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Thursday, June 13, 2013

An E3 for Donkey Kong Fans

By RAWKHAWK2010 - An E3...that matters.

For those who frequented the Donkey Kong board on the Nintendo NSider Forums, you might remember that we were the most depressed lot on the entire site. Endless vitriol towards the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games for making Donkey Kong look like a braindead jackass, actually wondering if Donkey Kong was even going to be in Super Smash Bros. Brawl (lol), and well, let's face it, we were the living-under-a-bridge homeless dudes of the Nintendo fandom, relying on slices of moldy bread (aka GBA ports and Paon games) just to stay alive.

Skip years later, and we were finally rescued from our purposeless existence with Donkey Kong Country Returns, a game that not only cemented Donkey Kong Country as part of modern culture but also turned out to be one of the greatest platformers of last gen. And while I was nothing short of elated from the time of the game's announcement 'til its release, DKCR was clearly a bit barebones in how much it explored the world of Donkey Kong Country. So with that said, the biggest feeling DKCR left me with was a feeling of wanting more. I didn't want DKC to "return" for one game and fade back into irrelevance (kind of like Punch-Out!! did), but sadly I thought that's what it would do.

Then skip a few more years to yesterday's Nintendo Direct, and holy shit:


Lo and behold, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. (I love the name, by the way. Sounds like a 7/11 slushy flavor. Or a drug.)

Just seeing another Donkey Kong Country was enough to get me hard, but then the trailer turns into a rapid-fire onslaught of super crazy awesome stuff. Those 3D barrel-blast scenes? The mine-cart level spiraling down a tree with all the airplane wreckage flying at you? The silhouette water segments? Motherfucking DIXIE KONG? (I repeat, MOTHERFUCKING DIXIE KONG?!)

She's got it going on like Dixie Kong! (Someone tell Trace Adkins so he can write a song about it.)

And then the megaton of E3 which we didn't find out til later: the game's soundtrack (with some help from Kenji Yamamoto) is being done by David Fucking Wise, aka the original composer of DKC1 and DKC2, but more importantly the latter since it's arguably the greatest video-game soundtrack of all time. If you told 2007 me this would happen, I would have called you a dirty lying Mario fan that only wanted to crush my hopes and shatter my dreams. But no, it's totally happening! We're getting a new David Wise-scored Donkey Kong Country game! (Mining Melancholy Returns, I want you in my ears RIGHT NOW!)

Now, idiot Metroid fans aside who are mad at Retro Studios for not catering to them after Other M ruined their favorite series like Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat almost ruined ours (or even bigger idiots who wanted Retro to do a new STARTROPICS or something equally fucking stupid), the only real complaint I've seen with Tropical Freeze is the same major complaint people had with Donkey Kong Country Returns -- the lack of Kremlings. I can understand applying that complaint to the Tikis since they were pretty uninteresting and only existed to jump on, but have you seen these Viking dudes?

His 'stache is more awesome than Jamie Hyneman's.

These are actual legitimate enemies with a purpose, freezing over Donkey Kong Island to make it inhabitable for all their arctic friends. That's AWESOME. I like the Kremlings, but I also like for developers to keep things interesting. I want to find out more about these guys and who's pulling the strings -- something I wouldn't feel if we were just taking down carbon copies of the Kremling Krew. (And for anyone that's played any game the Kremlings have been in for the past decade, it goes without saying they're a little washed out at the moment. Without some new leadership or a divine cosmic super weapon like DK: Jungle Climber's Crystal Banana, the Kremlings are probably less threatening than Groose.) Either way, my biggest fear when the trailer first started was that Tikis would have revived themselves with no purpose or explanation beyond Retro not wanting to create different enemies, but fortunately that's not the case. Donkey Kong Country is an evolving thing, its rogue gallery contributing to that as much as anything else.

But if you really want to hold out hope for King K. Rool appearing in some form, Ken Tanabe said Tropical Freeze is getting a fourth playable character he's not allowed to talk about yet. Since this game takes place across five different islands, maybe one of them is Crocodile Isle 3.0 and K. Rool has to join forces with DK to save it? That would take the angel food crazy cakes.

So to my fellow Donkey Kong fans...rejoice! This isn't like 2010 where Donkey Kong Country is simply being acknowledged and homaged -- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is pushing Donkey Kong and friends into exciting never-before-seen territory just like Donkey Kong Country 2 did all those years ago. It's gonna be a fantastic ride, folks -- now let's just hope Shigeru Miyamoto doesn't show up at Retro in his Grim Reaper robe to "fix" the game, because I don't want my ass getting banned from Miiverse just yet. (Oh, and Donkey Kong is apparently in the new Smash Bros. or something cool like that.)


Do you jack off to video-game monkeys and don't care who knows? Well, KoopaTV can't help you with that. But if you just want to talk about them, you should totally follow RawkHawk2010 on Miiverse and Twitter!

3 comments :

  1. I am equally excited for this.
    Problem is that it's a WiiU game and I don't have one.
    Flashback to 2005 when I first fought K.Rool. The genius fake credits scene hit me hard and I didn't pick the game back up until 2 years later when I restarted the game. I played through and beat down K.Rool. Recently I've played through the series, and to be honest, it's a needed change of pace with me forcing myself to beat Sonic 06 100%.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm really, really hoping K. Rool is the fourth playable dude. In this one Gamespot video, someone asked about a fourth Kong and the man was very careful to say there would be a fourth *character*.

      I'll be cool with whoever it is, but K. Rool teaming up with the Kongs in a mutual effort to save the island chain would be an awesome response to all the popularity he's seen lately.

      Delete
    2. And Sonic 06? May Solaris bless you. :P

      Delete

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