Playing Donkey Kong Country online: Gorilla Glacier (World 4)

Welcome to Hell Gorilla Glacier

The overview map pictures I am borrowing from Super Mario Wiki to illustrate the different worlds are getting smaller and smaller, apologies. Here is what you need to know about Gorilla Glacier:

• It is world number 4 in Donkey Kong Country and is set in the snowy peaks of Donkey Kong Island
• We are at the halfway point of our journey, giving Rare the perfect excuse to crank up the difficulty level through the roof. We die a lot in here
• In order to get to Candy Kong’s stall and save our progress in the world, we need to beat FIVE stages in a row (!)
• Three of those five stages feature icy surfaces and you know what that means in the world of platforming: slippery surfaces and unresponsive controls ahoy. Fun fun fun!

Snow Barrel Blast

Brain freeze

Every game worth its salt has that “moment”, the incredibly challenging stage or boss battle that makes or breaks your affiliation with it. These instances separate the wheat from the chaff, the players who will curse loudly, throw the controller and walk away from the hardcore few who will persevere through gritted teeth, forever sealing their loyalty (because frankly after enduring such torture you WILL want to finish the game to achieve closure). Snow Barrel Blast is one of those “moments” – but we do not know it yet.

We begin the stage with fresh hands and an innocent smile (‘ooh, look at the pretty snow…‘) that is quickly wiped off our faces when we start getting ourselves stuck in insta-kill situations only avoidable by committing to memory every single step of the first half of the course: a succession of Neckys flying across the screen at different heights, Klaptraps creeping up on the characters from lower or higher platforms. We progress veeery slowly by trial and error. Kalptraps are Aldara’s bêtes noires, while I tend to lose my lives by slipping off the icy platforms avoiding Zingers. Beautiful teamwork!

To make matters worse, a full-on snowstorm develops as you progress through the stage, reaching its climax after the mid-level save barrel. At this point, there are at least three layers of snow falling on screen, hampering our vision and making enemies, platforms and pits all blur into one. The effect is quite dizzying and adds to our frustration so much that Aldara gives up halfway through because it is actually making her sick. She is getting so stressed she is developing a migraine (“Donkey Kong Country, messing with your head since 1994!”).

So lost

I plough on by myself while Aldara goes silent for a while – I presume she is having a cigarette break but a few seconds later I get an onscreen message from her simply saying “Press 3”. She has discovered you can switch off different screen layers on ZSNES by pressing the numbers 1 to 5 on the keyboard, thus making the worst part of the blizzard disappear. Hooray for emulation!

We get a ‘Game Over’ screen on Snow Barrel Blast twice. This means we lose over 100 lives in it. We go to bed, try the next day and still struggle… until the totally unexpected happens and I fail to shoot ourselves properly from one barrel to another, landing on a shortcut barrel hidden at the bottom of the screen completely by accident. We laugh merrily as we get propelled across the stage at a blinding speed, roughly skipping its last third. For the purpose of proving we are not exaggerating (much) about Snow Barrel Blast, here is the last fuck-you bit the level has to offer right before the end

Seriously, Rare, have a word. Thankfully, we are laughing all the way to the exit sign after we discover the shortcut barrel. Hardest level in the game? Actually, there is worse to come, even on this same world (!), but not for anything there is a thread over at GameFAQs’ message boards entitled “How in gods name do you beat snow barrel blast?” [Answer: by cheating like a boss].

Slipslide Ride

How did I get here?

No rest for the wicked. We are deep into DIRTY GIT territory now and the Rare boys are ready to strike where it hurts. At least the screen is pristinely clear in this stage… The novelty trick in Slipslide Ride comes courtesy of slippery ropes that make Donkey and Diddy automatically slide up or down depending on their colour. The challenge starts easy enough, but gets progressively more and more infuriating.

One particularly nasty section involves a rows of Zingers at both ends of a row of blue (going up) and red (going down) ropes that you need to navigate in one go. Working out the right jumping pattern is tricky, so we opt to clear this obstacle the only way we know: sacrificing one of the chimps to a Zinger so the other one can take advantage of the couple of seconds of invincibility they are granted when they gain control of their character and dart across the screen as far as possible, ignoring all obstacles in the hope of reaching a safe spot before they become vulnerable again. Yes, this method is anything but pretty (or skilled), but it works.

The first time we arrive at Slipslide Ride we only have a handful of lives left and are promptly annihilated before we reach the mid-save barrel. This means we have to restart the game back in World 3 and work our way through Snow Barrel Blast again. Aldara despairs, but in truth I find Slipslide Ride the harder level of the two: not only there are several blind jumps in a stage awash with Zingers, but this is also the level where the programmers fall in love with

him all over again and grace the non-rope sections of the course with his presence *shivers* It is an extremly long course, but the prospect of having to beat Snow Barrel Blast again spurs us on to the exit.

Incidentally, this is the only ice cave level in the whole game. Bit of a waste of the gorgeous background of twinkling crystals and its incredibly chirpy (and perhaps slightly out of place considering how hardcore the stage is) theme tune:

You had me at Christmas bells, David Wise.

Ice Age Alley

Ostrich’s natural habitat

“Layer 3”. Those are Aldara’s first chat words the moment we start Ice Age Alley, as the full on blizzard from Snow Barrel Blast is back with a vengeance. It mercifully winds down as we progress through the stage, but Aldara is not taking any chances and deactivates the layer straight away.

Upon starting the level, I have another 1994 HOT FLASHBACK and I tell Aldara to turn around and jump across the big gap to the left of the beginning of the stage. She thinks I am nuts but I am positive there is something beyond the gap. Sadly, this something turns out to be our animal buddy Expresso, probably not who I would have asked for in a stage where visibility is limited and speeding is the quickest way to suicide. Ice Age Alley is full of minuscule icy platforms you have to navigate very carefully, so after a few unsuccessful tries, we ditch the ostrich and try to beat the stage with Donkey and Diddy alone.

Ice Age Alley is not as infuriatingly difficult as Snow Barrel Blast, but then WHAT IS. We actually enjoy it more as a result, welcoming our friend Manolo with glee when he cameos towards the end of the course. I can even forgive the couple of bouncing tires we come across. Just.

Croctopus Chase

Crunts

Still no sign of Candy Kong to save our game. Oh dear.

This is a water level with a twist. As its title implies, nasty Croctopuses give chase to Donkey and Diddy through the course at a relentless pace, so not only we need to navigate around fish, squid and other fauna from under the sea, but we ought to do it with an impending tentacle death hot on our heels. Aldara really likes the gimmick here, not unlike Temple Tempest in World 2, and she is pretty good at swimming around these bad boys

without getting hit. Once again, Enguarde saves the day and steers us through the most difficult bits of the course (mainly the last ten seconds of it where a hundred million squid pop out of nowhere swimming in random directions). Most reliable animal buddy ever.

So far the three underwater stages we have played have been slightly underwhelming in their straightforwardness. Unlike other levels, the only thing you do is swim in four directions and avoid incoming obstacles, whereas there is a certain flow to the dry land stages, and certainly a lot more variety. Aldara likes them, but I think she is swayed by the frankly amazing music track. ‘Aquatic Ambiance’ is such a legendary tune in video game lore it has no less than eleven different interpretations over at OCRemix. My favourite one? This metal cover stirs places in my heart I did not even know I had.

Torchlight Trouble

Squawks shines a light

One last stage before saving! After nearly going blind in a blizzard, snapping our fingers jumping between slippery ropes and feeling the Croctopus’ breath down our necks, we welcome a standard caves stage full of moving platforms and bouncing tires (never thought I would say that). We are getting to a point where the game needs to throw new gameplay ideas to avoid repetition and Torchlight Trouble’s is, at least, very original even if it doesn’t affect the way we play much: the whole stage is in near darkness, save for the bit of path right in our faces that is lit by our torch-bearing parrot buddy Squawks (love him). He even flips sides if Donkey or Diddy change directions, ‘accidentally’ flashing the player as a result. My brother and I used to spend ages (/five minutes) trying to pause the game right on the moment when the torch would flash at us. You can actually do it, and you get a completely white screen as a result. I know, so much free time then…

There are some tricky bits in here, particularly in the mid-section where you need to land your jumps between spiky boulders in tiny platforms, but it is a very short stage, so the pain is over quickly.

Several Klumps patrol the level. It is not the first time we meet them, but this is the first stage where the game actually forces you to play as Donkey Kong to stomp on their heads (as Diddy is too weak to do this) by placing them in unavoidable narrow platforms or overlooking edges of bottomless pits.

Just look at those tits and the size of that tail… I know websites where he would be very popular.

Beating Torchlight Trouble FINALLY unlocks Candy’s hut so we are able to save our progress. I cannot imagine how on Earth I ever managed to clear these five stages in a row back when I was not using the 50 lives cheat. The horror, the horror…

 

Rope Bridge Rumble

This is us for about 3 hours

I hate this stage. I know I went on and on about what a harrowing experience Snow Barrel Blast was, but I honestly think we have a harder time here. Rope Bridge Rumble is the last tree top stage in the game and Rare have decided to cram everything that made them infuriatingly challenging into it as a good-bye gift. Namely, lots of Zingers, moving platforms, barrels and (wait for it) boucing tires.

I lose track of how many tires you have to jump off in this stage. I feel we are permanently doing this again and again

Rot in hell, Pirelli.

[IN HINDSIGHT: Apparently you can get Winky by accessing an early ‘truco’ in this stage. I can see why the last third of the level might possibly maybe perhaps be slightly more palatable with her (as you can stomp on Zingers without getting killed), but the thought of having to handle this indomitable frog along moving platforms for the rest of the level gives me COLD SWEATS. I am glad we did it the hard way. Fuck that shit.]

Really Gnawty Rampage

We can see your Gnawty bits

At this point, the Emerald Weapon from Final Fantasy VII may descend from Videogame Heaven and challenge us for all I care. Gorilla Glacier has tested our fingers, our patience and our resistence to motion sickness. We cannot wait to see the back of it and a silly encounter with Really Gnawty (presumably a relative of previous big boss Very Gnawty) is not going to stand in our way. This guy, like his World 1 boss chum, is a total walk in the park.  Okay, so he jumps a bit more awkwardly and unexpectedly than Very Gnawty, but after staring Zingers in the face while balancing ourselves on a bouncing tire on top of a moving platform, we can predict his telegraphed moves a mile off and he never poses a real threat (/we die maybe three times). Bye, bye Gnawty, you were never a real challenger anyway. And a message to Rare: stop being lazy and design some original end of world bosses! (We may live to regret saying this once we play DKC2 and 3…).

So… that was fun! The internal clock in the game tells us we spent approximately 2 hours and 21 minutes clearing Gorilla Glacier, but we know in our hearts the pain will NEVER go away. Any highlights?

MONKEY MAGIC: Not sure I can describe any of the levels in this world as fun, more like a mad, frustrating descent into platforming hell, but we have to acknowledge there is some very creative gameplay scattered around these courses. Aldara rates the Croctopus twist in Croctopus Chase for at least trying something different with the water courses, but my favourite is Slipslide Ride, a highly original take on the swinging rope gameplay of previous levels. I would not say it was a joy to go through it, but like the art of knitting or The Godfather films, I can appreciate the skill that went into putting them together even if it is not for me.

MONKEY MADNESS: Stiff competition for this one as world 4 has definitely been the hardest in DKC so far. I personally think Rope Bridge Rumble is the worst offender because at this point I twitch every time I hear the bouncing tire sound effect, but Aldara is a firm hater of Snow Barrel Blast and to be fair she has a point: it made her physically sick.

BEST PUN: Plenty of great names to choose from here: Ice Age Alley, Torchlight Trouble, Slipslide Ride… but we have to go with Croctopus Chase because of its faint B-movie name whiff. Apparently Croctopus are a thing, at least on the Internet, so kudos to Rare for surfing the zeitgeist more than a decade in advance.

Onwards and upwards to World 5, the Kremroc Industries!