504: Donkey Kong Country | Retronauts

This week on Retronauts, we hate every ape we see from chimpanzee to chimpanzee.

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts.

I'm the leader of the bunch. My name is Bob.

I'm finally here to cast some pods, and that's all the rapping I'll be doing because on this week our topic is Donkey Kong Country, a very important game that we've yet to cover in 16 years of Retronauts, and we could wait another two years for its 30th anniversary, but I refuse to wait any longer because these are some important monkeys and apes and chimps, and I think there's a bonobo in there or something.

I don't know. They're impossibly related, but we'll talk more about their lineage very soon.

Before I go any any further who is here with me today in the same room to talk about donkey kong's country uh it's me henry gilbert straightening my big red tie to show i've grown up it's true that's uh significant to become a man now who is our uh uk correspondent very important for this uk -based episode hello i'm stuart jup and i'm broadcasting not from donkey kong country but from shunki king country very nice is shunki king the name the name of prince charles it is he was satirizing him he sort of has big ape light cans now so uh i think that's appropriate yes we are making fun of someone's

medical condition but let's go on who is talking to us from japan right now hello it's diamond fight and i'm wearing my lucky red cap very nice but it doesn't say nintendo on it but uh you're not being a shill and i appreciate that and you know this is just like the game itself this brings together japan uh england and also the marketing of americans and the american and pigs i guess we're the play it loud group putting the last bit on it yes uh we just checked our levels we're not playing it too loud but uh yes donkey kong country is a topic we've mentioned donkey kong in the past uh i mean very

important in nintendo history you know that i believe there's a donkey kong episode of retronauts but this is going to be our fully our first fully devoted episode to this game and for this podcast we're limiting our discussion to the very first game and related media and i'm sure we will explore the rest of this series in future episodes but before i go on any further i want to know from all of you what is your history donkey kong the character and then later his country uh let us start with uh stewart stewart uh what's your relationship with donkey kong have you been to twy cross um i don't

i may have done but i i wasn't paying attention if i did i i if there was if rare were there they were difficult to find uh you could say that they were they were rare in themselves uh sorry yeah moving on um my history with donkey kong is uh i used to uh when i used to rent the nes i used to uh rent also rent uh donkey kong classics which was a um so as i'm sure you know it was a cartridge that had both donkey kong and donkey kong country or the the nez versions of them and naturally i wasn't able to to, you know, get anywhere on Donkey Kong.

I don't recall that I got past the second board. But Donkey Kong Junior I could loop many times.

It's a very easy arcade game.

It's one of the rare easy arcade games in my humble opinion.

But nowadays I am very fond of the original.

I also had the unlicensed knockoff version of it, I think was just called Kong on the Spectrum.

It was terrible, as you'd imagine, borderline unplayable.

Not as good as Donkey Kong Country, which is is excellent i didn't actually get to play until many many years later when emulation was a thing and i could play it on snaz 9x and go oh yeah hang on this is this is a bit good but i did used to read about it in magazines and long for it i had a strategy guide for it for some reason i used to read and just pour over and go i'm playing this reading this is the same um so yeah it's a game game that i've grown very fond of and it's my favorite one of the original trilogy and probably the whole series in general that's not to say i don't like the others

but we'll presumably get to that at some point i assume you might be the biggest fan of the game on the podcast well let's talk to uh diamond diamond where do you and my donkey kong meet have you visited his country and uh it has his twi cross twi cross on your agenda no and uh i haven't looked up where that is i'm I'm assuming it's somewhere in a rolling hillside with some small, you know, knee -high stone walls and, I don't know, a cow.

So yeah, I'm, you know, I'm old enough to remember Donkey Kong being a thing when Donkey Kong was new.

I played the arcade game.

I loved it. I definitely played the Atari 2600 version.

I loved that one too.

Doesn't matter. Those sounds are in my head.

For some reason, Donkey Kong and Pac -Man are like the two Atari go -to game sounds when, like, people make movies and things.

So you still hear those sounds in productions today.

I don't know why, but they're in my head already.

And, you know, Donkey Kong, if you look at the Donkey Kong overall, you know, Donkey Kong, I think, is great.

Donkey Kong Jr., a lot of fun, but I don't think it's as good as Donkey Kong.

And then Donkey Kong 3 was kind of like, all right, I guess this is what we're doing now with bugs.

And so I feel like the character kind of ran out of steam there, you know, as Donkey Kong descended, Mario ascended.

so you know when this game came around it's like oh yeah Donkey Kong okay this this could be okay and uh I remember getting it and it was like this is this is fun I like this so um when this game came out I played it a lot I have actually very good memories of playing this um like being home sick one day from school and just devoting myself to playing playing as much as I possibly could so So I know I eventually got 100%, or was it 101%, I think?

But yeah, I did eventually just completely clear this game.

So I put a lot of time into this one, and I did enjoy it very much, although I didn't really return to the series at all, so I don't know anything about the Diddy's Kongs and the lands.

So this is like my one and only stop in Donkey Kong Country.

So we have two experts on our hands now.

Henry, how about you?

you all right so yes i love the donkey kong series quite a lot i associated with childhood wonder because i think one of the very first video games i ever saw other than pac -man was at like three or four at a pizza restaurant where i grew up in arkansas and they had donkey kong i couldn't even play it but just you know the visuals the sounds of it and the uh cabinet art as well all just was spellbinding to me like i just fell in love with the idea it was such a simple idea and uh it's so easy to grasp and and donkey kong jr too like i i really loved that uh i was able to play that one a little

bit and that that all just flowed easily into my love of mario and super mario brothers being the first game i truly loved but then as time went on with donkey kong though like i i think we maybe rented the nes version of it uh and and jr but i didn't play play it all that much i only truly came to appreciate original donkey kong when playing uh the one of my favorite games of all time donkey kong 94 which this podcast isn't about but dkc me and my brother played country a lot when it first came out it was a rental though we didn't buy it uh because we did deem it to be too hard for us to beat together

but i will say say the marketing worked on us so good i like it's it's amazing to play it now and to think about like no because of the marketing i saw something so much better than what i see on screen now even though it is the exact same game like that that was the magic of the marketing on it and uh i of course though because i love donkey kong the man uh the ape man when he was not playable of the sequel i was already like nope not doing it didn't touch it i didn't touch any of the other dkc huge huge mistake until until the wii time yes i don't know why they did that uh as for me uh i didn't

play the original donkey kong or any of the donkey kong games uh the early ones until after mario because some of the first arcade games i ever played were uh kangaroo uh ms pac -man and then the original mario brothers is where i really fell in love with video games i love the original mary brother so much and only after playing um you know super mario and stuff did i go back and play donkey kong and i was like these games are kind of dated but they're all right i hate donkey kong jr though uh when i play that again i'm like this this hitbox is preposterous sir how you expect me to control this thing

it's like a different shape no matter which way you move it uh anyhow yeah so time passes and i forget about donkey kong he's like a reference in nintendo games for a while we'll talk about that there's like a a dormancy period for donkey kong and then And of course, yes, the console wars are ramping up.

We're all getting invested in this as young people.

And yes, I am properly marketed to.

We'll talk about the marketing for this game.

It was laser honed on all of us adolescents.

And it worked. It worked very well.

I asked for this game for Christmas of 94 and I got it for Christmas of 94, but I made a major mistake in that I asked for it for Christmas.

It was on my Christmas list, but I rent games every weekend and I saw it for rent and I made the mistake of renting that game.

So it wasn't a special when I got it for Christmas.

I was like, I already played half of this.

Why did I write the game?

I asked my parents for this.

You played yourself, Bob.

Yeah, big mistake. Yes, I really did.

It was an early example of me playing myself.

But yes, I did enjoy it at the time.

I have a lot of memories of like everyone I know having this game and playing this game.

But my reaction was when I was playing it was like I like this and it's so pretty.

But it's pretty simple.

And I still walk away with that in my head today.

Like this is not the direction game design was going.

it was the direction graphics were going, but it's interesting to see this type of game come out in 94 with what I feel is, like, antiquated game design, but cutting edge, bleeding edge graphical technology, technically, technically.

And then, like, I dabbled a bit in renting Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3.

Again, like you, Henry, I'm like, why is the big man not here?

Like, what are you doing?

I played a tiny bit of the 64 game and then I was completely out for returns.

But then I was unemployed for a year after 1UP shut down and I needed money.

and uh jeremy is working for u .s gamer i was not working there yet and i reviewed donkey kong country tropical freeze and i thought i'm only playing this because i need money but i ended up really liking that game i like that game i think it's a very very good game better than the new super mario brother series um so i love that game and i'm waiting for the next one but yeah it took me until tropical freeze to really like donkey kong country games and that's my own story i'm with you it's better than the new mario the best new mario brothers game is i still put it below tropical freeze like returns

i'm quitting i quit returns is pretty good but tropical freeze and that's why it's even sadder that that game is so old now it's almost a decade old you know a tropical freeze never asked me to blow into anything unlike those awful mario man uh and none of the like the music way better in the tropical freeze absolutely much better music So, yes.

Yes, let's talk about Donkey Kong and Rare before Donkey Kong Country.

So, you know, we can go over the basics.

It can be a bit reductive.

Donkey Kong, obviously, a huge hit.

It saves Nintendo's arcade division.

It makes Nintendo a name in the arcades.

The Famicom essentially is made to be the home Donkey Kong machine.

They make hardware for one -screen arcade games.

And they have started adding chips on the cartridges to make them more, you know, bigger in scope is what I want to say.

So yes, Donkey Kong is basically MIA for a decade because we have Donkey Kong, we have Donkey Kong Jr., and then we have Donkey Kong 3.

And in my own, from my own experience, Donkey Kong 3 was so unloved that I only found out about it in like the early 2000s.

It's like, did you know there was a Donkey Kong 3?

I didn't know until maybe like 1999.

I think it was a minigame in WarioWare or something.

It was Donkey Kong 3.

And I was like, what the hell is this?

I kind of like that game now.

it's kind of not donkey kong but i kind of dig it it's okay it is an alternate reality where we're all playing stanley the bug exterminator sunshine or something i it's a nice little galaga clone that's what i like about it like when i play it but uh i you know i have only pretty much every time i played donkey kong 3 it's at on free play at some sort of uh arcade collection and i play for five minutes like yeah all right okay yeah just walk away like i can say i've played it but But, I mean, I honestly feel that Nintendo walked away from Donkey Kong because they were like, well, this was our

single -screen experience, and now Mario exists as Super Mario, and that's our scrolling game, and we don't know what to do with Donkey Kong in a scrolling game quite yet.

There is a very brief mention of something called Return of Donkey Kong in a few pieces of official Nintendo literature.

Not very descriptive as to what it is, just that it's coming, but it never materialized, and nothing of it ever came surface for the public, even with all the Nintendo leaks.

So who knows if that was just a pitch or like notes or design doc or whatever.

But at some point, maybe there was a return of Donkey Kong game in the mid to late 80s happening with the Nintendo.

Let's not forget about the the promise, but eventually never resurfaced.

The was a Donkey Kong music school or music fun for the Famicom.

That was one of those games that's been announced and we we saw an advertisements, but it's never been seen.

not even with all those giga leaks no one knows what happened to that game you know if Popeye can teach us English then Donkey Kong can teach us music I technically really don't want to count those even though they do count because it's just like let's just go to the asset factory drop some Donkey Kong things in your cart and make a math game which is like we technically Donkey Kong Junior Math is part of the Donkey Kong like experience but it's like that pinball NES pinball game is technically a Donkey Kong game and a Mario game yeah we don't like to talk about it Henry I'm sorry I'm a little

hung up on what you said about Popeye teaching English he has no business doing such a thing you would think so incomprehensible he talks rubbish sorry I'm moving on moving on we have to you have to ask a generation of Japanese children if it had if Popeye helped him learn English any better through the Famicom game that game is predicated on the idea that Popeye also knows Japanese and is fluent in it and I've never heard Popeye dubbed in Japanese maybe it's good i gotta give that yeah he would say like it's a ducky max or something it's a ducky mask a mask yeah he would say instead of whatever

i'm not i'm not instead of okay yeah there you go i'm not a regular joey gladstone over here where's nina when you need her uh exactly exactly i should have her on this call but uh so yeah like basically between 1983 and 1993 donkey kong is a cameo donkey kong is like an easter egg i'm looking at like a list of donkey kong appearances he's not in his own games but he's in like punch out and super punch out for the arcade he's in tetris he's an f1 race he's in nes open tournament golf and yeah just like uh just like a fun character remember him he was a big arcade guy now well mario's the main man but we

still still acknowledge him the simpsons even made fun of it like oh nobody wants donkey kong anymore oh god that joke is so weird he's still got it i love it that whole episode man oh my god but yeah i mean he was mainly mia and uh the biggest role donkey kong had in a nintendo game and this surprised me and his 11 year old is uh when a year before donkey kong country comes out about 18 months before it comes out they need another racer in mario kart and it's donkey kong jr and It always seems so odd to me playing that game as a kid.

I guess Donkey Kong's here for some reason, but it's Donkey Kong Jr. And I don't like that game, but he's sort of like, they need another big racer and Wario doesn't really exist yet.

So that's the biggest Donkey Kong playable appearance in games in like a decade.

And it's like a large version of Jr., right?

They call him Donkey Kong, but he's wearing Jr.'s white little tunic thing.

Yeah, he's got the vest. i think that's interesting because i'm sorry i never thought of him as having this kind of cultural kind of dropout they did keep him in the public eye somehow right because whenever duncan would show up i would be like oh yeah donkey kong so that original arcade game must have been absolutely seismic to have that effect yeah i mean we we do a futureama podcast and the first thing you see in the first episode of futurama is a donkey kong parody that's the very first image you see yeah i i would say to a a generation slightly older than us us like and for most people in the world

like the first image you thought of for video game if it wasn't pac -man it's donkey kong like donkey kong is the second thing you think of not even mario but donkey kong yeah i mean say what you will about the quality of the movie which i'm sure is dreadful but you know pixels i feel like is a great snapshot of what like a gen an entire generation of people thought of when they give it oh you got donkey kong you got packman you got cubert uh for some reason cubert is sexy now i don't know uh that's that's sandler for you but well i gotta watch this movie josh gadd fucks cubert it's true it isn't

oh my god it's true yeah it was a new low for cinema uh and isn't donkey kong is in the new mario movie right oh yeah he's played by uh seth rogan though he doesn't talk in the new trailer i hope he never talks yeah well i don't want canadian it's too busy blazing it you'll be laughing you'll all be you'll all be laughing he's like hey mario i made this vase i think if i went down to the dispensary i could buy some donkey kush i'm sure it's there i know donkey bong has anyone done that oh i'm sure you can get your own if i go to etsy i can get my own donkey bong but yeah i mean it's so weird nintendo's biggest

celebrity before mario uh is just cameos for about a decade but i guess that shows you how powerful mario was and how powerful the nes was that we don't want to really think about donkey bong as anything other than a throwback like Like, oh, remember those simple primitive games from a decade ago?

Well, we've moved on.

I guess, too, you know, with the way Mario is marketed so much, at the very least to Americans, with the D -Cartoon and all the, you know, branded pastas and whatnot, that, like, if you call back to, like, oh, remember when he hopped around with a monkey and also he kidnapped a monkey and whipped him, like, they, you know, they probably, that interferes with their branding operations.

so definitely i had prized you didn't get real mario toys when i was a kid who could like actually like move around and be poseable like a spider -man but i did have these little pvc mario figurines and of the set they had one that represented like him throwing a fireball him holding a mushroom uh him holding a turnip that he's about to throw uh like from two and then him with the hammer so it's still like that that toy did reference donkey kong just a little bit but there was no donkey kong figure with it yeah i just i had a few of those uh no no real toys for a while which was a real bummer so let's

talk about rare donkey kong mia but rare uh very prolific we covered the company back in episode 35 like eight years ago uh with jazz brignol he's on the episode so check that out but to give a brief overview of where rare was they spent the late 80s early early 90s making a lot of nes games i believe i counted 47 releases developed by rare incredible in that time period and every one of them brilliant yeah yeah including some good games they weren't all like licensed jeopardy games there were some good ones in there and guess what nintendo had a friendly relationship with rare they're even publishing

some rare games those Those games include Slalom, RC Pro -Am in a sequel, Cobra Triangle, Anticipation, Pinbot, and Snake Rattle and Roll.

Like, Nintendo liked Rare so much they were publishing Rare games because Rare was not a publisher at this time.

And they were basically working for every Western publisher just to make as many games as possible because they were that talented.

Yeah, Nintendo really liked those British guys.

Like, they worked with them a ton, and I think they, you know, the story sounds, even at the on the nes days like cobra triangle does like look graphically strong for uh for example or rc program was doing stuff you didn't see in other uh nes games it reminds me of the tale of starfox as well when we did that podcast of like that oh yeah right yeah that uh that nintendo sees these british developers doing things with their technology that they didn't think was possible and instead of like suing them or whatever they're like hey let's work together if you can do this with it let's let's let's see

what else you can do yeah it's very similar to argonaut down to the point where this game is made by a bunch of people in their late teens early 20s donkey kong is redesigned by a man who was 20 years old and that's the design that they kept unbelievable for the rest of time they all they all sound so young to me when they tell when i was reading about their ages i was like jesus who would ever trust a 22 year old tree that nintendo would hand over the design of like one of their major characters to a 22 year old of like just handle it you probably got a good idea and now they all look great they're

only like 50 years old now at this point and they weren't much older than we were when we were playing these games like the people who made Donkey Kong Country were like had like eight years on me basically when they were making it because they were very prolific rare often dealt with licensed games uh and because of that many rare games weren't great I mean they were work for hire and they were given some time and some money for some projects and not enough for others there's there's spider -man for game boy is all right i'd say like better better than all the other spider -man games on the game

boy i don't hate the nightmare on elm street game but i think i'm in the minority in that one you know what i think that's that's a it's a better licensed game of their steward i pretty i'm pretty sure that is a better one for them but i think my own theory is that by 91 rare is turning the corner they don't want to be a licensed game factor anymore they are getting into the world of like ip focused entertainment and that's where battle comes in we did a whole podcast about that but battletoads feels like rare uh sitting down and saying let's make our own like prestige not the word they was at the time

but their own prestige platformer where it's like it's not based on anything we want to compete with the marios and sonics of the world it's going to be our own our own ip and we want to make a like a fully realized experience not based on anything and that's kind of what leads them into donkey kong country because that's a big seller for nintendo it's a nintendo power cover and battle toads has legs for maybe like three years basically could i sorry can i chime in i'd be remiss in not mentioning this but but before they were rarely when they were ultimate play the game they were a spectrum developer

and that it was sort of like a return to the kind of glories for there because they were kind of the spectrum developers stuff like attic attack and saber wolf and uh night law these are huge games i mean then you play them now and they're like nothing they're like you know early jetpack or something but they were really big for spectrum so it was almost like they kind of went sort of up down then back up again which is which i find kind of interesting they like treated the nes as a kind of as you mentioned bob like licensed uh licensed games factory i guess to get the capital they needed maybe

to go to the next level i'm not sure yeah they couldn't even make games fast enough i mean there was such a hunger for nes games and uh it feels like they they had maybe 10 % of the American catalog was just made by Rare.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but boy, they made a lot of games.

And you wouldn't know it unless you looked at the title screens, like developed by Rare, co -LTD, or whatever.

Oh, sorry, Stuart? No, I was just, yeah, I agree with you.

There are so many. Like, I just keep thinking of more like popping into my head, just like stuff like Beetlejuice that pops into my head.

That's Rare, I'm pretty sure.

There's so many. Rare was always a prolific creator.

Like, even as resources increased east and they obviously couldn't put out you know 10 games in a year anymore they still were like they i mean in the n64 era they put nintendo to shame with how many games they put out like they could produce more we can make two games a year oh sorry a lot of gba games as well i was just sorry i'm just keep agreeing with you guys oh please keep agreeing i love this uh but yeah 94 would be a huge turning point for rare it's when nintendo basically turns them into a second party developer let's talk about how that happens because despite their success with the nes

rare does not go all in on the snes despite making this game that sells nine million copies uh all told they only develop three games for the super nintendo and uh no i'm sorry i think that's i think there's four games for the super nintendo i think it's the three donkey kong country games and then killer instinct and i believe i counted 47 nes releases so uh now i'm thinking of a few more i think there's like battle toads for the super nintendo so maybe like five or six there's a couple of Battletoads games on the SNES.

Basically 13 or 14 % of what they develop for the NES they make for the SNES.

They don't care about the SNES that much because they're setting their sights higher on newfangled 3D developments because the company, their coffers are bursting by developing 50 NES games.

They have a lot of money and what they invest into is Silicon Graphics workstations and they want to get ahead of the curve because they're like yes, Super Nintendo is here and it's great but But Project Reality is right around the corner launching in 1995, and we want to be ready for Project Reality, whatever that is.

We want to be ahead of the curve.

Isn't that wild to think that they invest that far in advance?

That one, that they have enough money that they can say, we can make it till – we don't need to really focus on a big thing for 93.

Let's buy these very expensive things to be ready.

Cutting edge stuff that only the biggest companies have. they probably were one of the few people in all of england to own those sdi machines i definitely didn't have fun yeah i think you're right henry to the point where uh the the government of twy cross it's hard to say twy cross the government of twy cross was uh looking into their power usage because they're using more power than anyone else in the entire uh town what's all this then exactly what's all this then was said by by a police officer or bobby uh they're gonna send you to an embarrassing for this one uh yeah they were developing

things out of basically a barn in the countryside uh at this era i apologize stewart i'm sorry it's oh that's okay it's we i deserve henry's hatred is coming through no i i i do want to say i i i mock british development a lot of the show it's fun when i come on i like it but i i love british culture one of my favorites like i became a comedy nerd because i got access to on american broadcasting like british comedies like that's why it was simpsons and monty python and red dwarf and all that stuff growing up as a kid like and i love the british sense of humor a lot of the time in rare stuff like

sometimes too much what if cranky is so silly so silly later games they go way too daft yeah they even use like british colloquialisms in the titles of games like grabbed by the ghoulies yeah that was that was too far yeah but i would actually rather be grabbed by the ghoulies than play that oh a lot of us would but yeah so uh rare getting in on 3d technology uh we we presume that the ultra 64 or whatever you want to call it it was project reality then ultra 64 then n64 that was going to be coming out in 95 so this was going to be the stop gap for them but they are experimenting with 3d modeling

one of the first things they experiment with is the the Battletoads arcade game so if you if you watch a playthrough of it or if you play through yourself you'll notice that there are 3d modeled objects but they're not living things it's it's limited to like stationary objects and ships and things like that so just very basic 3d modeling much easier to do than to try to make something like a living breathing creature with this early technology and then Rare decides to push it a bit further they said uh you know we've done this this experimentation with the arcade game, the Battletoads arcade game,

let's try to make a fighting game with these computer -generated characters.

So they make something called Brute Force, or a demo for it, rather.

It would go on release, though, because Nintendo saw footage of this game while visiting Rare.

They're like, hey, what do you got for us?

And they're like, hey, check this out.

And Nintendo was like, how did you do this?

And because of this demo for this boxing game that I don't even think footage has come out of it, Nintendo buys stake in Rare.

They bought a very, very big stake in Rare.

25 % initially, that would grow to 49%.

And this partnership ends in 2002.

Go back to our Star Fox podcast, because I think the partnership formally ends like the day Star Fox Adventures comes out or whatever, or the news breaks or something like that.

A dark day on the Nintendo forums on IGN for me.

It was a dark day. But a great day for the furries.

Yes, it was a great day to be a furry in 2002.

But yeah, Nintendo was so impressed by this uh stories differ on this matter uh some rare people said that they were given the uh you know their choice of ip to develop for and and some said that nintendo said make a donkey kong game whatever whatever the uh story is it's still interesting that nintendo was so impressed that they bought it instantly and said like this can buy us time in the console wars yeah it's uh that i guess that also shows you where they're at with donkey kong but like you know we've seen this for for years and years after the like uh miyamoto and other execs but it sounds

like he makes a lot of these calls that he goes like well i don't want to make more of this game so we can give that to the speed studio let's see what they can do like i don't want to make another luigi's mansion but if i hear a good pitch for it or if i think a company could do a good job with it on the 3ds i'll hand over luigi's mansion or i'll let them borrow luigi's mansion that there's no No handing over of Donkey Kong to these guys.

No, no. I was just haunted by the terrible thought of an alternate reality where Rare made a Metroid game.

And I don't want to think about that any further, but it's in my head now, and now I can't think of anything else.

So Rare Metroid. Man, I wouldn't want to see Samus with this kind of stylized graphics.

I think it works much better for googly -eyed, furry ape people.

I was going to say I want to see Ridley with big googly eyes.

They'd probably call him Fiddly Ridley or something.

Yes. They try to make it funny.

They try to make Metroid funny.

Oh, no. No. Some kind of rhyming scheme, I think, would work.

Metroid on the Rim is quite funny.

Oh, it is. It is. It's very funny.

So, yes. Also, at the time, Nintendo was like, yeah, this Genesis game, Aladdin, is making us look bad.

I mean, we know how they're doing it.

We need something as impressive as this.

So that was part of the reason why they approached Rare.

They're like, Aladdin is kicking our asses.

Aladdin ends up being, like, the fourth or fifth highest selling game on the platform, I think.

it's a huge seller for sega it's so it's really funny it's so easy to forget that that was that huge a thing i mean and we lived through it and i definitely remember thinking this is why settled by bob perfectly on a retro dots of which aladdin is better thank you but it is why it was a childhood argument uh at least for for me and my pals growing up too of like which aladdin was better it was just that big it was it was blowing my mind to see you know the developers of donkey in some of the articles you shared bob to talking about like yeah we were we felt the aladdin pressure like you never

think of aladdin i don't think anybody thinks of the aladdin genesis game as part of the console wars as and like on the level certainly not on the level of the sonic but like this was more about combating uh aladdin than sonic though definitely i think the keep it loud marketers were like we can do better than blast processing we'll make up some bullshit as that's even better than blast processing um bob can i just ask because i think i missed this one which aladdin did you give the crown to in the end super nintendo oh yes that's the correct answer thank you and i believe uh i've settled the matter yes i'm correct

in all instances it's over now i believe the genesis aladdin is made by the uk people as well i think i think david perry is irish but i think it's like a uk studio i'm pretty sure yeah i mean it has the uk feel of being lost Lost in a bunch of bullshit and aimlessness.

Whoa. Sorry. A lot of trolling here.

But, yeah, it's funny how, like, these British studios are, I mean, not even funny but interesting, these British studios are, like, the hottest competitors in the console wars.

They're the ones who are doing the most with the platforms, which is not that crazy if you think about it.

That's kind of what British games always were, like, the coolest technical tricks, not as much in the sense of game design, but they're devoting a lot of time to getting the most out of the hardware.

hardware so we all live through it in case you're a young person or older than us and forgot there was a console war happening and nintendo needed to compete with sega and its fast flashy games even though there's their hardware was technically inferior in many ways so this is their answer to sonic the hedgehog it's their answer to aladdin and it's their answer to buying two more years of time before new consoles arrive and we'll talk about the context of this release but there are so many consoles emerging at this time and most of them are massive failures although they're they're still like

delivering at a higher level of tech than the snes but they're all failing miserably because they don't have good games and half of them are from sega yes that's true i had i had an issue of egm it was like the 1995 game buyers guide around this time and it was my only issue of egm and at the beginning it has this overview of all the consoles that are currently out and it's like seven or eight pages of like four to a page it's insane i and yeah like with the console wars man it's like i can't imagine nintendo ultimately wins and gets to be called the winner without donkey kong country like there's

no no way it the super nes would still be an amazing system that we'd all remember great but when it comes to the actual dollars and the the finger things means the money nintendo wouldn't have won that without donkey kong country yeah this was it and uh donkey kong country was given the project named country because of where the development was taking place so that was in twycross i said it right that time apparently that was in the rural rural country see twycross and rural both hard to say uh yeah that was in the rural countryside but this was before you know the huge rare buy -in they moved

to a much bigger studio but this is basically being developed out of like a barn that was crazy in the middle of nowhere and yeah so country makes sense and also there's like the world and land naming conventions already for the nintendo game so it makes sense to just keep that at the name of the game although i believe in japan it's just called super donkey kong yes i think yeah that's correct yeah which is a cool name like like i i would have accepted i think the i'm glad they went with dkc uh because that is it's a strong label for themselves but it should i mean by the naming convention of most

of the like like the super Metroids out there that I suppose super Donkey Kong is the more logical progression for the naming yeah I but I guess they would have to keep the super for the for the IP for the brand and they would just be super from here on out right yeah it's probably wait wouldn't super Donkey Kong that's s sdk isn't that a thing yeah you they can't take that it's already been taken ah that's right oh you're right stk made by an sdk it's kind of one you think about it or a boris so this is a big project for rare obviously they assembled their biggest team to date of 12 entire people

uh and they get two of them were just doing this tie they're just working on donkey kong's tie yes just rendering the tie spinning it around i love that it's so it's so British they're like okay redesign donkey kong they're like well he looks a bit of a scruff to put a tie on him there you go he's a proper gentleman okay we're done show it to miyamoto and nintendo was like you guys have 18 months to do this because we need to get this out by november of 94 they think at this time that that's going to be the last snes christmas that will be next year by the way and they'll have donkey kong's country

2 sorry donkey kong country 2 diddy kong's quest no it's damn it i got it wrong again i got it to be fair to be fair it's stupid and it doesn't matter diddy diddy kong's wait diddy diddy's conquest get it like he's on a quest for a kong so he's kong quest yes yeah yeah now i'm in the third one uh triple trouble what the super what what is the third one called dixie kong's double trouble oh for the third game is dixie kong's double yeah i know it's also stupid because you have of Dixie and Kitty even Diddy is thrown away.

Yeah Diddy just chucked in a bin.

Is there a Moxie Kong?

So yeah 18 Moxie Kong.

You know what? There probably is.

I didn't play all his spin -offs If we check the animated series there's got to be 50 Kongs that don't go mentioned in the games at all If you get all the golds in King of Swing you unlock Moxie Kong or something.

No thanks So yeah 12 people 18 months.

Constant crunch for the team but it's real.

They're all like super young.

They don't have families families of their own so it's like a lot of camaraderie bonding over like killing themselves making this game and apparently uh if i mean it's not too surprising if you play the game but inspired by super mario uh rare had their own approach in that uh with the way the levels are laid out they're kind of like developing speed run friendly levels before speed runs are invented in that a a beginning player can poke around in the levels but there is a direct path to speed through the level for any advanced player so if you're watching someone play at an advanced level it's

very impressive and if you watch speed runs of this game yes there is a way just to go point a to point b zipping through level without stopping for a second and every level is designed like that it's probably it's i'm not sure if i'm getting ahead of us but the the gameboy advanced version release much later has a dedicated like time trial mode that sort of exploits that where you can save your times get ranked by how fast he play and what score you get okay yeah i didn't know that actually i didn't look into the ports of this game but i know the gameboy advanced one was like in 2003 or something

like that yeah it looks like someone threw up harry bow on the the screen is awful you know it's also funny to these different approaches because like argonaut for starfox it sounded like nintendo just like plucked them up and like you live in kyoto now and just drop them there but like uh the the rare guys got to do do the uh work remotely and hearing so many of their stories like well we fax this and they fax that or like or a guy who who only lived in the British countryside his whole life, you know, flies to Seattle and Kyoto to present the game to people like that.

Him describing the culture shock was very, very interesting.

And they don't really name drop Sonic the Hedgehog, but it feels a bit like that.

I mean, this is kind of a reaction to it in that, like, Donkey Kong is fast, he spends a lot of time in a ball like Sonic does, and like in Sonic the Hedgehog, there are different routes through a level, and some of them are a little more challenging to get through, and some of them will push you through faster I feel like there's some sense of sonic intruding on this game's design getting blasted through the barrels is a bit like being bounced around by springs and such as well I find absolutely I think so too oh yeah the game is embracing sort of the attitude era of of game design and that you

know once once you when you put the game in the nintendo and you push start what's the first thing you see after the logos are gone you see an old man remembering the past and then in comes oh here's the new hotness and I've got got a boom box and look at look at me i'm all fancy like that's that's you know to me that's that's very much in the spirit of sonic and those advertisements that are like oh that thing those old things those are old you want the new thing it doesn't matter if the new thing's wearing a tie or not but like that's that's the attitude i think am i am i wrong i might be wrong

about this but isn't cranky playing the old attract music from the original donkey kong as well and then he gets blown up on a gramophone which i can only hope i can only hope one of our listeners someday can put a retronauts on a lp because i want to see retros being played on a gramophone or like a wax cylinder yeah this this begins with cranky kong uh playing the donkey kong music and it literally begins with like a gen x record scratch like this ain't your daddy's donkey kong and it comes in with the boom box and dancing like it's amazing also to know like in late 1994 they're like yeah grandpa get

out of here with your game from 1981 from 13 years ago go fuck off this is what's cool now i mean i i know that uh you know technology moved incredibly fast at the time and yes the game from 1981 very different than a 1994 game that's just like us saying yeah 2009 sit and spin it's 2022 and we're doing it this way uncharted 2 you can't you can't hang today yes exactly yes every i guess you're so right this is all about how fast things move move ahead like there is a big graphical difference between say uncharted 2 and god of war ragnarok but it maybe this is just because we're old it doesn't feel

the same as looking at donkey kong and donkey kong country oh hell no no no no it's been incremental like since the ps2 almost well ps3 was a big leap but then since then it almost just feels like it looks slightly more more photorealistic i don't know it's crazy to me like going from i mean we had like microcomputers jumped to the nes jump to the snes and then there's n64 and that's in what like less than a decade it's kind of wild yeah yeah especially if you play i mean we did the final fantasy 9 episode and it was like oh remember uh 10 years ago wasn't that wild and now we've had had like

so many more decades of final fantasy but it just like it was very quaint when the 8 -bit era was a decade ago and you can like giggle at a single screen game and now we're giggling at this i giggle at you donkey kong country But one good thing Nintendo did is they stepped in and they said, okay, Rare, you know what you're doing, but you've got to make this game less difficult because we've got phone calls about Battletoads.

We have support lines set up.

So this game is still, I think it's a well -made game.

It is harder than a Japanese -developed Nintendo platformer of the time would be.

And I still have never finished it.

I played most of it for this recording, but I tapped out when I knew I've had enough.

And I think there are some good things about this game, but I feel like Diddy and Donkey, their offensive vocabulary is super limited and they are slippery little fuckers.

They're careening off every cliff.

And I feel like your defensive, your offensive move just sends you into danger more often than it helps you.

It gets really bad once you get in the later levels and you have the ice physics to contend with.

it you can it is so easy just to jump on a platform and then you just slide right off the platform without doing anything else and then the minecart levels also bring in the the torture of the twitch based like instant reaction you needed in battle toads i mean it's not as cruel as battle toads few things are but uh yeah the the minecart level still had that no i mean what also too when i played it two player with my brother uh which is how we played the most like Like, we didn't realize that also kind of Fs you when it comes to health, because it's like, we didn't catch on until a little bit

in like, oh, we're basically sharing a health bar.

Like, if I play this single player, I could mess up once or twice and lose Diddy.

But if we're playing together, we're like, neither of us can make a mistake, you know?

Even though Nintendo fine -tuned the difficulty or told Rare to, it does feel very old school, even for 94, in that it's a one -hit kill game.

even by 90 91 Nintendo was like Mario can have a mushroom in a little box that drops down if you get in trouble like there are no concessions here and it would have been much harder I think if they didn't step in and say guys you need we need to get like Super Mario Club in here to like focus group this and test this because Battletoads was only tested by people who worked at Rare and that's why it's so hard I think Nintendo did their normal like play testing that they do with with every game with this game i think that made it better i i mean difficulty subjective i don't find it as difficult

as as you're saying um because mostly the game like essentially just dumps extra lives on you constantly and i wonder if maybe they do it because they know they need to yeah because uh while there is a save feature which is you know still quite rare by this point no pun intended it's only every few levels sometimes like four or five stages you get to save i think uh so you will have to play through some quite rough gauntlets of difficult stages because yeah no you know what thinking about it by world two it starts ramping up to fairly difficult kind of levels i think that level stop and go station is on world

two and that's an absolute nightmare yeah although i will say this i do like the fact that on stop and go station when you enter the level if you immediately turn around and exit again it whoops you right to the ends which is hilarious as if you're just going nope you're just noping out of the whole level it's great you can do that with the minecart stages as well if you jump over the barrel that blasters the first minecart hang left you'll hit an invisible warp barrel skip the whole level wow they they knew i i know way too much about this game yeah yeah they they dump extra lives on you because i

guess yeah you're right they know battle toes was not so generous but still So like the moment to moment frustrations you can try a lot but it's it's a little tough and I think nothing gets people madder on these podcasts is when I say something is hard for my own my own opinion and they're like no it's not you're no pro gamer.

But I will say that Tropical Freeze it's about twice as hard as Super Mario 3D World you know very different games but it is still like a harder than a Mario game but I think that was like the perfect balance where it just like I wasn't expecting it to be that challenging but it felt a lot more fair and of course there's like 20 years of hindsight after this game or so like Like 15 years, rather.

Something like that.

I mean, it's something I'm used to.

That's why, like I said, it's subjective, but even the way you bounce off enemies in Donkey Kong Country is kind of weird, because in Mario you've got quite a lot of hang time in the air to sort of think, okay, I'm going to land on this Goomba when I come down.

In Donkey Kong not only do you bounce quite low, but you suddenly start moving weirdly quickly in the air.

The physics don't really match what you're doing.

If you hit a Mario enemy at high speed you're going to continue being at high speed.

and in this game you will just shift and change and it is unusual and it is hard to get used to and you know, playing it on a modern system the messy because you don't have the kind of blurry edges you would get with an old television it's a lot harder to forgive the collision detection being slightly weird and bad you can get hit by those things I think they're called Claptraps they're taken out of Donkey Kong Junior those things can feel like a dice roll to land on them like if you land on them slightly up to the far to too far to the left you're going to take damage and you know now i think

about you i agree with you despite the fact that i love this game and i probably always will i can't defend it from its uh criticisms because they're all pretty much reasonable i had a moment of that uh when playing it just this morning of like starting up the first stage again and i was like all right oh yeah let's roll you can go pretty pretty fast when you roll and as i'm just getting used to the feel of it an enemy like throws a coconut at me and i i died i'm like oh right and then i you know in sonic that type of moment happens all the time but when you get hit in sonic and then it's like

oh well i stopped my momentum that sucks and i lost all my rings i grabbed one ring i'm fine i'll start running again you don't instead with dk when that happened to me he like shook his head like i'm dead start over the stage gauge like yeah the hit detection is a bit weird i mean i think what makes it's unfair to compare this to mario but hey dk is in the same universe and it's published by nintendo but like the hit detection is so good in those mario games that it you you really can't uh do worse than that i expect me to put up with you and it's just like i expect the same results every time

i jump on a guy and that doesn't always happen to me when i play this game i like i said i love this game and i'll get into why i'm sure but it's worth it super mario world came out what five years before this and is you know, four years before this and it's, you know I've talked about that game on here before as how it's not my favourite Mario I still love it, it's 10 out of 10 but it's better than Donkey Kong Country by some, in almost every department like, so this big new Nintendo platform are coming out, there was definitely a lot riding on the visuals because they were super hyped, they

were talking about how it's like the same computers that were used to make Jurassic Park that was the big line that they were using, I think but all of the magazines were just like look at this for Christ's sake who cares how it plays just look at it and you know I do think it's a good game and I do value the simplicity of it I think that's kind of what makes me like it over the sequels which I also do enjoy is this game that has this kind of linear focus on getting to the end because while you can go for the sequels you can get 100 % it doesn't really change the ending it doesn't give you access

to it's not like the true ending being locked behind mind getting 100 it's just the number it doesn't matter whereas the later ones are kind of like now you can't see the real ending unless you've done every little thing in this game which i don't really want to do um but it's it's it's just there's lots of there's plenty of ideas and gimmicks and things and that's kind of i guess what makes it fall down over something like mario world which does have its new ideas but they're integrated very um what's the word comfortably and in this it's just like on this level it's just the normal platforming

level except the the lights are going to go off every five seconds.

Good luck with that.

Which is like my least favorite gimmick in the game.

It's garbage. I don't like that gimmick.

But yeah, Stuart, I think like at the time I was surprised when I played this and thinking like, wow, this is very simple.

It's just a game about running and jumping and then looking at it from like 30 years ahead of time.

It's just like, oh yeah, this game is about a bunch of variations on very specific themes and that's how they develop the levels.

It's like, we're going to have an idea and then on Post -it notes, we'll put down, we'll write every, or sorry draw every version of that idea and then arrange them in the order we feel is appropriate and now when i look at donkey kong country it feels more like an indie game of today like a modern indie game it's like here is one basic idea we thought of and we'll do as much as we possibly can with that idea like celeste or something like that where it's just like it's a game about running and jumping and that's it or super meat boy or something like that you know donkey kong country was the celeste

of its time yes in a way in a way uh donkey kong country is It's also about coping with depression.

I had the same thought when I played...

You know, I get depressed when I lose all my bananas.

Me too. But then they're like 39 cents each. When you go into the banana hoard at the beginning and the sad music plays and Donkey Kong just shakes his head sorrowfully, it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in a video game.

It's so stupid. But one more thought about simplicity in game design and how it takes me aback sometimes, especially when it's a full -budget $60 release.

I remember I got a PS3 because of Uncharted 2 and every games journalist breathlessly was like it's just like i'm playing a movie my girlfriend was fooled uh that's how they sold the game if your girlfriend is fooled by a video game then you've won yeah that ad uh has an h2o just like don't tell your girlfriend it's not a movie she might leave me if i do uh but when i played it i was like okay uh the next generation of gaming and it's just like all i do is shoot at guys it's like i don't upgrade my character there's no like hit points there's no like treasure to find it's just like no you just

shoot at guys and then get better at shooting them and i had the same reaction of that as i had to donkey on country uh back in the day where it's just like well this is so well made and it looks gorgeous but i can't get over like just how simple it is it's i guess i i call it maybe frictionless in a sense that you're supposed to move forward and see more of it and go wow i'm you know i'm progressing i'm doing well i'm having fun i guess that's why they threw in the the secret areas where you have to like spell the word nintendo you know but then those secret areas are kind of perfunctory because despite

what i said about the fact that they don't have you know cram coins and crap like that all you're getting is more and more lives eventually you've got 99 lives and you don't need any more lives because you're essentially invincible and you don't want to collect those animal tokens because they send you to a bonus room to get more lives that then jumps you back at the last checkpoint which might be halfway back through the level again so it almost feels like they just bolted that stuff on the top when they made the game and went hang on a minute they're going to finish this in five seconds yeah

yeah yeah it feels like the thrill is gone when everything you get is just an extra life a diamond what's your what are your thoughts on the difficulty well i just so as i said i i played this game completed it 100 or 101 whatever it is back uh back when it was new uh for the purposes podcast i did it's on the switch online so i got out i replayed it here's the proof i did indeed feed restore the bananas to the rightful rightful place but anyone could have taken that screenshot i don't buy that you never played the game in your life but i remember as i was playing it again i was i i really felt

i was kind of surprised at how simple i don't i don't i don't think this is me like with like muscle memory like oh this is so easy i've done this before it's not like you know not like me for like megaman 2 it's like i know every trick in megaman 2 at this point it just felt very straightforward to me.

These levels, I guess, on the one hand, it's not a bad decision, because if you look back at 1994, oh my god, there are so many platformers being made, and a lot of them being made in the UK, no offense, Stu.

And as Dave Rudden famously called them, the airplane hangers.

You're in this gigantic space, you can go up, you can go down, you can loop around, you've got to find eight levers or something to get to the exit, and And it's exhausting.

It's like these levels are all very, it's like, you know where you're going.

There's no, there's no mazes.

There's no teleporters.

It's just like, you need to go from this point.

You're going from left to right, no matter what.

You know, you might, you might go up and down a little bit, but if that's because there's a mountain in the way you're like, you're never going to get lost in this game.

Even the water, even the water levels, which can be a little bit frustrating when it's like, well, I'm supposed to go four directions.

Which ways, which way do I go?

Even those there's not that many, there's not that many loops you can take.

You're not gonna You're never in risk of drowning The enemies are about as slow as you are Except for those damn octopus things But I don't like those I felt like it was moving It moved very smoothly This playthrough It took me two hours to finish In game time I feel like for a game of this era That's pretty fast If I knew what I was doing I'm sure you could probably get the game down I mean, when you beat it, Cranky Kong tells you, I would have found all the rooms, I would have done it in less than an hour.

I'd be very curious, is it possible to 100 % this game in less than an hour, or is Cranky Kong just lying?

Is he a liar? I can't imagine that's possible.

No, I mean, they would have Cranky Kong troll you like that, and tell you, like, you can do this faster, and just to torture children all over the world to try.

something about this game that you mentioned Diamond about all the levels being sort of more or less left to right that is true I mean besides the water levels obviously there's one level to my mind that's not like that which is the level slip slide ride which almost feels like it came out of another game because you're going up all over the place left right climbing up like vines and such but most of the game based on the comparison to Sonic it is actually a little bit like Sonic in the fact that the first zone or the first stage has a lot of verticality has a lot of hidden secrets like lots

and lots of secrets like even the fact that you can ground pound certain parts of the terrain and bananas come out like that that's like it's something that even i didn't know about till quite recently um but it's like how you can roll jump across the rooftops and get like 10 extra lives or you can go down to the ground you can break through the walls with ram you do all this kind of stuff and then almost as soon as you finish that stage that drops like a stone like it's just like okay we've we've done our big showpiece stage now it's just uh now we're just making filler like there's a there's

a stage called there's just i remember this there's a stage called winky's walkway which is funny because winky means you know penis yes um and the the level is about 10 seconds 15 seconds long just run left to right and the secrets were in full view it's almost like they realized they hadn't got a level and they just needed to slap one in there before it got shipped um and then towards that's how it goes on that way and as i said i like this game but it's It's incredibly linear, like insanely linear.

I can't think of a more linear platformer outside of something like Pac -Land.

I mean, the original Mario Brothers had warp zones, you know?

I know it's not fair, but it also is inevitable to talk about this game in Mario World games, but it's like, this game has this world map and it's like the world map is almost completely useless because there are no hidden exits.

There are secrets to find on every level, yes, but there are no hidden exits.

There are no alternate paths.

you cannot you know jump into a barrel on stage one and find yourself four stages later like there that doesn't happen the worlds are extremely like you finish one world you go to the next world and you know super mario world you know you went you explored through these different areas and each individual area had multiple paths and some of those multiple paths led you to different parts of the world entirely like that that game has a gigantic map and then like not even talking about Yoshi's Island, which came out a year later, which had even more sort of surprises and stuff like that.

Though Yoshi's Island was completely linear, it's worth noting.

They sort of ate the structure in a way.

No pun intended. Right.

Okay, that is true.

They had less of the branching paths in that one.

Though obviously there were loads of secrets within the stages, like you say.

Sorry, I don't mean to muddy the issue there.

No, no, you're correct.

But that was the biggest thing I thought of when I was sitting here playing this game again with the world map, and I'm like, okay, so each time you clear a stage, someone drops down a line of Cheerios, and you go to the next stage, page and it's like but why like you know what why is you know i feel like if if you could push a button to leave an individual area and go back to the world map if you could if you could just do that you wouldn't even need funky con like that would be he his his entire his entire existence would be you know moot if you just had a button it's like oh i want to go back

to world map okay because i actually googled that i was like how do i go back to world map oh i can't i have to go to to this i have to go to this crazed ape and it's like the the gba version i think that gba version dropped him entirely you can or you can just press start and go to funky's flights anytime you want they did actually make that quality of life change we had to wait until funky mode was invented to see his full new funky mode yes i want to go back to what i was saying earlier about the design and that i think it's okay for games to be simple but just seeing it a game the simple and like

the blockbuster format that took me aback and at the time like before i got this i had just gotten and final fantasy 3 slash 6 and just like oh the innovations in storytelling and just how technically complex all of the design is and yes it's an rpg and i played mario world to death and it's just like mario can has like 30 verbs in his vocabulary if you combine him with yoshi and everything he can do with all the items around him so it just felt so uh simple and i think i thought of celeste because this game is very forward thinking and that it has coyote time and what coyote time is it still

lets you jump after you move enough off of the cliff there's There's like a certain threshold in which you fall but you can roll off of a cliff and still jump when there's nothing under you so I think they were for the hand and kind of inventing coyote time in this game without naming it when when when country returns came out I remember being because I'm a big fan of this series I remember fretting that they weren't gonna nail it and then I saw one of the trailers you did a roll jump I was like they've done it they've absolutely got it that is don't you did he yes did he especially yeah he that's

his one like I feel like that cart wheel can just move you like 30 feet over nothing when you before you jump yeah there's very little between the two characters i mean all it is i think is that that did he can do that a bit faster and donkey kong can kill those army guys who are a bit bigger than the others uh whereas he just bounces off them and they barely even appear they're in like two levels so like who cares but you're saying it makes you feel a bit like a tech demo i think it's a good tech demo and i really i like it a lot like i say i still think it's my favorite based on the simplicity

of it but i wouldn't be so bald as to say that it wasn't probably i don't like using this word but probably objectively not as good as the second one in terms of what it offers the second one feels a bit like they went like okay well now we've got that other way we can actually you know make a game yeah yeah like we've we built the framework now we can expand upon it and so what you're saying and he had a really good point earlier in that like after that first stage the first stage is expansive there are many different approaches there's all kinds of ideas is but after that it's just like them

doing their most with the single idea and then moving on and my issue with that is like so yeah some mario levels will do that but i feel like if you don't like that idea you'd have nowhere else to go with your life you need to finish that challenge and rare has a real issue in this game with putting the nastiest thing like like inches before the finish line uh in a very cruel way which is a battle toads choice they They were doing that in Battletoads, but they're still doing it here.

Just like, I did all of that and you do this to me at the end?

Yeah, there's a level.

I can't, I can't which level it is, but there's an absolutely vile level in towards the end of the game where at the end, there's one of those, um, clap traps that jumps the same time you do.

And it comes out of the exit right as you're approaching it.

Like you can't even see it until you're basically on top of it.

And then if you jump instinctively, you will get hit.

It's the most vile shit I've ever seen.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.

Thank you. we'll talk more about the design soon i want to get through the history there's some interesting things here um so yes uh miyamoto suggests the tie for donkey kong and i'm sure that's going in tandem with the relaunch of donkey kong for the game boy in that uh he's got a tie there as well and uh yes uh skip bayless designed the battle toads so donkey kong shares some traits this will ruin donkey kong forever if you look at the newer version of donkey kong he is basically a brown battle toad it's it has rooted for me i can't believe i played so much battle toads i've played this i have known

this as the donkey kong like vision like donkey kong even in that illumination trailer for the most recent trailer that debuted donkey kong for that movie it's still the same kind of brow and face like it's it's still and it never hit me that it's a battle to they they definitely uh i'll go ahead stir it i was just to make a really stupid joke to be honest which skin condition would we name the donkey kong battle toad after he's uh scabies i mean they've adjusted the model over time they make it a lot less harsh because this this is very early character modeling to the point where they're like

kind of like sausage links jammed together and they're clipping through each other i think the eyes are a little less set back in his head now but yeah he started life as a brown battle toad and i can teach you about the the journey towards diddy kong and according to greg males of rare here's his quotes quote we initially wanted to include dk junior as donkey's sidekick uh diddy kong was our update of junior but nintendo felt that the character was too different neither wanted junior to be included in his original look or the name of our new character to be changed we felt that our new new character

perfectly suited the updated universe of Donkey Kong, so we kept our character and gave him a different name.

We had a sheet of paper that we passed around where potential names were scribbled down.

Some were hilariously bad.

Diet DK, DK Light, and Titchy Kong.

We settled on Dinky Kong, but after legal advice, changed it to Diddy.

Yes, there was a copyright on the phrase, on the word Dinky from some toy manufacturer.

And Stuart, I've been told based on some interviews about the subject, Diddy is is uh british slang is that true yeah well there's a oh my god i can't believe i'm mentioning this guy on on retronauts but there's a british comedian or was a british comedian called ken dodd who would run around with a feather duster and he had like very prominent teeth and he did six hour gigs um but he anyway the point is sorry i don't this is not about ken the point the point is he had sidekicks who he called the diddy men it's pretty un -pc to be be honest um but that's how i know the word diddy basically see

okay i didn't know it had certain connotations well let's just think of it as a cute little ape guy then yeah i mean i guess did you mean small but when you're referring to did you mean i think what you're referring to there is um i don't actually know what the correct nomenclature is uh what do we call little people yeah i see oh okay yeah okay wow so yeah the british there i know we don't normally do things like that we don't normally you know do faux pas that we look back on later and think oh oh, that's incredibly offensive and or racist and or sexist. But this time we did.

Hey, same with Americans.

I was worried you were going to say it dates back to – it was made up by Jimmy Savile.

If it's any consolation, Kent or Dad Skeleton by now.

Yeah, so Diddy's been with us for a very long time.

I'm so glad it's not DK Jr. The DK Jr., he can still show up and be in his little onesie in the rare times you see him.

is he like in the tennis games now or something definitely was in a tennis game I think he was put in you know I'm just gonna have to go to the mario wiki when I'm saying these things but I'm pretty sure they have put him in more stuff lately uh than you would have thought of but for a long time he was gone and but me as a kid I thought like oh so he's I mean we could go through a whole thing about what who's related to who and what characters are the old versions of other characters in this but it confused me as a kid yeah i always wondered if that was complete fan headcanon crap or if there

was anything supporting that because everyone you always used to say that cranky kong was the original donkey kong and donkey kong in this game was donkey kong jr but where's the basis for that the joke that starts this is that like i mean they've yeah there there is some of that i think if you ask miyamoto he'd say that is definitely not true but yeah i think some folks of rare did think that oh no definitely internally a rare the thought was yeah cranky Cranky Kong is the original Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong is Donkey Kong Jr. But I don't think they were allowed to put that down as, like, the lore

of the game, because I think they originally wrote, like, eight pages of lore, and Nintendo's like, make it a paragraph.

Donkey Kong and his bananas are missing.

So I think, like, internally, just for this game, Cranky Kong is original DK, which is why when you visit him and have to sit through him ranting about kids these days before he actually gives you tips, some of them are like, I only had one screen, and I had my life fine.

Everything was great.

Who needs scrolling?

I love that he's a guy who plays golf.

It's just me on Twitter.

I love it. Yeah, I like that even before we knew what these people were, Cranky Kong is like the original angry retro gamer.

Oh, man. So, yeah, Junior actually barely appears in other stuff after this.

I mean, like he's in the N64 Mario Tennis and not any after.

Okay. And I think after that, since he's in some Game & Watch games and then get remade for Game & Watch Gallery, gallery he's in parts of those as well but post that other than like him as a statue or like as a signpost in other games he is not like a playable guy in games in the last like 20 years pretty much listeners unless he comes back unless he comes back i don't know about those those awful march of the minis games or whatever uh he's not hey whoa they're not awful they're they're all right uh spoken like a british alone but no i i like i beat i beat three of those games did we need eight

of those games i don't know no i mean let me let me rephrase the first one where it's a platformer was all right yes except for the hideous graphics and then the last one where it was like pipe mania in 3d that was really cool but all the other ones were just bad version of lemmings i like the ds1 okay march the minis but yeah i mean okay also like yeah hey hey, if I can turn things around for my normal schtick in this episode, that was like Nintendo's American branch being shitty or worse at trying to copy a classic British game in Lemmings.

Yeah, NST, right? Yeah, which I don't think exists anymore.

I don't think they're a going concern anymore.

But it's interesting.

The way this game is made is very funny when you think of it.

I mean, we all know more about technology now, where it's just like we're going to make the most advanced graphics with the most cutting edge computers in the universe a boy it's like you won't even believe how powerful these are and then we turn them into animated gifs that a super nintendo can display and that's essentially the making of this game because they point it out in various interviews a screen full of rendered graphics was essentially the size of an snes card so they're making this game the same they would make any other game breaking everything down into tiles and making sure they

use the tiles effectively enough that you don't notice that it's repetitive now i noticed definitely that they had some space issues because once you get to the winter stages you realize like oh they didn't make any new like winter enemies i'm still fighting like crocodiles and kremlings and all the other the gang it's like they can't you can tell that they just used up all of their data here i think yeah it's like beavers snakes and those big wasps and the necky vultures and i can't think of any more enemies armadillos and the big fellas that's about oh yeah i think i i felt like such a rube

when i realized the trick of the of the marketing that this game did i mean now it is even uh outside of the trick that they were able to make these kind of character models and show them off and then have those basically photographs or memes sorry gifts like you said bob uh exist in the game that is very impressive but the The advertising where they literally say, this is on the same thing as Jurassic Park.

And then, you know, in a game, a magazine or in a commercial, you see just the still image of the full thing they rendered on the computer.

Then when I played the game on my SD television as a kid, I thought I am looking at the same image.

This is the same image.

It's moving in real time.

And this is just like the T -Rex in Jurassic Park.

One of the many, many games that benefits enormously from not being on a high -definition display, like in games that use pre -rendered graphics like this, I think that's what they call them, right?

You can see artifacting.

It doesn't look very good, but when you've got a fuzzy, unclear sort of display, that all blends together, all the color blends together, everything just looks great.

Incredibly atmospheric.

It's an atmospheric game.

Then when you play it on ACTV, you can see all the seams. It just doesn't really work.

yeah the tricks to all of these pre -rendered games is like you must have an sd tv you must be connecting your snes via like the rf switch not even just like composite cables or whatever because in the cold light of 2022 on a 4k screen you can see every bit of dithering every bit of artifact you can see like shimmering lines around the characters that you shouldn't have seen before all of the tricks are on display in front of you like the magician is unmasked you can see everything going on here but yeah it was all a big trick and i remember uh it was like 1994 and we were doing a class project

that was like uh we're doing a fake time capsule we're not actually gonna bear anything but what are the three things you would put in it and why and one of the things i put in i didn't actually put it in but say like oh doc con country should be in it because they made this game with the same computers they used to make jurassic park so i was just parodying the pr lines to my teacher that's how effective this advertising was we were We were just like Bart saying, buy me Bone Storm or go to hell.

Exactly. He did what the commercials told us to say.

I was more polite. And it's like, this was the brief window of time in which Jurassic Park comparison could be made.

After this, it was like, it's going to be graphics on the par of Toy Story.

Yeah. By the time that they were marketing the N64, it was more like, it's made in the same thing as Toy Story, which, yeah.

I mean, and then same with Killer Instinct a little after this.

It pretty much just was, it was the same tech as Mortal Kombat, except instead of photographs of human beings and costumes it was photographs of cgi models though that i mean the cgi models were impressive for their time and and there's something too i've seen this going around in the retro spaces recently about how as much as we like the aesthetic of the sharp edges of of a pixel graphic character a lot of uh most of the people who designed those were thinking well we make these sharp edges because we know exactly how they will be fuzzed up on your sd television it's not meant to be seen in this kind

of sharp contrast sometimes my friends hit me because i turn on scan lines and crt filters when i play video games they don't understand like i do i like seeing the intent but i'm not a crt a devotee i never wanted one in my life as long as i live i've had enough of those heavy bastards but yes uh the trick works very well and uh i mean just Just the fact that they were able to make all of these models, a bunch of kids basically, with no training in this software.

The documentation was very technical from an engineering perspective, not from an artist perspective.

I saw pictures of the manuals that are like four feet high when you stack them all up.

No YouTube tutorials, no helpline.

They are not just making like eight balls floating on a checkerboard or whatever, like you're used to seeing in early 3D modeling.

They have to make convincing animal characters that animate as well as cartoon characters.

And that is an achievement, even though they're taking those models and basically putting photographs of them in a Super Nintendo game.

Absolutely. Yeah. I don't want to denigrate their their work.

Anybody say like, well, it's just really a picture like I'm not.

I don't want to say a rare, rare accomplishment for these kids on like machines.

also like they can't they're doing this uh thousands of miles away from where like these machines were built in silicon valley like they can't they can't talk to the people very easily to fix these things i guess taking aside issues with the gameplay that we have you can't fault the like aesthetic ultimately as it was presented back in 1990 when it when it came out like with both the graphics on the sound were pretty much spectacular on the snes there was nothing like it for several i guess ironically the toy story game that came out from travelers tales i remember the next year when the the toy

story game came to uh the genesis like some of the uh previews were saying like you know finally something that looks like donkey kong country could be on the genesis you know like don't forget sonic 3d flick his island who could forget three sorry just just just kidding i've misread this i do definitely forget i meant to say hey we can remember mario uh rpg that's those are good pre -rendered graphics yeah i still love that game so much great soundtrack too i love it too i love it i just wish it didn't look like that yes uh yeah it could look better now but i mean rare did take some shortcuts

they had some ideas they've stole from other games in development or other games they might have made uh the kremlings are from another project that they were thinking of making they were trying to get into the point and click adventure space like a make a lucasarts style game they had something in the works called uh johnny blast off in the kremlin armada and it only by hearing british people saying kremlin did i realize like oh this is a slate against the russians there are a bunch of kremlins walking around yeah i never did either and tell that just now And yes, Yes, a very good soundtrack

on this game because just like with Argonaut Software, they assumed, you know, of course we're going to develop the game, but then, you know, Japan's going to compose for it.

But in this case, they said, no, you guys can do it.

And David Wise was, I'm sorry, Tim Wise, not David Wise.

Tim Wise was not working for Wear at the time.

He was a freelancer and like, hey, Tim, write three songs for us, three demos, and we'll see if you're right for the project.

He does three demos, and they're like, okay, that's the first song in the game.

and not write more which is why the first song you hear when you when you play the first level it doesn't feel like a traditional video game song because it's like it's not looping yet and it starts like a whole another like movement to it so there's like it goes through three movements because it's three different demos that he wrote kind of strung together but i mean i just love it that the game starts you literally explode out of your house like a cannonball and you've got those increasing those and slowly the backing comes oh it's it's so good but that first level is a masterpiece the whole

game should just be that one level that that first level it gets the game off to a really great start and it kind of slips up after that but this is this is one of the first video game soundtracks that's released in america is dk jams with a z of course uh and uh square uh square soft in america did start releasing final fantasy soundtracks in america but these are some of the first then through nintendo power they start releasing more of these soundtracks through like the play it loud brand which was a very short -lived brand i think think it was july 94 to september of 96 because after that they're

like we won the cuts yeah yeah the killer cuts that was the class yeah i won then in 96 that's what or maybe it was early 97 the that i bought the mario 64 soundtrack and the wave race slash mario kart soundtrack too but yeah this was it's still it's nuts how long it took uh companies that sell music in america to to understand that like gamers wants to play and want to buy these soundtracks you know and i was a little nerd holding a like a microphone up to the tv speaker and recording things with it yes so so the ambassadors of funk featuring mc mario soup doesn't count that's a different thing

right like no although i put tons of that music in our 500 episode because it's it rocks and did you put uh wonder man by right side fred in the i don't think i did reference for you there okay i don't think i did because he's canceled now yeah he is oh god i forgot they're they're complete twats i forgot yeah i i forgot i mentioned them on a podcast recently until a comment came in like oh right yeah they suck but uh the i think too the soundtrack i think a lot more people learn to appreciate it who maybe missed it the next generation because they played super uh smash Smash Brothers Melee a ton and the soundtrack

is all over that and you uh because Sakurai loves video game music he showcases that the the DKC music quite a lot yeah we're not at the wrap yet and that's the only song you should play in any DK level on Smash Brothers the the UK Nintendo magazine released uh as a free gift on like a cover mounted gift a CD of the Smash Brothers orchestra concert that took place it was absolutely wild I don't know what I just was reminded of that there was this thing the donkey kong designs we were talking about earlier like the new renders of uh dk and the design of say diddy kong dixie kong all the extended

donkey kong family do you find it as jarring as i do when they show up in smash brothers compared to all these like beautifully designed like japanese designed and american designed game characters then you've just got king k rule who's just a fat loser with like bloodshot eyes like what's he doing there actually he's my main obviously i play as him because he's me but like come on i i remember I remember when King K.

Rool was announced that there was an interview with the original designer, and he was like, this was, like, my first attempt at this character, and if I had known he would have gone on for this long, I would have come up with something better.

He would have had a better name, because his design makes no sense, because his, like, his chest is made of gold for some reason, but it's not armor, and he's got weird, like, misshapen eyes, and his name is King K.

Rool. Yeah, I mean, for the longest time, it felt like Sakurai didn't want any of the googly -eyed goofballs in his game, game and that's why it was so so much fun when the king k rule trailer is one of my favorite trailers they ever did for any smash game because it's literally like king d to d who's voiced by sakurai and is his uh inserted that thing they tease that oh king k rules here and then they're like haha no he's not here where you thought we were putting him in the game and then he actually just does drop down on him like no he really is in the game and and then they did the sequel to

of that with the banjo kazooie one where they're just like that was great yeah i hate but yes they they do look wacky as hell that trailer did it was anyone else horrified when um when they see king k .r .ool their eyes bug out and they smash through the glass of their house like imagine the pain i mean honestly that it just called to mind the uncanny valley weirdness of the donkey kong country cartoon show from the french oh yeah yeah we can we can be bad at the french for that i have never seen that and i'm thrilled that i've never seen it we we covered it on this podcast there's a lot of singing

on that show there's many many a song it's really a musical show it really is uh diamond any thoughts on the music we didn't even cover the underwater music which is i think the most legendary song from the soundtrack it gets and in like the list of what are the best songs of all time in video games especially of this era that is one of them yeah i must say because of because i was playing on the switch i wasn't really tuned into the music this much much on my replay but i do remember having fond memories of the music when i played it for the first time and i agree that the first song kind of has way

too much going on in it to be a video game song but it's also just it's so good you don't really care so um i think a lot of the music is is actually probably still stuck in my head a little bit and i just i just need to unlock it but ironically while playing it this time you know in my living room while doing other things i actually didn't listen to the music that much but i do have um i do have positive memories of it i mean i think that they went for the more atmospheric thing here and then for for the sequel they went for tunes like the sequel is like the one that everyone loves all the music

in because they're all just these great tunes just like aquatic ambience which i think is what the coral capers song is called uh because it's one of the only songs in the soundtrack that's a proper actual like song as opposed to yeah some ambient uh atmospherics and a little bit of uh sort of tinkling music some people are gonna jump down my throat for saying that bring it on no i think the music in this game is pretty ambient and just sort of about evoking a mood and less about putting a catchy tune in your head outside of like the first uh the first level and the underwater level if you want

to get another taste of this kind of music go and buy uh the port of donkey kong Country 3 on the Game Boy Advance it came out right at the end of the Game Boy Advance's life because it has a completely new redone soundtrack by David Wise they took out Evelyn Fisher's music, threw it in a bin set fire to the bin kicked the bin into a bigger bin and set that on fire and then they put all these new songs in it and the new songs have, for example, yodeling extended pulls where all you can hear is the wind blowing harshly then some distant Christmassy music that sounds like it's being played in the next

village and you can only just hear it um the sound of uh soars soaring that's another thing that he uses it's a very interesting soundtrack and i uh recommend you play that now that i think about it uh the one song that stood out to me the most was when i finally got to the last boss and it's like it's like a pirate sea shanty even though he's like yeah it's like it's a very strange finale because you you go up the mountain and i sort of probably because i was thinking yoshi's island i assumed you would go up to the top of the island and then you would change and you come back down the island but no you

go up the top of the island and you go one square over to the ship that's always been there and the last stage is there is no world there's just one last stage where you fight King K.

Rool and yeah he's a king but he's on a pirate ship and yeah the music is very piratey and you're kind of like this is it is this the end this is the end and that music to me struck out as kind of it's fun it's bubbly but it's kind of like this is the we're finishing the game this is this is the end okay all right well i'm jumping that's one of the most famous that's one of the most famous dog kong country songs and it gets reused as well quite a lot in different things uh and then of course the pirate theme they leaned into more with um donkey kong land which has a pirate themed level actual

levels um and then in donkey kong country 2 k rule is in fact a pirate uh so it's like they kind of which makes this feel even more like a tech demo now that i think about it we ran out of pirate ideas but yeah the game boy games have very good music as well because it's like the same kind of sentiment it's the same kind of sentiment but on a an 8 -bit uh you know music hardware i want to cover one beautiful graphics uh they're they're trying real hard on that game boy um but yeah i want to cover one more thing before we get into the the release of the marketing and then close out here in that um

there is controversy about this game in miyamoto because for the longest time little stinkers who didn't like this game very much or like yoshi's island more i'm one of them me too uh we would say you know miyamoto actually doesn't like this game and he was quoted to say that uh donkey kong country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good and no one ever actually bothered looking up if he actually said that quote until 2019 as far as i can tell apparently miyamoto was said to have said this in an issue of electronic games in uh i believe may of 95 or something

like that and uh to think about it now it's just like it would be weird if miyamoto would be slamming that holiday's biggest seller something he had his hand and something his name is on That would be the first time he ever would say something that inelegant or mean about one of his things.

It's also like even in interviews, it does seem silly now that we all accept that because we've all read so many interviews of Japanese developers.

Even if they didn't like something, they would never be that blunt about not liking it.

Yeah, it doesn't ring true at all, I don't think, personally.

definitely um it's something you want to believe is true if you want to believe that that you that if you do prefer yoshizan and then you're sort of weirdly obsessed about it i guess yes well we kind of were yeah but yeah well yeah uh frank safaldi our friend of the show here at the game history organization um he he basically had access to this magazine as of like 2019 it was i'm sure it wasn't that hard to find but he's like oh i just came into possession of this and they're like oh check the magazine did he say this quote he's like there's nothing like that in there so he actually never said

this quote it's so apocryphal I want to know who we have to like comb the news groups and find the liar who put this online but he did address this in 2010 when Donkey Kong Returns was coming out somebody finally asked him about this and this is what he said quote Miyamoto says the first point I want to make is that I actually worked very closely with Rare on the original Donkey Kong Country and I apparently recently some rumor got out that I really didn't like the game I just want to clarify that's not the case because I was very involved in that and even emailing almost daily with Tim Stamper

right up until the end so there you have it on the record uh a it was never quoted he was never quoted to say that b yes he's promoting a new game but he was as hands -on as he could be in Japan even though Rare was left up to their own devices a lot in Twicross the Miyamoto Rare interaction I want confirmed to be true is that he said that the ending of GoldenEye 007 should have 007 visiting all the people he shot in the hospital and shaking their hands i hope that's true i want to believe that's another fun story i desperately want that to be true well he was kind of shocked by the violence in rare games

because uh in the original like preview builds of donkey kong country 64 or donkey kong 64 whatever it's called the guns were real guns they weren't like coconut guns and memo's like can it shoot peanuts maybe yeah i i'm so glad he said that that was uh i i miss by the way i miss want to ask so much those were so great but but yeah the donkey kong country miyamoto would feel ownership over it to a certain degree because it was it happened with his permission like he oversaw it he's an executive producer on the game and you don't i i mean unless you're a real jerk uh you don't talk that kind of crap

about a successful thing you were an executive producer on you know like and he and that it would be so out of character but yeah like you said bob i I wanted to believe because the schoolyard fight was you.

We loved our crayon colorful Yoshi Island game from the next year.

And people said that was dumb and for babies.

And the Donkey Kong Country was way better.

And you drew up battle lines.

And so we wanted to believe that, well, actually the God of gaming, the only person we know who makes video games, Shigeru Miyamoto, he actually hates Donkey Kong Country.

So there. air and Yoshi's Island was in production for a very very long time especially at the time especially for a platformer I think even via the Nintendo leak it's been revealed that as early as 1991 this game was in development so like four years on a platformer and obviously while they're working on it Donkey Kong Country becomes a huge hit it's too late for them to go back and make it a pre -rendered game but I think that that's why they overcompensate in a good way with the 2D graphics i think they said to themselves and this i don't think this is an insane speculation but we can't make

this pre -rendered let's do as much as we can with 2d graphics this is our last statement about 2d graphics because they won't exist anymore that's as far as they knew they wouldn't exist anymore they had the fx2 chip as well obviously with the extremely impressive effects and morphing and stretching and things and i know it's not a josh's island podcast but the fact that we went from mario world to mario world 2 which looks like it came from a completely different much more advanced console as far as i'm concerned is wild with donkey kong country in between it's just kind of this the snaz was off

the chain like it's absolutely nuts i will say to be fair to donkey kong country uh yoshi's island is sort of on the other end of the spectrum and that there's all many almost too many ideas in that game to the point where i need to like build up confidence to play yoshi's island again it just you have to put a lot of yourself into it but if you look at just how complex that game is uh just like every boss is a different idea in Donkey Kong Country it's like you just jump on a head three times and you're out of there yeah I mean I want to agree with you I wrote about this in Retro Nauts that Yoshitsu

Island I think is a masterpiece like it's an incredible game I don't think there's anything wrong with it you can complain about the baby sound effect but just don't get hits like you know don't get hit be cool like me um but I don't want to play it anymore because once you've done it 100 points going back and not doing it 100 points feels like you're doing it wrong and getting 100 points is really stressful whereas Donkey Kong Country I can bop through that game not give a shit and get to the end in like an hour and then play it again and it's going to be just as fun for me I don't think it's

a better game but I think it's more enticing to revisit just to have a little session on a 2D platformer Can we talk about the bosses though?

I think we probably should talk about the bosses because you know well speaking of time saving I'm kidding sorry speaking on the yoshi's island topic i did want to mention real quick that like i was so into this battle that the first time i ever got to interview takashi tezuka at e3 2012 what was ostensibly i got a whole hour with him and got to it was talking about the the just announced wii u uh super mario new super mario brothers 2 all this stuff and i was like okay but But at the end, I have set aside five minutes at the end to ask him about Yoshi's Island.

Because you're the director of Yoshi's Island, right?

That was really hard. That's my favorite game.

And I asked him, like, you know.

I wish I could not find my original article so I can't source myself directly.

But I basically asked him, was Yoshi's Island made in response to Donkey Kong Country?

And he did allude that some.

Now, I don't want to put words in his mouth.

but he alluded that some decisions were made in reaction to it but yeah i definitely agree with this not just what miyamoto said but also that the provable timeline of yoshi's island existed long before it existed before donkey kong country even was made let alone a success so but i do think some choices were probably made at least partly uh as as is a reaction yeah i think graphically i think it's why there's a pre -rendered sequence up front to let you know like we're aware this exists you won't see it in the game uh stewart go ahead the giga leak showed a something called super donkey that i

think it was called which is a very which looks like a very early yoshizu island with a very unusual looking character and you know obviously being called super donkey that raises a pretty obvious flag and i do wonder what was going on there you know i do wonder if yoshizu island was ever at any point a donkey kong game um because you know know you're throwing stuff donkey kong throws stuff you know he throws barrels he doesn't throw eggs unless something's gone horribly wrong well if you try to investigate this nintendo might take your youtube video down so that's true yeah careful oh god yeah

uh but yeah diamond you were talking about the boss fights and yeah sorry they are very simple although uh i was 12 year old boy at the time my friend and i love walking up to each other and saying neck he's nuts that was a little joke we had because uh you know i mean rare rare is naming after things after dicks and balls they're not above this but diamond please uh boss chat they're pretty bad right as you said a lot of this stuff was just you know once you make the model then you mean so it's like you've got the you've got a giant beaver which is the same it's just you know small enemy becomes

big enemy you've got the giant vulture it's like i think that's an original model but it certainly is based off the smaller model then you've got the giant bee wasp thing you you've got the giant barrel your one boss fight is literally just a barrel that comes down with eyes you have to dodge the barrel long enough and the barrel just explodes like it gets bored of its own boss fight and just gives up and then I have to say the barrel doesn't even have eyes it really doesn't it's just a barrel with a skull and bush bones on it it's rubbish it doesn't even animate then you fight the beaver again there's

a drum with eyes in the third game then you fight the beaver again then you fight the vulture again yeah but it's changed like they're different colours it's Neki's nuts and it's naughty beaver and very naughty yeah oh okay get it get it do you get the joke because naughty because they like to ignore on things yeah that's very funny what i'm saying is so you go through all this stuff so the only really original boss is the last boss and he's in my opinion he's the only one that actually has genuine challenge like the other ones that just the only real challenge from the other boss fights is like

can you tell when the boss's iframes are not because they give you no indication of when they're invincible you might you know you'll jump on their head and you do damage.

Jump with your head this time it's like, oh no, they laugh this time and they keep moving so they run you over.

It's like, well they're not blinking or anything.

There's no indication that they're armaments.

Well, when do I jump with them?

So it's like that's that to me was a little bit frustrating.

So to me, King K. Rool was much more sensible, I think.

Because he's wearing the crown and clearly you can't jump on him when he's wearing the crown.

So when he throws the crown, that's your chance to hit him.

But then there are other parts where he just is standing there wearing the crown.

He's not doing anything he's standing there while like things fall on you and i know for me as a kid i was like why can't i hit him why can't i roll it why can't i do anything no i'd have to wait for him i have to wait for him to take his crown off that's the only time you can hit him but at least the game tells you this is what you do and sticks with it did you ever get fooled by the fake credits when you when you let me tell you i completely bought it this time i absolutely i could i completely forgot about that joke so when i beat when i beat the game this time and the credit started like oh

wow that was that was pretty fast and wait they're joke credits what What is this, Castlevania?

And then he gets up and he's like, oh, they fooled me.

They fooled me. I honestly love that.

I love stuff like that.

That made me really happy.

It's part of Rare's very cheeky sense of humor.

But yeah, the bosses, I mean, like the beaver just wanders back and forth.

The B fight, you're just actually, you're fighting a parabola.

Just like, can you stand in the right spot?

They're all very, very simple.

But again, they didn't have time to actually think of like, to reinvent the platformer.

They were reinventing the graphics first. so then with the second game it's when they start developing better game design ideas November 21st is coming soon they can't miss that ship date we have to wrap up soon go ahead Stuart I would say like I said already but the second game honestly it's like in terms of almost everything that people value it's leagues ahead of the first one everything feels more consistent and thoughtful the difficulty while it's still high feels a lot more measured but we'll probably presumably talk about that on a dedicated podcast at some point oh for sure together with the third

one yes they can both be together with no donkey kong because he's not present all right let's wrap up here by talking about the release in the marketing so this game was revealed at the 1994 ces that was before e3 and it was the final part of nintendo's presentation that year and apparently they didn't reveal this was going to be an snes game until the very end of like the donkey kong country reel and that stunned the crowd it's one of those things where i wish there was a camera in the audience oh hell yeah i saw footage of that ces from the the floor but there was no footage of this presentation yeah

i that description like i feel like i read that exact thing in egm or ultra or what i would have been just game players at the time uh but that's that description of like and by the way this isn't on a next gen so like this is a super nes you don't have to buy and that was so key to their marketing to just tell you especially because they were fighting against uh sega trying to tell it was such a great attack on sega trying to sell an add -on that they have to just show like their commercials look how awesome that looks and you don't gotta buy any add -on you don't gotta buy a new system it'll just

play in super nes it can look like this yes i remember that being in the magazine ads that was a major factor of just like yep this is a super nes game like no no bullshit and yeah nintendo needed to to show the world just what they had created with rare and part of this uh they did this via vhs tape sent out to nintendo power subscribers i believe this was the first one out of like five or six they would send out there was one for like starfox 64 one for like mario 64 and so on like banjo kazooie we all know the john lovitz narrated banjo kazooie video of course oh my god i have to see this oh

you haven't oh you gotta yeah because you do it in his ridiculous light simpsons character out to voices that would be right i mean just his voice he only has one yeah no i yeah uh this was the first one because we this promotional tape worked on me and my brother so well to to rent it we didn't buy it like i said but we rented it like it was a free rental the the commercial was a free rental at blockbuster like mom look it's a tape that's free right like let's rent it like yeah of course the commercial is free it was the how to buy action figure man special you know what's kind of wild is i'm

pretty sure i had this tape and i didn't have a super nintendo i definitely didn't buy it and i definitely didn't get it off a magazine so it just somehow appears in my home well this this special i skim through it i recall watching it like back in the day when i was doing retro research or something but it's hosted by this very poochy style gen x comedian with like a backwards hat and long hair and he's like totally on the edge and he's talking to very meek nintendo employees but uh a i'm glad that they talked to a rare employee but b it ends with a very surprising thing in which he's like let's

go into this room guys and it's like a bunch of people playing killer instinct on what then was going to be the ultra 64 and they're like no get out of the room no no so it was like a secret sneak preview for killer instinct a version that would never exist because the n64 wasn't ready they had to make killer instinct for the super nintendo in 1995 instead yeah that that that post -credit scene they did blew my mind as a a kid i didn't even know what exactly well it was like a year later when they started advertising killer instinct for like the arcades that i realized what it was they showed donkey

kong with one of the infinity stones it thrilled us all the contrast though this is this is 94 when killer comes to any snes in 1995 like that's a game that is so super downsized from the from the you know the high the high -end machines it was made on like that game even at the time i was kind of like this is this doesn't look very good like I'm having fun playing it but this this can't even compare to that arcade machine and so I feel like whatever magic happened with Dungeon Country but even one year later like my eyes were kind of like uh this doesn't it's just a bunch of gifs isn't it or I

didn't know the time.

It next to the gorgeous Battle Arena Toshinden could not compare.

Yes you know I never played the arcade game so I just like seeing pre -rendered things on my screen like this is really cool uh but also donkey kong country had a 60 million dollar marketing budget which is about three times the average marketing budget at that time and uh it sold this game based on the technology that made it which technically wasn't a lie and yes this was the we made this with jurassic park stuff kind of uh pitched everybody and of course every preview regurgitated this every review did hey it was like eight free words in your 300 word write -up what are you gonna do not include

the pr marketing that you probably got paid like $600 to write in 92 money oh maybe like 10 ,000 these people are rolling yeah one of the earliest and biggest games in the play it loud era which only lasted until September of 96 because Nintendo moved on with the n64 it's like play it loud was just trying to compete with Genesis and their bullshit and they're like okay we won the screaming contest now we're moving on to the n64 and happier times and yeah Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country right under the wire for For the Christmas shopping season on November 21st, 94.

And this went on to sell a little over 9 million copies in its lifetime.

Which means close to half of all SNES owners actually purchase this game.

An incredible number.

Yeah. It's still flowing around at every used game store.

That one is not a collectible used game just yet.

Are there any SNES games that sold higher that weren't pack -ins than this game?

No, this is number three.

It might have been a pack -in at some point, but this is number three.

Number one is Mario World.

Number two is Mario All -Stars.

i think that was a pack -in wow yeah yeah it was yeah okay yeah that makes sense wow okay i was reading up on the release of this game and the context around it and this is around the time when you know uh the normies were finding out about video games like these things are big business for nintendo and there were stories like in its second week this game outgrossed the highest grossing movie and the highest grossing album that week and that was the santa claus the tim allen movie and some kenny g crap for christmas it's christmas yeah that's christmas 94 man And we were listening to Kenny G.

We left the Santa Claus screening and then wrote a letter to Santa saying, buy me Donkey, send me Donkey Kong Country.

Or go to hell. And, yeah, I still see these stories a lot.

I remember, like, when Final Fantasy VII came out in 97, it's like, this be G .I.

Jane. Did you realize that?

Like, oh, no, not the biggest movie of all time, G .I.

Jane. But you still hear, like, about big launches and how they're bigger than movies.

And, like, yeah, folks, we know video games, they cost $60.

A ticket costs $15.

And people buy a lot of these things.

So let's all calm down a little bit Bob I'd like to congratulate you for being the second person in 2022 To reference G .I.

Jane And the first one to not get hit for doing it Henry there's a table between us I can tell Henry's a big G .I.

Jane fan G .I. Jane fan Keep G .I.

Jane out of your damn mouth What a lame joke He should have been slapped A G .I.

Jane reference in 2022 That was his defense That was this year Jesus Christ Christ. Yeah.

Yeah. His defense was that joke sucks.

Thank you, Bruce Valanche.

So moving on, more context.

It's so delicious. Sega is not doing bad, but they're investing too much in failed hardware add -ons.

Nintendo comes out the clear winner without having to invest in new hardware quite yet.

The mistakes have begun.

Like, it's, I think without, it's not that Sega lost it, but Nintendo did beat them.

like the Donkey Kong Country sold better and they kept going but it did not help that their 95 was like it just was crappier like they didn't have the thing they didn't have a Sonic ready and they yeah they thought they um they kind of got bought it by Donkey Kong Country and this and the PlayStation sort of more or less in the same year just by some guy saying like $399 yeah yeah let's go over what was happening in the world at the time in the console world I mean Nintendo doing doing very well without having to put out a new console so a sega saturn launches in japan a day after donkey kong

country has a disastrous secret launch in may of 95 the exclusive toys r us launch we all know about that uh the sony playstation launches in japan a few weeks after donkey kong country has a fairly successful launch in america that fall the 32x launches the same day as this game in america uh -oh bad idea uh yeah like i said the those ads what are you gonna play on the damn thing uh star wars arcade can you still was that that launch with it i have to know probably nothing knowing that well i i just remember yeah 32x was like a free commercial for donkey kong like that was so clear a thing of like

oh you don't you can play this thing that looks great and you don't have to buy another thing to put on top of it yeah yeah well you can buy this mushroom for your mega drive and play cosmic carnage with your soon -to -be ex -friends they They will never come back.

And also, yeah, Atari Jaguar and 3DO have been out for a year.

But who cares? I mean, we had our laughs, right?

But nobody cares about those consoles, especially at the time.

I played these at the time.

And even then I was like, I like my Super Nintendo.

I'm furious at the 3DO community.

I know they're listening.

The very limited number of good games that were on those things, like, say, Ray -Ban, then instantly comes to every other system.

I yeah and one other uh person or or game that was uh that felt the pain of Donkey Kong Country I wanted to mention was Earthworm Jim because it did do really well but it was very outsold by Donkey Kong Country it was also 94 yes okay I thought so so when the Sega CD version of Earthworm Jim came out a little later within a year later uh there is a secret input you can can put into it uh that will give him basically donkey kong's head but with an arrow through the top of his head because they were as as their little middle finger to donkey kong yeah it was it was in the pc version i had the special

edition and that you just type queen slug for a butt's name she has like millions of names and one of those gives you the donkey kong arrowhead bit of trivia for restaurants there well the creator of donkey kong country did not yell at me online i'm like the creator of earthworm jim so it's another plus for donkey khan yes uh doug ten apple yells at someone online that seems crazy stop the presses uh i think there's another guy who's a complete let's not even say it yeah yeah this is a whole it's why i don't want to do an earthworm jim episode because while on the plus side at least tommy talerico

is untouchable oh yes oh right uh he that's a he he's a man who'd never lie man you know what sucks is like i love that game and like i also love day is gone and the guy who directed that this week has gone insane as well and it's just horrible what am i going to play next and find out that the guy who made it is just another complete tool it's gonna suck well you know now that free speech is legal on twitter we have to watch out yeah comedy and free speech are legal again yeah that's just how it's gonna be and we can't take it and i guess to wrap up uh you know we'll talk more about dakikon country

as the years of retronauts go by but this would not stop here there will be multiple sequels they were even annual at first there's going to be spin -offs and this version of donkey kong is going to be the donkey kong for the rest of time it's going to find its way into a ton of nintendo productions even things made in japan diddy is around as well in those productions and also there was a decade of dormancy between donkey kong country returns and uh tropical freeze no wait uh we are living in that period i'm sorry i misread my notes so yeah there was like uh there There was about a decade between 64

and Returns. And then there was like four years, and then it was Tropical Freeze.

And now we are almost 10 years out from Tropical Freeze.

And again, that is my favorite Donkey Kong Country game.

And it's like the one Wii U game for Switch I have not repurchased yet.

It will break me. But guess what, guys?

It's on sale this week for $40.

Wow, that's as cheap as it's ever going to be.

I just want to get this episode out with my hot tape before we wrap it up, which is I didn't like Tropical Freeze very much. Boom.

All right, moving on.

Wow, damn. I thought it was great.

I was like, you finally, you did something right, and I finally like this.

It took a different developer to make it, I guess, but boy, it's such a dense game with just so many features, so many different play styles, and the bosses are so good too.

But I feel like I would not be surprised at this point if there was Nintendo Direct soon, early in the new year maybe, and they say, you know, coming for the Switch in its final days, a new Donkey Kong Country game, because there technically has not been a new one for the switch and technically it will be nine years in february so uh the clock's a ticking and i think it's time and these these are still very popular games there's a lot of nostalgia for the old ones as well retro studios must be doing something like i hope so they still employ people they have to be making something they put them

on metroid prime 4 didn't they i imagine that they reset development and stuck them on that they're rendering a new logo right now for you yeah yeah oh and one more thing we've changed the font on the metroid 4 logo oh one more thing metroid prime 4 is canceled they should just let us know but yeah those are my final thoughts uh i i think this is a flawed game but it's the game it needed to be at the time they did not have time to develop new gameplay ideas it was all about putting the technology first and then you can see how throughout time they've uh iterated on this concept and made it into

a much better series but yeah i really think about being 12 years old when i play this uh some good and bad memories but that's my only thoughts about dkc in this two hour podcast uh anyone else have final thoughts let's go to uh stewart how about you yes we've made it through this entire podcast without mentioning the sexy chimpanzee candy kong oh i wanted to avoid this yeah well that's okay because that's all i'm gonna say about candy kong and i mean she speaks for herself i believe um no my final thoughts is what i said i think it is a game that is laden with issues in terms of gameplay for me

they don't kill it i do still enjoy playing it with the exception of like a couple of levels because the full momentum is just that quick it is just that breezy of a game i don't find it as difficult as y 'all do that's how we talk that's not because that's not because i'm like skill it's just i've played it a a lot so i've gotten i know all its stupid dumb tricks plus as i mentioned i had the strategy guy before i even played the game so yeah uh no i like it a lot i go back to it a lot because it does it is almost the last hurrah before collectathons take over and i kind of appreciate that like

even yoshi's island is a collectathon as much as i love it um it's it's fun i like it i like probably the gameboy advanced port slightly more because they they put the qualitative life changes in a a bit add a few more things to find um and yeah i'm probably still go back to it for many years to come plus you know apes are cool they are uh diamond how about you well i must say so i'm not hurting for choices there's so many things just within within arm's reach of me right now that i could be playing right now so i didn't have to beat dunking on country to have this podcast but once i started playing

it i did have fun with it i did enjoy it uh certainly i have some of that is nostalgia based but I think the game overall is fun I just think yeah it doesn't hold up so well you know years later both graphically and design -wise because you know in the back of your mind you're thinking oh boy it came out after this game which was kind of better than it and the next year later was was a game that was really incredible but it is it is sort of its own thing I think uh Bob I really appreciate you mentioning that the indie the indianess of it it because yeah it does it does sort of keep itself to one

you know one general idea you know the animal friends come up but the animal friends are kind of used sparingly and they don't really they don't really transform the game so much duncan kong himself duncan diddy kong whatever they never really get new powers like there's no fire flower there's no invincibility star you're never invincible really even the animal friends don't make you invincible they just make you stronger um so i had a good time with it and i think it is fun and honestly you know You're not the first person to tell me that Tropical Freeze is great so maybe I will Drop that much

money on Tropical Freeze But just to address it It will never be less than $40 Just to address it before we get past this We need to point out Candy Kong is the only one In the game who's actually wearing clothing Which means the rest of them are nude She's the only non -sexy one Well at least bottomless Like you know we know the Diddy wears a nice little shirt And a hat With a Nintendo logo go diamond diamond did you say you're 100 of the game no i didn't no not uh in 90 in 94 i did not now i see i was gonna say i want to get it on the record that the way that you get 101 or 105 in this game is the most

patently unreasonable thing that no one would ever find without a magazine which is uh one of the bonus rooms you have to finish it with a single banana outcome rather than one of the good outcomes which then gives you a barrel that you use to break through to the next bonus room then you do the same thing again then you break through to another another bonus room which is completely undocumented and then you get 105 no one would ever find that it's it's rubbish it's it's it's like pure british game design at its worst miyamoto did not find that before the game shipped uh henry final thoughts

do you want to apologize to the british especially i i apologize to you and your your wonderful king uh you may your majesty Steve no no I kid uh but I like to the point that I used one of the most high profile interviews I had had to that point as a way to ask about it I have always been tied up in viewing you know Yoshi's Island and also Donkey Kong 94 for Game Boy versus this game and I prefer those games to of this game by a wide margin but i i feel like that has always clouded me of judging donkey kong country on its own merits not to mention as its own like you know just huge moment in games

and that had a gigantic effect on games like it changed how so many games were marketed like the 3d the things it was the the not the first thing but it was a preview of what 1995 was going to be all about with game ads of just like no everything has to be 3d now everything looks stupid if it's not 3d like in donkey kong and its country and its huge success is a big big part of it and and yeah i mean as somebody who loves the trivial stupid canon and continuity of the donkey kong world i have to appreciate the donkey kong country added so much weirdness to it of like was cranky kong the original

donkey kong is donkey kong donkey kong jr grown up these questions that That will never truly be answered.

Not until we do a paternity test. Yeah, I mean, it's a simple game.

We talked about it for two hours.

So hats off to Donkey Kong Country.

But thanks for listening, folks.

We are a fan -supported podcast. We're RetroNauts, by the way, in case you forgot.

It's been two hours.

You can find us online at RetroNauts on Twitter.

And, yes, if you want to support the show and get these episodes one week ahead of time and ad -free, please go to patreon .com slash RetroNauts.

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it's where you want to be because on that $5 tier you get early access and also two full -length bonus episodes every month and also a bonus uh essay and podcast by diamond fight here and we've been doing this for three years now three years total we're coming to the end of our third year so there has been two exclusive episodes every month for three complete years so if you're not on the $5 tier you missed a lot of great episodes and they're all available to you instantly the second you sign up for five bucks a month at patreon .com slash retronauts that's it for our our plugs thanks so much for listening

to Retronauts as for our personal plugs Diamond how about you what's going on with Diamond Fight well you mentioned the column actually and two hours ago you mentioned Kangaroo actually covered Kangaroo in the column at the start of this year because that was one of that was an arcade game I played a lot when I was a child so and very Donkey Kong adjacent although there's no there's no barrels but yes it needs barrels you can find me on the internet in various places Twitter for now presumably tomorrow as well Fight Club F E I T that's my last name game club a blunt weapon that nate might use

but not in this game and uh stewart how about you you can find me on twitter at super carburet an incredibly clever portmanteau of my name and the word super carburet there uh you probably shouldn't follow me on twitter because i'm really just terrible on there like all my worst excesses are brought to light um i should probably plug the book shouldn't i i do i've done a book for press run uh limited different games uh it's called all games are good and it's out in 2023 i want to say sort of mid year summer sort of time uh so get excited and stay excited for many many months please and henry how

about you well if you liked hearing me and bob talk about stuff on this you should definitely check out the talking simpsons podcast network where me and bob do that all the time we on the talking simpsons podcast go chronologically through the entire series of simpsons super duper in depth full of great research just like bob did in this episode episode of Rats or Nots and you can also listen to our What a Cartoon podcast where we do the same for animated series and What a Cartoon movie where we do it for animated feature films look for Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon wherever you find podcasts

and that's all supported at patreon .com slash Talking Simpsons if you sign up there you hear all of our podcasts a week early and each month you get an episode of Talking Futurama of Talk King of the Hill and we closed closed out 2022 with our newest season of blabbing about batman the animated series talking about eight of our favorite episodes of batman the animated series we have so much fun talking about that please see it all for yourself at patreon .com slash talking simpsons and you can follow me on twitter at h -e -n -e -r -e -y -g and of course i'm on twitter too as bob servo but that's it for this episode of retronauts we'll see you again soon for another

new episode thanks for listening Thank you.

Thank you.

[Retronauts: Revisiting the Impact and Legacy of Donkey Kong Country]-[504: Donkey Kong Country]

📋 Summary

Retronauts: The Ape-Man Legacy of Donkey Kong Country

The Rare Partnership: From British Barns to Silicon Graphics

Marketing as a "Big Trick"

Gameplay: Simple, Linear, and Polarizing

The Legacy of the Kongs

Final Verdict

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript