animation? He first CLAPS at you, then emphatically THUMBS you UP and finally LIFTS HIS ARMS IN THE AIR like he just don’t care.

I think the way he stares at you with his slightly glassy eyes is what makes it for me. Don’t get too cocky, Donkey, I think we have not seen the last of Gnawty yet…

World 1 over! Here are our favourite moments:

MONKEY MAGIC: Aldara chooses Jungle Hijinx as her favourite Kongo Jungle stage. She liked Rambi the Rhino, who you get to ride at some point in the level, and I like the gorgeous sunset effect that engulfs the course as you get near the end (such a nerd). I think Barrel Cannon Canyon is a better level overall, but cannot really argue for it as we skipped half the stage with cheap shortcuts.

MONKEY MADNESS: We both agree Ropey Rampage was the hardest level for us, what with all the jumping, barrel blasting and them Armadillos from Hell.

FAVOURITE PUN: Although Very Gnawty is a brilliant name for a boss, Ropey Rampage edges it thanks to its aliteration bonus point.

 Onto World 2, Monkey Mines!