Retronauts - 504: Donkey Kong Country

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

As the console wars heated up, Nintendo needed something big that wouldn't necessarily involve investing in new hardware that could potentially wreck the company. And that "something" arrived in the form of Donkey Kong Country, a fairly simple platformer by the technical wizards at Rare that nonetheless impressed millions with its newfangled pre-rendered graphics. This week on Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Stuart Gipp, Diamond Feit, and Henry Gilbert as the crew works up a mighty hunger for bananas and discusses the finer points of those damn, dirty apes. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get two full-length exclusive episodes every month, as well as access to 50+ previous bonus episodes, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

This week on Retronauts, we hate every ape we see from Chimpan A to Chimpanzee. I'm the leader of the bunch. My name is Bob. I'm finally here to cast some pods. And that's all the wrapping 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 further, who is here with me today in the same room to talk about Donkey Kong's country? It's me, Henry Gilbert, straightening my big red tie to show I've grown up. It's true. That's significant. You've become a man now. Who is our UK correspondent? Very important for this UK-based episode. Hello. I'm Stuart Jop and I'm broadcasting, not from Donkey Kong country, but from Shunky King country. Very nice. Is Shunky King, the new name of Prince Charles?

It is, he is, yeah. I was satirizing him. He sort of has big ape-lip cans now. So 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 you're not being a shill, and I appreciate that.

And, you know, this is just like the game itself. This brings together Japan, England, and also the marketing of Americans. And the American pigs. I guess we're the Play It Loud group, putting the last bit on it. Yes. We just checked our levels. I'm playing it too loud. But, yes, Donkey Kong country is a topic.

We've mentioned Donkey Kong in the past. 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 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. Let us start with Stewart. Stewart. Hello. What's your relationship with Donkey Kong? Have you been to Twy Cross? I may have done, but I wasn't paying attention

if I did. If rare were there, they were difficult to find. You could say that they were rare themselves. Sorry, yeah, moving on. My history with Donkey Kong is I used to, when I used to rent the NES, I used to rent, also rent, Donkey Kong classics, which was a, as I'm sure you know, it was a cartridge that had both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong country, the NES versions of them. And naturally, I wasn't able to, you know, get anywhere on Donkey Kong. I don't recall that I got past the second board, but Donkey Kong Jr. 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 knock-off version of it, I think it was just called Kong on the spectrum. It was terrible, as you'd imagine. But borderline unplayable. Not as good as Donkey Kong Country, which 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 SNAS 9X and go,

oh, yeah, hang on, this is a bit good. But I did you used to read about it in magazines and long for it. I had a strategy guide for it for some reason that I used to read and just pour over and know I'm playing this reading this is the same so yeah it's a 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 but let's talk to Diamond Diamond where do you and Donkey Kong meet have you visited his country and

is TwiCross on your agenda? No, and I haven't looked up where that is. 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 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.

It doesn't matter. Those sounds are in my head. For some reason, reason, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man are like the two Atari go-to game sounds when 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. Dunk Kong Jr., a lot of fun, but I don't think it's as good as Donkey Kong. And then Duncan 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 Duncan Kong descended Mario ascended. So, you know, when this game came around, it's like, oh yeah, Duncan Kong. Okay. This could be okay. And I remember getting it and it was like, this is, this is fun. I like this. So when this game came out, I played it a lot. I have actually very good memories of playing this, like being home sick one day from school and just devoting myself to playing playing as much as I possibly could so I know I eventually got 100%

or is it 101% I think but yeah I did eventually just completely clear this game so I've 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 Diddies Kongs and the

lands and 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? 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 cabinet art is well all just was spellbinding to me like i just fell in love with the idea of it was such a simple idea and uh it's so easy to grasp and and donkey con junior too like i i i really loved that 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 his time went on with donkey cong though like i i think we maybe rented the ns version of it uh and and junior but

I didn't play it all that much. I only truly came to appreciate original Donkey Kong when playing the one of my favorite games of all time, Donkey Kong 94, which his 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 because we did deem it to be too hard for us to beat together. But I will say the marketing worked on us so good. 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 I of course though because I love Donkey Kong the man the ape man when he was not playable in the sequel I was already like nope not doing it didn't touch it I didn't touch any other DKCs huge huge mistake until until the Wii time yes I don't know why they did that as for me

I didn't play the original Donkey Kong or any of the Donkey Kong games the early ones until after Mario because some of the first arcade games I ever played were kangaroo Miz Pac-Man and then the original Mario Brothers is where I really fell in love with video games I love the original Mario Brothers so much and only after playing

you know Super Mario and stuff that I go back and play Donkey Kong I was like, these games are kind of dated, but they're all right. I hate Donkey Kong Jr., though. When I play that again, I'm like, this hitbox is preposterous, sir. You expect me to control this thing? It's like a different shape no matter which way you move it. 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 dormancy period for Donkey Kong. And then, 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 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 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 rent 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 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 on country two and three again like you Henry I'm like why is the the big man not here like what are you doing uh 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 one up shut down and I needed money and uh Jeremy is working for US gamer I was not working there yet and I reviewed donkey 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. 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 it. 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 game is so old. It's almost a decade old.

You know what, Tropical Freeze never asked me to blow into anything, unlike those awful Mario Man. And none of the, like the music way better in the Tropical Freeze. Absolutely, much better music. So, yes, let's talk about Donkey Kong and Rare before Donkey Kong country. So, you know, we can go over the basics. We 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 start 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 Wario Ware or something that 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. There's an alternate reality where we're all playing Stanley the Bug Exterminator Sunshine or something. It's a nice little Gallagher clone. That's what I like about it.

I like when I play it. But I have only pretty much every time I played Donkey Kong 3, it's at on free play at some sort of arcade collection and I play it for five minutes like yeah all right okay yeah just walk away like I can say I've played it 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 surfaced 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 promise, but eventually never resurfaced the, what was it, Donkey Kong music school or music fun for the Famicom.

That was one of those games that's been announced and we saw an advertising. but it's never been seen not even with all those giga leaks no one no one knows what happened to that that game yeah you know if pop I 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 you go to the asset factory drop some Donkey Kong things in your car to make a math game which is like we technically Donkey Kong junior math is part of the 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 yeah yeah 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. He's incomprehensible. He talks rubbish.

Sorry, I'm moving on, moving on. We'd have to ask a generation of Japanese children 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 names. Maybe it's good. I got to give that, yeah. He would say like It's a Dukimax or something. It's a Degu-Mask.

Yeah, he has to go out like, yeah. He would say, foo, foo, foo, foo, instead of whatever. Instead of, okay, yeah, there you go. I'm not a regular Joey Gladstone over here. Where's Nita when you need her? Exactly. Exactly. I should have her on this call.

But 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 punchout 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, just like a fun character. Remember him? He was a big arcade guy. Now Mario's the main man, but we 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 still got it. I love it. I'll

episode man oh my god but yeah i mean he was mainly m ia 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 card and it's donkey kong junior and it's just like it always seems so odd to me playing that game as a kid like i guess donkey kong's here for some reason but it's donkey kong junior 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 con a playable appearance in uh games in like a decade and it's like it's like it's they call him donkey con but he's wearing like juniors white little like uh

yeah so yeah he's got the vest that's interesting because i'm sorry i never thought of him as having this kind of cultural kind of drop out because they did keep him in the public eye somehow because whenever donkong would show up i would be like oh yeah donkey con so that that original arcade game must have been absolutely seismic to have that effect Yeah, I mean, we do a Futurama 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 would say to a generation slightly older than 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 an entire generation of people thought of when the video goes, oh, we got Donkey Kong, you got Pac-Man, you got Kubert, uh, for some reason Cuban is sexy now. I don't know. That's, that's Sandler for you, but, well,

I go to watch this movie. Josh Gad fucks Kuberd. It's true. It isn't, uh, oh my God. It's true, yeah, it was a new low for cinema. Uh, and isn't, Donkey Kong isn't the new Mario movie, right? Oh, yeah, he's played by Seth Rogen, though he doesn't talk in the

new trail here. I hope he never talks. Yeah. I don't want Canadian. He's too busy blazing it. You'll be laughing. You'll all be laughing. He's like, hey, Mario, I made this vase. I think if I went down to the Spencer, I could buy some donkey cush. I'm sure it's there.

I don't 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 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 Kong as anything other than a

throwback. 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 was 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, 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 to be posed like a Spider-Man. But I did have these little PVC Mario figurines.

And of the set, they had one that rep, like him throwing a fireball, him holding a mushroom, uh, him holding a turn up 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 had a few of those. No real toys for a while, which is a real bummer. So let's talk about Rare, Donkey Kong, MIA, but Rare, very prolific. We covered the company back in episode 35, like eight years ago with Jazz Brignall.

He's on the episode, so check that out. But to give a brief overview of where Rare was, they spent the late 80s and early 90s making a lot of NES games. I believe I counted 47 releases developed by Rare 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 were even publishing some rare games. Those games include Slalom, R.C. Pro-Am and a sequel, a 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 like those British guys like they work with them a ton and I think they you know the story sounds

even at the NES days like Cobra Triangle does like look graphically strong for for example or RC Program was doing stuff you didn't see in other NES games. It reminds me of the tale of Star Fox as well when we did that podcast of like that

Oh yeah, I don't, right? Yeah, 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 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 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 to read that Nintendo would hand over the design of like one of their major characters to a 22-year-old of like, eh, just to 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 had made Donkey Kong country were like had like eight years on me basically when they were making it because of they they were very prolific rare often dealt with license 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 realm 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'm 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 license game factor anymore they are getting into the world of like ip focused entertainment and that's where battle toads comes in we did a whole podcast about that but battle toads 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 on 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 and not mentioning this but before they were rarely when they were ultimate play the game and they were a spectrum developer and it was sort of like a return to the kind of gloria's 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 you know or they jetpack or something but they were really big for spectrum so it was almost like they kind of went sort of up down

them back up again which is which i find kind of interesting they like treated the nes as a kind of as you mentioned but 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 it feels like 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-L-T-D or whatever. Oh, sorry, Stuart? I just, yeah, I agree with you. There are so many, like, I just keep thinking of more, like, popping into my head. like stuff like beetle juice that popped into my that's rare i'm pretty sure there's so many um rare was always a prolific uh creator like even even as resources increased 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 were produce more

we can make two games a year oh sorry steward 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. But yeah, 94 would be a huge turning part 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 S-NES, despite making this game that sells 9 million copies.

All told, they only develop three games for the Super Nintendo. And, 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 now I'm taking you a few more. I think there's like Battletoads for the Super Nintendo. So maybe like five or six. There's a couple of Battletoids games on the SNAS.

Basically 13 or 14% of what they develop for the NES. They make for the SNS. They don't care about the SNES that much because they're setting their sites 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, yeah, Super Nintendo is here and it's great.

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 they're, you know, that one, that they have enough money that they can say, like, you know, we can make it till we don't need to really focus on a big thing for 93. like let's buy these very expensive things to be ready cutting edge like 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 one yeah i think you're right henry to the point where uh the the government of twi cross it's hard to say twi cross the government of twi 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 they said Exactly. What's all this then was said by a police officer or Bobby? They're going to send you to the barrister for this one.

Yeah, they were developing things out of basically a barn in the countryside at this era. I apologize, Stuart. I'm sorry. Oh, that's okay. I deserve. Henry's hatred is coming through. No, I do want to say I mock British development a lot of this show. It's fun when I come on.

I like it. But I love British culture. One of my favorites, like, I became a comedy nerd because I got access to an 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 Grab by the Goolies. Yeah, that was too far. I would actually rather be grabbed by the Goalies than play that. Ooh. A lot of us would. But yeah, so rare getting in on 3D technology, 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 stopgap for them. but they are experimenting with 3D modeling. One of the first things they experiment with is the Battletoads Arcade game. So if you watch a playthrough of it or if you play through it yourself, you'll notice that there are 3D modeled objects, but they're not living things. 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, you know, we've done. this experimentation with the arcade game, the Battle Todes 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 and 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 and 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 IGM for me. That was a target day. Great day for the furies. Yes, it was a great day

to be a furry in 2002. But yeah, Nintendo was so impressed by this. Stories differ on this matter. Some 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 con 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

con like you know we've seen this for years and years after the like uh miamoto 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 this B 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 a Luigi's Mansion or I'll let them borrow Luigi's Mansion. There's no handing over of Donkey Kong to these guys. No, no. I was just haunted by the terrible thought of an alternate reality where a rare made a Metroid game. And I just,

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, a rare Metroid. Oh, man, I wouldn't want to see, yeah, I wouldn't want to see Sammis 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, like, Ridley with big googly eyes. Oh, God. They probably call him, like, Fiddly Ridley or something.

Yes. No, they try to make it funny. They try to make Metroid funny. Oh, no. Some kind of rhyming scheme, I think, would be worth it. Metroid-O-the-Ram is quite funny. Oh, it is. It is. It is 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. That'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 retrodots of which Aladdin is better. Thank you. But it is why it was a childhood argument at least for me and my pals growing up too of which Aladdin was better. It was just that big. It was blowing my mind to see

the developers of Donkey Kong in some of the articles you shared Bob talking about like yeah 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 and like on the level certainly not on the level of the sonic but like this was more

about combating aladdin than sonic though definitely i think the keep it loud marketers we're like we can do better than blast processing we'll make up some bullshit uh 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 well done Thank you. And I believe... Bob 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 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 in a bunch of bullshit and aimlessness. Whoa. Sorry. A lot of trolling here. But yeah, it's funny how like these British studios, I mean, not even funny, but interesting.

These British studios are like the, the, 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. That's kind of what British games always were, like the coolest technical tricks. Not as much in sense of game design, but they're devoting a lot of time to

getting the most out of the 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 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 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 an issue of EGM. It was like the 1995 game buyer's 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 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 finger things means the money Nintendo wouldn't have won that without Donkey Kong Country

Yeah, this was it And 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

Country City Twycross and rural Both hard to say 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 the name of the game.

Although, I believe in Japan, it's just called Super Donkey Kong. Yes, I think, yeah. That's true. Yeah. Which is a cool name. Like, like, I would have accepted it. I think the, I'm glad they went with DKC, because that is, it's a strong label for themselves. But it should, I mean, by the naming convention of most of the, like, the super metroids out there.

that I suppose Super Donkey Kong is the more logical progression for the naming. Yeah, but I guess they would have to keep the super 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 SDK, isn't that a thing? Yeah, they can't take that. It's already been taken for the development kit. That's right. Oh, oh, you're right. SDK made by an SDK. It's kind of wild when you think about it.

Uroboros. So this is a big project for Rare, obviously. They assemble their biggest team to date of 12 entire people and they get to work. 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 Dong Kong. They're like, well, it looks a bit of a scroth. To put a tie on it. There you go. He's a proper gentleman now. 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 S&S 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. Oh, it's Diddy's Kong Quest? Damn it, I got it wrong again. I got it wrong again.

To be fair, it's stupid and it doesn't matter. Diddy Kong's, wait, Diddy Kong's Conquest, get it like his Conquest. Diddy is on a quest for a Kong. Diddy's Kong quest. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Now I mean the third one. Triple trouble?

What is the third one called? Dixie Kong's double trouble. Oh, for the third game is Dixie Kong's double trouble. Yeah, I know. It's also stupid. Because you have Dixie and Kitty. Even Diddy is thrown away. Yeah, Diddy just chucked in a bin.

Is there a Moxie Kong? So, yeah, 18. Moxy Kong. You know what? There probably is. I didn't play all this spinoffs. If we check the animated series, there's got to be. 50 Kongs that don't go mention

in the games at all. If you get all the gold in King of Swing, you unlock Moksy 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 of their own. So it's like a lot of camaraderie bonding over

like killing themselves making this game. And apparently, I mean it's not too surprising if you play the game, but inspired by Super Mario, Rare had their own approach in that with the way the levels are laid out, out, they're kind of like developing speed run friendly levels before speed runs are invented, and that a beginning player could 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 to point B zipping through level without stopping for a second, and every level is designed like that. It's probably, I'm not sure if I'm getting ahead of us, but the, the Game Boy Advance 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 game boy advanced one was like in 2003 or something like that it looks like someone threw up harrow

on the screen it's awful you know it's also funny to these different approaches because like argonaut for star fox it sounded like nintendo just like pluck them up and like you live in kiyoto now and just drop them there but like uh the the the rare guys got to to do the work remotely and hearing so many of their stories like, well, we fax this and they fax that or like a guy who only lived in the British countryside his whole life, you know, that 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 they don't really name drop song to 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 game design and that, you know, once 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 a boom box and look at me I'm all fancy. Like that's that's, you know, to me 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 the attitude, I think. Am I, 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 I can only have one of our listeners

someday can put a retronauts on a LP because I want to see retronauts being played on a gramophone or like a wax cylinder yeah this this begins with cranky Kong 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 boombox 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.

Fuck off. This is what's cool now. I mean, I know that technology moved incredibly fast at the time. And, yes, a 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 hang today. Yes, exactly.

Yes, every, I guess you're so right. This is all about how fast things 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. 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 photo-realistic. I don't know. It's crazy to me. Like going from, I mean, we had like microcomputers jump to the N. has jumped to the SNAS and then the 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 nine episode and it was like oh remember 10 years ago wasn't that wild and now we've had like so many more decades of

final fantasy but it's just like it was a 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 got to make this game less difficult because we got phone calls about Battle Toads 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, this, the careening off every cliff. And I feel like your defensive, your offensive move just sends you into danger more often than it helps you. Yeah, it gets really bad once you can the later levels and you have the ice physics to contend with. You can, it is so easy to just to jump on a platform and then you just slide right the platform without doing anything else.

And then the mind card levels also bring in the, the torture of the Twitch base, like, instant reaction you needed in Battletoads. I mean, it's not as cruel as Battletoads, few things are. but yeah the the mind card level still had that no i mean well also too when i played it two player with my brother uh which is how we we played the most like we didn't realize that also kind of f 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 played this single player i could mess up once or twice and lose ditty but if we're playing together uh we're like we neither of us can make a mistake you know

Even though Nintendo fine-tuned, the difficulty are told Rare 2, 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, 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, playtesting that they do with every game with this game, and I think that made it better. I mean, difficulty subjective.

I don't find it as difficult, as you're saying, 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 while there is a safe feature, which is, you know, still quite rare by this. win no pun intended it's only every few levels sometimes at 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 so 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 warps you right to the end, which is hilarious. As if they're just going, nope. You're just noping out of the whole level. It's great. You can do that with the mine cart stages as well. If you jump over the barrel that blasts in the first mine cart, hang left, you'll hit

an invisible warp barrel, skip the whole level. Wow. They knew. I know way too much about the skit. Holy shit. Yeah, they dump extra lives on you because yes, you're right, they know. Battletoes was not so generous, but still like the moment to moment frustrations, you

can try a lot, but it's a little tough. And I think nothing gets people matter on these podcasts is when I say something is hard for 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 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 15 years, rather, something like that. I mean, even, 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, you know, hang time in the air

to sort of think, okay, I'm going to land on this gun, but when I come down, in Donkey Kong, not only do you bounce quite low, but you suddenly start moving weirdly quickly in the air, like 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 if in this game you will just shift and change, and it is unusual, and it is hard to get it. 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 the 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 clap traps, the little blue, they're taken out of Donkey Kong Jr. Those things can feel like a dice roll to land on them. Like if you land on them slightly too far to the left, you're going to take damage and you know now that 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

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'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 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's 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 really can't do worse than that and 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 way I'm sure but it's worth from 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 favorite Mario I still love it it's 10 out of 10 but But it's better than Donkey on Country

by some, in front of 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 it, all 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 secret, you can get 100%. It doesn't really change the ending. It doesn't give you access to it. It's not like the true ending being locked behind 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. But it's a good. 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, what's the word, comfortably. And in this, it's just like, on this level, it's just the normal platforming level, except 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 thinking 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 yeah donkey Kong country is also about coping with depression I had the same thought when I you know I get depressed when I lose on my bananas me too but then they're like 39 cents each when you go into the banana horn at the beginning and the sad music plays

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 thought about, like, simplicity and game design and how, like, it takes me aback sometimes, especially when it's, like, a full budget, $60 release. I remember I got a PS3 because of Uncharted 2, and every game's journalist breathlessly was like, it's just like, I'm playing a movie.

My girlfriend was fooled. That's how they sold the game. If your girlfriend is fooled by a video game, then you've won. Yeah, that ad has an age too well. Just like, don't tell your girlfriend, it's not a movie. She might leave me if I do. But when I played it, I was like, okay, the next generation of games, and it's just like all I do is shoot it guys

is 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 it guys and then get better at shooting them and I had the same reaction to that as I had to donkey on country back in the day where it's like well this is so well made and it looks gorgeous but I can't get over like just how simple it is I guess 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 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 the you know crem 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. It feels like the thrill is gone when everything you get is just an extra life. Diamond, what are your thoughts on the difficulty? Well, I just, so as I said, I played this game, completed it 100% or 101% whatever it is back, back when it was new. For the purpose of this podcast, I did, it's on the switch online,

so I got out, I replayed it. Here's the proof. I did indeed restore the bananas to the rightful place. but anyone could have taken that screenshot I don't buy it you never played the game in your life but I remember as I was playing it again

I was I really felt I was kind of surprised at how simple 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 me for like Mega Man 2

it's like I know every trick in Mega Man 2 at this point it just felt it felt very straightforward to me like these levels you know I guess and I guess in the one hand it's it's it's not a bad decision

because if you look back at the certainly 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 to do and you know and as Dave Rudden famously

called them like the airplane hangers it's like you're in this gigantic space you can go up you can go down you can loop around you've got to find like eight levers or something to get to the exit and it's just exhausting it's like these levels are all very

it's like you know where you're going 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 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 way do I go even those there's not that many there's not that many loops you can take you're not going to you know you're never in risk of drowning the enemies

are about as slow as you are except for those damn octopus things but um don't like those yeah I just I felt like it was moving it moved very smoothly it went very quickly

I mean this play through it took me two hours to finish in game time so I feel like you know for a game of this era that's that's pretty fat

I'm sure yeah if I knew what I was doing I'm sure you could 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 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 liar? No, I can't imagine that's possible.

No, I got, 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 of 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. Oh, yeah. But most of the game, based on the comparison to Sonic, it is actually a little bit like Sonic and 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's like something that even I didn't know about until quite recently. 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 Ramby 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 done our big showpiece stage now it's just now we're just making filler like there's a stage called I remember this there's a stage called Winkie's Walkway

which is funny because Winky means you know penis and the level is about 10 seconds 15 seconds long just run left to right and the secrets were in full view and 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 and then towards that's how it goes on that way and as I said I like this game but it's incredibly linear like insanely linear

I can't think of a more linear platformer outside of something like Packland I mean the original Mario Brothers had warp signs you know I know it's not fair but it also is inevitable to talk about this game and this is mirror world games but it's like this game has this world map and it's like the world map is almost completely completely useless because like there is no there are no hidden exits like there are secrets to find 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 to get 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 game has a gigantic map. And then, like, not even talk about Yoshi's Island, which came out a year later, which had even

even more sort of, you know, surprises in store like that. But, 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 than that one. There were, obviously, there were loads of secrets within the stages, like you say, sorry, I don't know, no, 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 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 funkycom 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 the world map okay

because i actually googled that i was like how do i go back to the world map oh i can't I have to go 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. Or you can just press start and go to Funkie's flights anytime you want. They did actually make that quarter of quality of life change. We had to wait until Funky Mode was invented to see his full. New Funky mode. 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 tick me aback. And at the time, like, before I got this, I had just gotten Final Fantasy 3, 6 and just like, oh, the innovations and 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 simple. And I think I thought of Celeste because this game is very forward thinking in that it has coyote time. And what coyote time is, it still lets you jump after you move enough off of a clip. 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 forward thinking and kind of inventing coyote time in this game without naming it.

When country returns came out I remember because I'm a big fan of this series I remember fretting that they weren't going to nail it and then I saw in one of the trailers he did a roll jump and I was like they've done it. They've absolutely got it. That is Donkey Kong country. Especially did he? Yes, Diddy. Especially yeah. That's his one like I feel like that cartwheel can just

move you like 30 feet over nothing before you jump. Yeah, there's very little between the two characters. I mean all it is I think is that that, Diddy can do that a bit faster and Donkey Kong can kill those army guys who are a bit bigger than the others, 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 about 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 built the framework now we can expand upon it and so what you're saying and i 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 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 say 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 inches before the finish line

in a very cruel way which is a Battletoads choice 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 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 clap traps that jumps the same time you do and it comes out of the exit right as you're approaching it. 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. ...which... ...that... ...you know.

...that... ...an... ...that... ...the... We'll talk more about the design, so we'll talk more about the design so soon. I want to get through. the history. There's some interesting things here. So, yes, 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, and that he's got a tie there as well. And, yes, Skip Bayliss designed the Battle Toads. So Donkey Kong shares some traits, and this will ruin Donkey Kong forever. If you look at the newer version of Donkey Kong, he is basically a brown battle toad.

It has ruined it 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 reason really 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 go ahead stir it i was just to make a really stupid joke to be honest go for which skin condition would we name the donkey kong battle toad after He's scabies.

I love it. Yes. I mean, they've adjusted the model over time. They make it a lot less harsh because this is very early character modeling to the point where they're 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 journey towards Diddy Kong. And according to Greg Males of Rare, here's his quotes.

Quote, we initially wanted to include D.K. Jr. as donkey's sidekick. 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 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 D-DK, DK light, and Titchie Kong We settled on Dinky Kong But after legal advice, changed it to Ditty 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 British slang Is that true? Yeah, well there's a Oh my God, I can't believe I'm mentioning this guy 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 but anyway the point is sorry this is not about Ken Dodd The point is he had sidekicks who he called the Diddy Man and it's pretty un-PC, to be honest.

But that's how I know the word Diddy, basically. I see. Okay. I didn't know it had certain connotations. Well, let's just think of it as a cute little ape guy then. I mean, I guess Diddy mean small, but when you're referring to Diddy Man, I think what you're referring to there is, I don't actually know what the correct nomenclature is

what we call Little People, I suppose. 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 par that we look back on later and think, oh, that's incredibly offensive and or racist and or sexist. But, you know, this time we did.

Hey, same with Americans. I was worried you're going to say it dates back to, it was made up by Jimmy Saville. If it's any consolation, Kent or dead skeleton by now. Yeah, so we went with, like, Diddy's been with us for a very long time. I'm so glad it's not D.K. Jr., the D.K. 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?

He definitely was in a tennis game I think he was put in you know I'm just going to 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 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 and this but it confused me as a kid yeah i always wondered if that was complete fan head cannon 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

donkong junior 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 me a motto 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 was yeah, 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 bananas, 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 He's just me. 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. Ah, man. So, yeah, Junior actually barely appears in other stuff after this. I mean, like, he's in the N64 of Mario Tennis and not any after. Okay.

And I think after that, since he's in some game and watch games that they're remade for Game game and watch gallery he's in parts of those as well but post that other than like him as a statue or like is 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 or the minis games or whatever uh he's not oh hey whoa they're not awful they're all right uh spoken like a bruce guy you leave those minis 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. 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 PipeMania and in 3D, that was really cool. But all the other ones were just bad version of Lemmings. I like the DS one, okay, March of the Minis. But yeah, I mean, also like, yeah, hey, if I can turn things around for my normal schick 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? Yep, yeah, which I don't think exists anymore. I don't think they're going concern anymore. Yeah. But it's interesting. Like, the way this game is made is very funny when you think of, 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 gifts, that a Super Nintendo can display. And that's essentially the making of this game

because they pointed out in various interviews. A screen full of rendered graphics was essentially the size of an S&S 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 Kremlins and all the other, the gang. It's like they 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 it, I think.

I felt like such a rube when I realized the trick 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, exist in the game. That is very impressive. But the advertising where they literally say, this is on the same thing as Jurassic Park. And then, you know, in a game of 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-rended graphics like this. I think that's what they call them, right? Yeah. You can see artifacting. You can see, you know, it doesn't look very good. But when you've got a fuzzy, unclear sort of display, that all burns together, all the color

burns together. Everything just looks great. And, you know, incredibly atmospheric. It's an atmospheric game. Then when you play on a CCTV, you can see all the seams. It just doesn't really work. Yeah, the tricks to all of these pre-ridden games is like you must have an SDTV. 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. And 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 it was like 1994. And we were doing a class project that was like, we're doing a fake time caps. We're not actually going to bear anything. But what were 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, DocuCon Country should be in it because they made this game with the same computers they used to make Jurassic Park. So I would just pair. the PR lines to my teacher. That's how effective this advertising

was. We were just like Bart saying, buy me, bone, storm, or go to hell. Exactly. We 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 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 combat, except instead of photographs of human beings and costumes, it was photographs of

CGI models, though I mean the CGI models were impressive for their time, and there is something to you. 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 a pixel

graphic character, a lot of, 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 want another one in my life as long as I live. I've had enough of those heavy bastards. But yes, the trick works very well. And I mean, just the fact that they were able to make all of these models, of these, a bunch of kids basically with no training in this software. The documentation was very technical

from an engineering perspective, not from an artist's 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, you know, eight balls floating on a checkerboard

or whatever. Like you're used to seeing an 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 work anybody saying like, well, it's just really a picture. Like, yeah, I'm not, I don't want to say that. Rare's accomplishment for these kids on, like, machines. Also, like, they can't, they're doing this thousands of miles away from where, like, these machines were built in Silicon Valley. Like, 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 well when it came out like with that both the graphics on the sound pretty much spectacular on the snows there was nothing like it for several i guess ironically the toy story game that came out from travel's 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?

Don't forget Sonic 3D Flickies Island. Oh, yeah. You could forget. Sorry, just kidding. I've misread this. I definitely forget, I meant to say. Hey, we can remember Mario RPG. Those are good pre-rendered graphics.

Yeah. I still love that game so much. Great soundtrack, too. Oh, I love it, too. I just wish it didn't look like that. Yes, 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 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 Johnny Blastoff in the Kremlin Armada

and it only by hearing British people saying Kremlin that I realize like, oh, this is a slate against the Russians. There are a bunch of Kremlin's walking around. I never did either until that just now. And yes, a very good soundtrack on this game, because just like 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, sorry, Tim Wise, not David Wise. Tim Wise was not working for Wair at the time. He was a freelancer. 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, not write more. Which is why the first song you hear 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 just love it that the game starts you literally explode out of your house like a cannon ball and you've got those increasing those do do do do do do do do and slowly the backing comes oh it's so good

but that first level is a masterpiece the whole game should just be that one level that first level it gets the game off to a really great start and it kind of slips up after that but this is one of the first video game soundtracks that's released in America is DK Jams with a Z of course

and Square Soft in America did start releasing Final Fantasy soundtracks in America but these are some of the first and 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 it was July 94 to September

of 96 because after that they're like We won. The Killer Cuts. Yeah. Yeah, the Killer Cuts. That was the, yeah, I won in 96, that's what, or maybe it was early 97, the, I bought the Mario 64 soundtrack and the Wave Rates slash Mario Kart soundtrack, too. But yeah, this was, it's still, it's nuts how long it took companies that sell music in America 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. So the Ambassadors of Funk featuring MC Mario doesn't count. That's a different thing, right? No. Although I put tons of that music in our 500 episode because it's, it rocks. Did you put Wonder Man by

Right Said Fred in the... I don't think I did. It's an obscure reference for you there. Okay. I don't think I did because he's cancelled now. Yeah, he is. Oh, God, I forgot. They're complete twats. I forgot. I mentioned them on a podcast recently until a comment came in like, Oh, right. Yeah, they suck.

But 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 Smash Brothers Melee a ton and the soundtrack is all over that. And you, because Sakurai loves video game music, he showcases the, the DKC music quite a lot. Yeah, we're not the rap yet. That's the only song you should play in any DK level on Smash Brothers. the UK Nintendo magazine released 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 just was reminded of that there was a thing the Donkey Kong designs we were talking about earlier like the new renders of DK and the design of say Diddy Kong Dixie Kong all the extended Donkey Kong family do you find it as jarring as I really

when they show up in Smash Brothers compared to all these like beautifully designed Japanese designed an American design game characters Then you've just got King K. Rool 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 remember when King K Ruhl was announced That there was an interview With the original designer And he was like this was like

This was like my first attempt Of 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 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 Rule. Yeah, I I mean for the longest time it felt like Sakurai didn't want any of the Googliad goofballs in his game and that's why it was 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-Dadee who is voiced by Sakurai and is his insert in that thing they tease that oh King K rules here and then they're like

ha ha 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 that with the banjo kizui one where they're just like yeah but yes they they do look wacky as hell that trailer did it was anyone else horrified when um when they see king keral their eyes bug out and they smashed 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 con country cartoon show from the french oh yeah yeah we can we can be that 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 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 of 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 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 that you don't really care. So I think a lot of the music is actually probably still stuck in my head a little bit, and I just need to unlock it. But ironically, while playing it this time, you know, my living room while doing other things, I actually didn't listen to the music that much, but I do have, I do have positive memories of it. I mean, I think that they went for the more atmospheric thing here, and then for the sequel, they went for tunes.

Like, the sequel is, like, the one that everyone loves all the music in, because they were all just these great tunes, just like aquatic ambience, which I think is what the Coral Capers song is called, because it's one of the only songs in the soundtrack that's a proper actual, like, song, as opposed to, you know, some ambient, atmospherics and a little bit of sort of tinkling music. So people are going to jump down my throat for saying that

to bring it on. 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 level and the underwater level. If you want to get another taste of this kind of music, go and buy

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 White is they took out Evelyn Fisher's music, threw it in a bin, set fire to the bin, kicked the bin into a bigger bin, then set

that on fire. And then they put all these new songs in it. And the new songs have, for example, yodeling, an extended pause, 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.

The sound of sores, soaring. That's another thing that he uses. It's a very interesting soundtrack, and I recommend you play that. Now that I think about it, 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 a, it's a very strange finale because you go up the mountain and I sort of, probably because I was thinking of Yoshi's Island, I assumed you would go up to the top of the island and then you would change and you'd come back down the island, but no, you go up the top of the island, then 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 Rule 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 is 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 the end okay all right well I'm jumping I think that's one of the most famous

that's one of the most famous that's one of the most famous dog come country songs and it gets reused as well quite a lot different things. And then of course the pirate theme they leaned into more with Donkey Kong Land which has a pirate

themed level actual levels and then in Donkey Kong Country 2 K-Rool is in fact a pirate 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 8 bit music hardware I want to cover one thing. Beautiful graphics 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 in the marketing and then close out here in that um there is controversy about this game in miamoto 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 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, I believe, May of 95 or something like that. And 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 in something his name is on. That would be the first time he ever would say something that in elegance or mean about one of his things. It's also like, even in interview, 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.

It's something you want to believe is true if you want to believe that if you do prefer Yosh's Island and you're sort of weirdly obsessed about it, I guess. Yes, well, we kind of were. Yeah, well, yeah. Frank Sefaldi, a friend of the show here at the Game History Organization, He basically had access to this magazine as of like 2019. 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? And 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 newsgroups 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 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 Twycross. The Miyamoto rare interaction I want confirmed to be true is that he said that the ending of Golden I-O-7 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 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 Miamoto's like, can it shoot peanuts maybe? Yeah, I'm so glad he said that that was, I miss, by the way, I miss a lot of ask so much. Those were so great. But, but yeah, Donkey Kong country, Miamoto 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 mean, unless you're a real jerk, you don't, 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 docky con 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 to Garamimoto, he actually hates Donkey Kong Country, so they're.

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 League, it's been revealed that as early as 191, 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 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.

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. I know it's not a Yoshi'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 the SNES was off the chain It's absolutely nuts I will say to be fair to Donkey Kong country Yoshi's Island is sort of on the other end of the spectrum and that there's 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, just like every boss is a different idea. In Donkey Kong Country, it's like you just jump on ahead three times and you're out of there. I mean, I want to agree with it. I wrote about this in Rhetronauts. Yoshi's 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. 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 dunk on country I can bop through that game not give a shit and gets 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. On the Yoshi's on 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 Tezika at E3, 2012, what was ostensibly, I got a whole hour with him and got to, it was talking about the, the just announced with you, super Mario, new Super Mario Brothers 2, all this stuff.

and I was like, okay, but at the end, I have set aside five minutes at the end to ask him about Yoshis Island, because you're the director's Yoshi's Island, right? Like, that was, you know, really hard. This is my favorite game. And I asked him, like, you know, I wish I could, I could not find my original article, so I can't source myself directly. But I basically asked him, was Yoshis Island made in response to Donkey Kong country? And he did allude that some, now I want to put words.

in his mouth, but he alluded that some decisions were made in reaction to it, but I definitely agree with this, not just what Miyamoto said, but also that the provable timeline of Yoshi's Island existed long before, existed before Donkey Kong country even was made, let alone a success.

But I do think some choices were probably made at least partly as a reaction to it. 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 of this exists. You won't see it in the game. Stewart, go ahead.

The Gigalek showed a something called Super Donkey that I think it was called, which is a very, which looks like a very early Yoshi's 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 Yoshi's Island was ever at any point a Donkey Kong game. Because, you 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 Oh, that's true, yeah, careful. Oh, God. Yeah, but yeah, Diamond, you were talking about the boss fights, and yeah, they are very simple, although

I was 12-year-old boy at the time. My friend and I love walking up to each other and saying Necky's nuts. That was a little joke we had because, you know, I mean, rare is naming things after dicks and balls. They're not above this, but Diamond, please. Boss chat, they're pretty bad, right?

As you said, a lot of the stuff with 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 certainly is based off the smaller model. Then you've got the giant bee wasp thing. You've got the giant barrel. You've got the giant barrel. You're one boss fight is literally just a barrel that comes down. With eyes. Yeah. You have to, you've to dodge the barrel long enough and the barrel just explodes. Like it, like it gets bored of its own boss fight and just gives up. I have to say The barrel doesn't even have eyes It really doesn't It's just a barrel With a skull brushbones on it It's rubbish

It doesn't even animate Oh wow 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 Nekis Nuts And it's Nauty Beaver And very naughty Yeah Oh boy Okay Come on guys

Get it Do you get the joke Because Nortty Because they like to gnaw on things Yeah That's very fun But 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 the, 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 eye frames 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'll do damage. Jump with their 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 there are invincible. When do I jump with him? So it's like that's, you know, that, that to me was a little bit frustrating. But so to me, King K. Rules was much more sensible, I think. Because, like, he's wearing the crown. And clearly you can't jump on him when he's wearing the crown. So, like, 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 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 beat him? Let me tell you, I completely bought it this time. I completely forgot about that joke. So when I beat the game this time and the credit started, I was, that was pretty fast. And wait, their joke credits? What is this?

Castlevania? And then he gets up, it was like, oh, they fooled me. They fooled me. I honestly love that. I love stuff like that. I made me really happy. it's part of rare's a very cheeky sense of humor but yeah the bosses i mean like the beaver just wanders back and forth the bee fight you're just actually you're fighting a parabola just like can

you stand in the right spot it's they're all very very simple but again they didn't have time to actually think of like re to reinvent the platform or they were reinventing the graphics first and then and with the second game it's when they start developing better game design ideas november 21st is coming soon you know they got a he can't miss that ship date uh we have to wrap up soon oh go it stewart no i would say Like I've 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 concerned 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. We'll stab it together with the third one. Yes, they can both be together with no Donkey Kong because he's not present. Brett, let's wrap up here by talking about here by talking about the release in the marketing. So this game was revealed at the 1994 season.

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 S&S 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 floor, but there was no footage of this presentation. Yeah, that description, like, I feel like I read that exact thing in EGM or Ultra or would have been just game players at the time. But that's that description of like, and by the way, this isn't on a next gen.

Like, this is a super N.E.S. You don't have to buy. And that was so key to their marketing to just tell you, especially because they were fighting against Sega trying to tell. It was such a great attack on Sega trying to sell an ad on that they have to just show like their commercials. Look how awesome that looks. And you don't got to buy any ad on. You don't got to buy a new system. It'll just play in Super Nias. 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 bullshit. And, yeah, Nintendo needed to show the world just what they had created with Rare. And part of this, 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 Star Fox 64, one for like Mario 64 and so on, like Banjo Cazoo. We all know that John Lovitz narrated Banjoo Cazooie video, of course. Oh, my God, I have to see this. Oh, you haven't. Oh, you got to, yeah. Because you do it in his ridiculous, Slate Simpsons character voices. That would be great. I mean, just his voice.

He only has one. Yeah. No, I, yeah, this was the first one because we, this promotional tape worked on me and my brother so well to rent it. We didn't buy it, like I said, but we rented it. Like, it was a free rental. The commercial was a free rental at Blockbuster. Like, Mom, look, it's a tape that's free. Rent it.

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 special, I skim through it. I recall watching it like back in the day when I was doing retro research for 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 A, I'm glad that they talk 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-S64. And they're like, no, get out of the room, no, 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 post-credit scene they did blew my mind as a kid. I didn't even know what exactly. 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 94. When Killerson comes to any SNES in 1995, like, that's a game that is so super downsized from the, you know, the high-end machines it was made on. Like, that game, even at the time, I was kind of like, this doesn't look very good. Like, I'm having fun playing it, but this can't even compare to that arcade machine. And so I feel like whatever magic happened with Dunkin Country, but even one year later, like, my eyes were kind of like, this doesn't, it's just a bunch of gifts, isn't it? I didn't know the, we were the time. It next to the gorgeous battle arena to Shinden 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. but also Donkey Kong Country had a $60 million marketing budget which is about three times the average marketing budget at that time and 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 pitch to 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 going to do not include the PR marketing that you probably got paid like $600 to write in 92 money. Oh, oh, maybe like 10,000. These people are rolling in the dough. Yeah.

And yeah, one of the earliest and biggest games in the Play-At-Loud era, which only lasted until September of 96 because Nintendo moved on with the N-64. It's like, Play-It-Loud was just trying to compete with Genesis in their bullshit. And they're like, okay, we won the screaming contest. Now we're moving on to the N-64

in happier times. And, yeah, Nintendo released Donkey on Country right under the wire 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 at SNES owners actually purchase this game

An incredible number Yeah just like it's still flown around At every used game story That one is not a collectible used game just yet Are there any SNS games that sold higher That weren't pack-ins than this game? No, this is number three This might have been a pack-in at some point

But this is number three Number one's 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, the Normies were frending 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. 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 tongue country or go to hell and yeah I still see these these stories a lot I remember like when Final Fantasy 7 came out in 97 it's like this be

GI Jane did you realize that like oh no not the biggest movie of all time GI 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 bucks a ticket costs 15 bucks 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

2022 to reference G.I. Jane and the first one to not get hit for doing it. Oh, oh. Henry, there's a table between us. I can tell Henry's a big G.I.J. fan. G.I.J. fan. He almost did slap me. Keep G.I.J. out of your damn. What a lame joke. You know what? He should have been slapped for it. A G.I.J. reference in 2020. You know, that was this year. That was this year. Yes. Jesus 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, Donkey Kong Country sold better and they kept going, but it did not help that their 95 was like, it just was crappier. They didn't have the thing. They didn't have a Sonic ready, and they, yeah, they thought.

They, um, they kind of got bodded by Donkey Kong Country and the PlayStation, sort of of more or less at 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 very well with having to put out a new console. So, 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. 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. Like I said, those ads. What are you going to play on the damn thing? Star Wars Arcade. Can you still, can that launch? Did that launch?

No, I don't think you did that launch? I have to know. Probably nothing knowing them. Well, I just remember. you, 32X was like a free commercial for Donkey Kong. That was so clear a thing of like, oh you can play this thing that looks great

and you don't have to buy another thing to put on top of it. Yeah. Well, you can buy this mushroom for your Mega Drive and play Cosmic Carnage with your soon-to-be ex-friends. They will never come back. And also, yeah, Atari Jaguar and 3Dio have been out for a year, but who cares? I mean, we

had our laughs, right? But nobody cares about those consoles. And especially at the time. I played these at the time. Even then I was like, I like my Super Nintendo. The three games that... I'm furious at the 3-D-O community. I know they're listening. The very limited number of good games that were on those things, like, say, Rayban,

then instantly comes to a better... The other system, every other system. Yeah, and one other person or game that was... 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. 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 put into it uh that will give him basically donkey con's head but with an arrow through the top of his head because they were as as their little

middle finger to donkey con yeah it was it was in the pc version i had the special edition and in that you just type queen slug furbot's name she was like million of names and one of those gives you the Donkey Kong Arrowhead. A bit of trivia for retronauts there. Well, the creator of Donkey Kong country did not yell at me online on like the creator of Earthworm Gym. So it's another plus for Donkey Kong.

Doug Tenaple yells at someone online. That seems crazy. Stop the presses. I think I have to block. Let's not even say it. Yeah, yeah. It's why I don't want to do an Earthworm Jim episode. Well, on the plus side, at least Tommy Taylorico is untouchable. Oh, no. Yes.

Oh, right. He's a man who never lie. Man, you know what it sucks? I love that game, and, like, I also love Days 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 a guy who made it is just another complete tool?

Well, you know, now that free speech is legal on Twitter, we have to watch out. Yeah, comedy and free speech are legal again, and that's just how it's going to be. And we can't take it. And I guess to wrap up, you know, we'll talk more about Donkey Kong country as the years of retronauts go by,

but this would not stop here. There would be multiple sequels. They were even annual at first. There's going to be spinoffs. 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 Tropical Freeze.

No, wait, we are living in that period. I'm sorry, I misread my notes. So, yeah, there was like, 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 Dunkin 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, this is, 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, it's such a, like, a dense game with, like, just so many features, so many different, like, 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 and 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 the clock's a ticking and I think it's time and 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 got to be making something. They put them on Metroid Prime 4 didn't they? Am I imagine that? They're reset development and stuck them on that. They're rendering a new logo right now

for a thing. Oh and one more thing. We've changed the font on the Metroid 4 logo. Well, one more thing. Metroid Prime 4 is Cucka Cancel. They should just let us know. But yeah, those are my final thoughts. 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 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. Some good and bad memories. But that's my only thoughts about DKC. in this two-hour podcast. Anyone else have final thoughts?

Let's go to 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 going to say about Candy Kong. I mean, she speaks for herself, I believe.

Now, my final thoughts is why 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, 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 but uh 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 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 Even Yosha's Island is a collect-a-thon as much as I love it. It's fun. I like it. I like probably the Game Boy Vance port slightly more because they put the quality of life changes in a bit, add a few more things to find. And, yeah, I'm probably still going back to it for many years to come.

Plus, you know, apes are cool. They are. Diamond, how about you? Well, I must say, so I'm not hurting for choices. There's so many things just within arm's reach of me right now that I could be playing right now. So I didn't have to beat Duncan Kong Country to have this podcast. But once I started playing it, I did have fun with it. I did enjoy it.

Certainly I have some of that as 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 a game that was really incredible. but it is it is sort of its own thing I think Bob I really appreciate

you mentioning that the indie the indiness of 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

Dunkin Kong himself Dunk Kong diddy Kong whatever they never really get new powers like there's no fire flower there's no invincible star like you're never invincible really even the animal friends don't make invincible they just make you stronger

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 I 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 That's it. They're nude. She's the only non-sexy one

Well, at least bottomless. Like, you know, we know the Diddy wears the nice little shirt and hat. That was a Nintendo logo. Diamond, did you say you 100% of the game? No, I didn't, no, not in 94 I did.

Not now. I see. I was going to 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 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 used to break through to the next bonus room. They do the same thing again, And then you break through to another bonus room, which is completely undocumented, and then you get 105%. No one would ever find that. It's rubbish. It's like pure British game design at its worst. Miyamoto did not find that before the game shipped. Henry, final thoughts? Do you want to apologize to the British, especially Stewie? I apologize to you and your wonderful king. May your majesty.

No, no, I kid. 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 this game by a wide margin. But 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, 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 will never truly be answered. 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. So I have it there for three bucks a month. You can adjust that, but also there's a $5 tier.

It's where you want to be because on that $5 tier you get early access. And also two full-link bonus episodes every month and also a bonus 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 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. I actually covered kangaroo in the column at the start of this year because that was an arcade game. I played a lot when I was a child. And very Dunkin-Gong adjacent, although there's no barrels.

But yes, 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. C-L-U-B, a blunt weapon that Nate might use, but not in this game. And Stuart, how about you? You can find me on Twitter at Stupacarber, an incredibly clever portmanteau of my name and the word chupacabra there you probably

shouldn't follow me on Twitter later because I'm really just terrible on there like all my worst excesses are brought to light I should probably plug the book shouldn't I I'm do have done a book for press run limited run games 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 so get excited and stay excited for many many months please and Henry how about you well if you like to 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 of Retroats. 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 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 out 2022 with our newest season of blab and 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.