Donkey Kong 64
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 C'mon, Cranky; take it to the fridge!
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Donkey Kong 64 is a 3D action-adventure platform game developed by Rareware and released for the Nintendo 64 in 1999. It is a follow-up to the original Donkey Kong trilogy for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; it is the first and so far the only 3D platform game in the Donkey Kong franchise.
Plot
The story begins with a view of DK Isles, which is the homeland of the Kongs. Meanwhile, the Kremlings and King K. Rool are sailing inside a fortified, technological version of Crocodile Isle, which hosts the doomsday device, the Blast-o-Matic. The device was designed by a weasel engineer named Snide, whom K. Rool later fired out of paranoia. K. Rool puts the Kritters in charge of operating the Blast-o-Matic and manuevering Crocodile Isle, but due to the Kritters' incompetence and laziness, Crocodile Isle crashes into a rock. The Blast-o-Matic becomes heavily damaged as a result. Crocodile Isle docks directly in front of Kong Isle, and K. Rool orders three of his minions, a Klump, a Kritter and a Kasplat, to distract Donkey Kong by stealing his banana hoard and imprisoning the other Kongs, to buy them time as they repair the Blast-o-Matic. Klump assures K. Rool that they have already fulfilled his orders.
Meanwhile, Donkey Kong is in his tree house, doing push ups while listening to the DK Rap on his radio. Squawks suddenly flies into his house and tells Donkey Kong that all of his Golden Bananas are gone and that the other Kongs have vanished. Donkey Kong then goes to Cranky's Lab for help, where Cranky Kong, who has the role of a professor, offers homemade potions that each grant a new ability to a Kong. He allows Donkey Kong to have his first potion, the Simian Slam, after he completes the Training Barrels. With the Simian Slam, Donkey Kong exits outside Kong Isle and starts his adventure in stopping K. Rool and rescuing the Kongs.
Donkey Kong goes inside a round, green prison where a giant Kremling, K. Lumsy, is imprisoned. He was locked inside a cage for refusing to help K. Rool in destroying DK Isles. K. Lumsy asks Donkey Kong to retrieve the Boss Keys to unlock his cage and free him. As Donkey Kong recovers his Golden Bananas, he eventually saves Diddy Kong in Jungle Japes, Lanky and Tiny Kong in Angry Aztec, and lastly Chunky Kong in Frantic Factory. Tiny meets the Banana Fairy Princess in Banana Fairy Island, and she asks Tiny and the other Kongs to capture all of the Banana Fairies with the Banana Fairy's Camera.
The Kongs manage to enter inside of Crocodile Isle and manage to shut down the Blast-o-Matic before its power gets fully restored. After the Kongs obtain the final Boss Key, K. Rool retreats into his airship. With the final Boss Key, the Kongs free K. Lumsy from his cage. He then chases after K. Rool, who is flying his airship around Kong Isle. As he chases K. Rool, K. Lumsy accidentally trips over a rock and hits the cruiser, causing it to crash into the water. The Kongs enter the airship and engage in a five-round boxing match against King Krusha K. Rool. After the match, Funky Kong appears and launches a boot at K. Rool while Candy Kong distracts him. This results in K. Rool being defeated, and the Kongs and rest of DK Isles celebrate over their victory.
Why It's a Golden Banana
- The controls are very tight and responsive, and each of the abilities that you can perform in the game are very simple to pull off, since that they often require just one tap of the B button.
- The camera controls are very advanced, especially for its time, as the player is not only allowed to rotate it with the C buttons, but the player can also make the camera face the back of the Kong's with the L button.
- The graphics are amazing for 1999 standards, and especially for an N64 title as well, and multiple details are scattered throughout the game as well, such as having multiple cracks being able to be seen on walls.
- It is the first Donkey Kong game (and the only one) to be played in full 3D.
- The introduction cutscene that is seen upon booting the game up, the DK Rap, is a cheesy and stupid, yet charming and memorable introduction and rap song.
- You can explore huge worlds full of enemies, with some of them being old enemies from previous Donkey Kong Country games, obstacles and platforming elements that are built around the game's structure, and they don't really feel like they're forced into the game as well.
- The soundtrack is enjoyable and charming, and fits the themes of each area of the game pretty well, whether if it's relaxing, mysterious, or menacing.
- Every world is accessed with DK Isles and Crocodile Isle, both of which create an enormous hub world and have secrets scattered throughout them, such as hidden Golden Bananas, and Banana Fairies.
- You can play as five different Kong's each with their own abilities, instruments, mini-games, and collectibles:
- Donkey Kong - His Bananas, Banana Balloons and Banana Coins are yellow. He is the the biggest main character of the game, and because of this, he is the balanced character as far as jumping, running, and strength is concerned. His ammo is coconuts, his instrument is a pair of bongos, his special barrel makes him invincible, his pad lets him play the barrel shooting mini-games, and his miscellaneous ability is pulling levers.
- Diddy Kong - His Bananas, Banana Balloons, and Banana Coins are all red. He is smaller, faster, and weaker than Donkey Kong, but slightly stronger than Tiny Kong. His ammo is peanuts, his instrument is a guitar, his special barrel lets him fly (with a jetpack), his pad lets him jump high by springing on his tail, and his miscellaneous ability is headbutt charging.
- Lanky Kong - His Bananas, Banana Balloons, and Banana Coins are all blue. Lanky is by far the fastest Kong, and has good reach. However, his physical attacks are average. His ammo is grapes, his instrument is a trombone, his special barrel lets him move extremely quickly while handstanding, his pad lets him inflate himself and float called Baboon Balloon, and his miscellaneous ability is handstanding and walking on his hands.
- Tiny Kong - Her Bananas, Banana Balloons, and Banana Coins are all purple. Her physical attacks are quite weak when compared to the others, however, she can jump high, and is a little quicker. Her ammo is feathers, her instrument is a saxophone, her special barrel lets her shrink, her pad lets her teleport, and her miscellaneous ability is hovering/gliding by spinning her ponytails.
- Chunky Kong - His Bananas, Banana Balloons, and Banana Coins are all green. Chunky is more slow and has a smaller jump, however, he is the largest and most powerful Kong. His ammo is pineapples, his instrument is a triangle, he can turn invisible, become giant, and mega punch among other abilities.
- In each level there are Golden Bananas, which work as this game's Stars just like in Super Mario 64. Along with that, each Kong is obligated to five Golden Bananas for each world, with the exception of Hideout Helm. Before entering each level you can get a hint from Wrinkly Kong on how to find a Golden Banana with each Kong. There is a total of 201 Bananas.
- Not only that, each time that you find a Golden Banana, you get a hilarious "Ohh, Banana!" jingle.
- You only need 100 Golden bananas to reach the final level, so you can skip missions that you find frustrating.
- Along with Golden Bananas are Blueprints. Each Kong is assigned their color Blueprint, which are always gathered after the player defeats a Kasplat and can be given to Snide. When a Kong hands over a single piece of Blueprint to Snide they receive a Golden Banana in return. Furthermore, in the game's final area, Hideout Helm, every blueprint returned to Snide will increase the time limit to shut down the Blast-O-Matic by one minute (with a minimum time of 10 minutes and a possible maximum time, if the player returns all of the Blueprints to Snide, of 50 minutes).
- In each world there is one battle arena platform, and beating it gets the player a crown. Its usefulness is plentiful. First, the player must collect at least four of them to enter King K. Rool's secret room to retrieve the final key to K. Lumsy's cage. Second, they add to the final percentage score. Finally, the player must have at least one to open the multiplayer modes. There are ten crowns (two crowns on DK Isle, and one crown in each of the eight worlds).
- There are two coins that opens the door for the last key: The Rare and Nintendo coins.
- In order to get the Rare Coin, the player has to collect fifteen banana medals and go to Cranky's Lab. He will let the player play the Jetpac game for the Rare Coin. In order to get the coin, 5000 points must be earned. It is recommended that the player stays on the first stage and farms points from enemies and falling items, as it is harder to beat the later stages.
- In order to get the Nintendo Coin the player has to know the move Gorilla Grab. They need to go to the Donkey Kong Arcade in Frantic Factory and pull the lever to play it. After getting a Golden Banana after playing the first time, Squawks will appear and tell you to play again for 2 coins. The Nintendo Coin should replace Pauline. Once the arcade game is beaten again, the Nintendo Coin will be acquired. The idea of playing the 1981 Donkey Kong classic as well by needing to go through a few specific tasks is a unique idea as well.
- By collecting 75 bananas of one color by a playable Kong in each level that Kong will be rewarded a Banana Medal. There are a total of 40 in the game, 8 for each of the five Kong's, and 5 for each level. If the player collects 15 Banana Medals and visits Cranky's Lab, Cranky Kong will allow the player to play Jetpac, Rare's first game, on his computer.
- In this game, there are five colors of bananas - each color can only be collected by a specific Kong. Donkey Kong collects yellow bananas, Diddy collects red bananas, Lanky collects blue bananas, Tiny Kong collects purple bananas, and Chunky Kong collects green bananas. Bananas are needed to feed Scoff in order to allow Troff to open the door to the stage's boss.
- Returning from Donkey Kong Country 2 are the Banana Coins. In this game, Banana Coins are used to buy certain items and upgrades such as guns, new moves and abilities, and musical instruments. Just like the normal bananas, each of the five playable Kong's collect a different color for each of their coins.
- As stated earlier, the Banana Coins can be used to buy items from returning Kong characters from the previous games.
- Cranky Kong sells the Kong's potions, which gives them new power-ups.
- Funky Kong sells the Kong's their personalized shooters.
- Candy Kong sells the Kong's their instruments.
- Wrinkly Kong returns as a ghost since she died after the events of Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, to give the player tips and save the player's progress.
- The boss battles are unique and creative, as they are not only faced with different Kong's, but they also fit the theme of each world pretty well, and use unique tactics to take down each of the Kong's, such as Mad Jack trying to bounce on Tiny Kong and firing lasers at her, and Dogadon firing fireballs at Diddy and Chunky Kong, creating shockwaves (Chunky Kong only), and causing his stadium to shrink (Chunky Kong only).
- There are many different gameplay modes scattered throughout the game, such as riding minecarts, racing against other characters, and going through jetpack races.
- There are two different multiplayer games available, Monkey Smash and Battle Arena. Monkey Smash consists of a choice of three large tactical arenas where the players are in split-screen mode and must try to beat their opponents in different game types. The Battle Arena is a small single-screen arena where players again must beat the other player in the game mode, however, they must do this without falling off the arena as it appears as a large floating coin.
- Monkey Smash has six different modes available:
- Survival: The last player standing is the winner.
- Coin Hoard: The player with the most coins at the end of the time limit is the winner.
- Wins: The first player to reach a target number of monkey smashes wins.
- Time: The player with the most monkey smashes at the end of the time limit wins.
- Capture: The player holding the DK Coin at the end of the time limit is the winner.
- Capture Pad: Try to activate the pads while holding the DK Coin. The first player to activate all the pads wins. This mode is not available in the Battle Arena, due to the arena itself being exceptionally small and single-screen.
- Battle Arena has five different modes available:
- Wins: The first player to score the required amount of ring outs is the winner.
- Coin Hoard: The player with the most coins at the end of the time limit is the winner.
- Survival: The player who survives the longest wins.
- Capture: The player holding the DK coin at the end of the time limit is the winner.
- Time: The player with the most ring outs at the end of the time limit wins.
- Monkey Smash has six different modes available:
- Despite the game requiring the Expansion Pak, copies of the game mint in the box came bundled with it for the buyers' convenience, and unlike The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask that also requires it to play, this is the only N64 game to come bundled with it.
Blast-o-Matic Qualities
- Having to constantly switch between Kong's to complete objectives can get tedious because there isn't always a swap barrel nearby which causes TOO MUCH backtracking, and it makes the game feel like the Kong's are on a treasure hunt instead.
- The Sniper mode upgrade for your weapons causes the framerate to drop when shooting in first person mode. This makes timer based missions that require shooting extremely difficult because the slower framerate slows you down too much while the timer goes as normal. The only solution to this problem is to fire then immediately toggle off the aiming reticle so the framerate returns to normal until you need to fire again, which makes shooting accurately too difficult.
- Towards the end of the game the minigames begin to overstay their welcome because most are repeated multiple times and some are frustrating.
- While most of the levels and side-quests are fun, there are some that suffer due to backtracking, gimmicks, puzzles, or for just being frustrating.
- Gloomy Galleon: It's one of the largest levels in the game, along with a lot of backtracking if you're attempting to get everything in it. It doesn't help that in order to obtain bananas and reach Golden Bananas, you have to change the water level very frequently. Even for those that've played it before, it'll take at least a few hours to find everything.
- Fungi Forest: This one is loathed for its gimmick, which is switching between day and night in order to access areas or solve puzzles. In other words, it's a mechanic similar to the Tag Barrel, where the player is forced to constantly backtrack and satisfy a certain condition (the right Kong/time) before they can properly navigate through the level. Just to make it even more irritating, the two mechanics inevitably blend together; you have to switch the time of day at the clock, then you'll inevitably have to find a Tag Barrel and switch to the appropriate Kong.
- Creepy Castle: There are just too many rooms and caves to keep track of, making for a very confusing layout that's nearly impossible to memorize.
- Beaver Bother: It's a basic herding game where, as a Klaptrap, you have one minute to scare Gnawtys into a tiny hole in the center of a round stage. Problem is, the collision detection for the beavers vs. the hole is a little too good, and your Klaptrap can't simply push them in, also due to collision mechanics. The Gnawtys also have a slowish respawn, and frequently get stuck on the wall. There's one game that requires you to herd 12 Gnawtys in the hole, which is difficult, but then there are TWO versions that require you to herd 15.
- Any of the races that require you to collect a certain number of coins and still beat your opponent. In particular, the slides. It seems Rare didn't learn their lesson from Diddy Kong Racing.
- The mechanical fish in Gloomy Galleon. You have to play Diddy's guitar on top of the lighthouse, get to the other section, dive underwater, and get into the submarine and then the fun begins. You have to shoot out all three of the lights (hit them three times to turn them from red to white to busted) but the propeller and respawning Zingers can get in the way. The reason this is odd is because, as this video elaborates, the difficulty depends on whether you have Diddy’s Sniper Scope upgrade; if you do, the game lags, and as a result the propeller stops less times and gives you less opportunity to shoot, while the countdown timer gives you barely enough time if you do it exactly right. It's not only much tougher than Beaver Bother, but at least with Beaver Bother you can jump right in the banana barrel again, here you have to go back to the top of the lighthouse and do that all over again. However, if you turn off the aiming or do not have the upgrade, the mission is much easier.
- The DK arcade game side-quest in Frantic Factory would have been a fun inclusion and a decent challenge...were it not for the fact that not only is it mandatory to beat the game, you are only given one life to get through all four levels! And after you do it once, you then find out you have to do it again but on the second phase this time, meaning everything is now more difficult and you still only are given a single life. While a casual player is likely to earn a second life without doing any sort of score farming, that doesn't help terribly much, and the worst part is you are booted back to the stage every time you lose which means you have to pull the lever and watch the animation again every single time.
- Along with that, some of the bosses aren't very good.
- Mad Jack: The player is forced to twirl back and forth between platforms to avoid being smashed. Worst of all, he speeds up as the battle goes on, so the player need to land precisely on the edge of every platform or else they won't have enough time to reach the next one. This repeats for 10-15 times, and if they fall off, the pattern starts over. Also the camera is known to make a switcheroo mid-twirl. The secret is to stay in the middle four platforms, but this isn't even perfect because his panels can appear anywhere. Another trick is to jump off the edge and stay on the platform that raises you up until he jumps up again, though this will eventually require a difficult jump as he wises up and stays on the "corner."
- Pufftoss: To damage the boss, the player has to pilot a little motorboat through a series of checkpoints. The problem is, it handles about as well as the hovercraft in Diddy Kong Racing, and the checkpoints get smaller and smaller. The first phase is deceptively easy, but then it gets cruel. In the second phase the checkpoints are still as large as the first time where it's easy, but it becomes hard because they're all next to him and he spams the player with shockwaves that stun you. In the third phase, the stars vary from close to far as they will in the last three. His shockwaves are less frequent thankfully, and disappear in the fourth and are replaced by heat seeking missiles that do half a melon's worth of damage. Fifth stage of the battle near the end can be either almost impossible or easy, depending on if the player has enough health left to take one or two hits since the star reappears in the same location.
- Dogadon, the second time. The final "form" of this boss involves him pounding the battle platform into molten lava. It's unclear exactly how much HP he has in the sections where the player need to get big with Chunky and punch him. Chunky's stronger moves seem to be less effective than using his neutral B move over and over and over again, though repeatedly using his charge-up punch does the trick too.
- King Kut-Out: To be fair, he does become much easier once the player realizes that they need to shoot him when he's actually in front of them, not where the player predicts he will be. Once the player actually see him at any of the openings, they can shoot freely; once a shot is fired he stops moving, so if he was somewhere else you'll lose a Kong, but if he was right in front of you it's a guaranteed hit.
- While the final boss isn't a challenge with every Kong, he can be a nightmare with Lanky. The player has to hit switches with his arms, grab a barrel before it drops down and if it ends up happening, you have to do it over again, drop the barrel with the banana peel and pray that he's in the right area to slip on the banana peel. What makes this so tedious is that he can run right next to the banana peel and completely avoid it, while the player takes damage and have to do the whole thing all over again. But the player needs to do this four times, in just three minutes, meaning that every second counts as the player doesn't have any room to mess up, which is more than likely bound to happen and predicting where he'll run is very hard too in order to avoid taking damage from that. Also, since the camera automatically focuses on the boss, the player cannot see the buttons you're trying to hit. Worse yet, when the player aims for the buttons, they have to be really careful not to let Lanky start running or he'll do his moving attack instead of his punch. Lastly, if time runs out, the player starts another round with the same amount of hit points left when the round ended.
- Homing and regular ammunition are separate which is pointless and stupid. Fortunately, if you have the cheat for infinite ammo activated, you will only shoot homing ammo if you've purchased homing ammo from Funky's Store.
- The instruments trivialize all combat in this game. It's a screen-clearing attack that no Mook is able to resist, and its "ammo" can be easily restored by just finding Candy's headphones (which can be reused infinitely) or simply visiting Candy herself.
- The Beetle Races are really bad due to its awkward design and its sudden spike in difficulty. Fortunately, there's only two and both are optional.
- You need to obtain two special coins in order to unlock the door to collect the final key, those two being the Rare coin and the Nintendo coin, the Rare coin can be found in Jetpac, and the Nintendo coin can be found in the Donkey Kong arcade minigame, due to how the game never tells you that you need these and how the game never tells you exactly where to find them until you've unlocked Jetpac and when you've unlocked the arcade machine, which might require a few players to find them by looking both of the coins up.
- All you get for completing at 101% is an ending cutscene were the Kong's play out the game similar to that of a movie director, while it is kind of neat, it would have made more sense if they did that at the beginning of the game.
- Because you must collect almost everything in the game for 101%, including the the Banana Coins, Rare Coin, Nintendo Coin, Golden Bananas, Blueprints, and every Colored Banana, that gives you a total of 3,821 collectibles (Even more if you count the out of bounds collectables). This earned the game the world record for most collectibles in a game.[1]
- Permanently Missable Content: Hideout Helm's Banana Medals will disappear once you finish Hideout Helm which makes getting 101% completion impossible.
- If the player presses both the A and B Buttons at the same time to play Bonus Games at Snide's HQ after collecting all 40 Blueprints, an infamous glitch occurs which transports the player into the Debug Room that appears empty other than that it has four climbable pillars, a floating yellow Banana Balloon (belonging to Donkey Kong) that appears halfway through the floor and a stationary model of Donkey Kong that does nothing other than just blink. If the player attempts to escape, they will be respawned back into it — and on the other hand, the player cannot pause the game from there. The only way out is to simply reset the game or to switch the console's power off and back on.
- Some areas in the game are really dark and make it difficult to see what you're doing, no matter how high you change the brightness of your TV.
- Some of the DK Rap's lyrics are misleading.
- While Donkey Kong is one of the bigger Kong's which is true, he actually has the second slowest movement behind Chunky Kong despite what the lyrics claim.
- Despite showing Tiny Kong climbing up thick palm trees, only Chunky Kong can actually climb up thick palm trees instead, just in Hunky Chunky form.
- False Advertising: The game's box art and other promotional content show the entire cast riding on a Mine Cart. In the actual game, only Diddy Kong, Chunky Kong, and Donkey Kong ride on Mine Carts in their respective challenges on Jungle Japes, Fungi Forest, and Creepy Castle, respectively.
Trivia
- The theme for DK Isle was originally written for Banjo-Kazooie.
- Donkey Kong 64 managed to spawn multiple memes, such as "Ohhh, Banana!", "C'mon Cranky, take it to the Fridge!", the entire DK Rap, and "Chunky's dead".
- Some text in the game's coding and an unused cutscene suggests that this could've been compatible with Banjo-Tooie's scrapped Stop 'n' Swop feature.
- Fungi Forest was going to appear in Banjo-Kazooie as Fungus Forest, but the level was (among other levels) scrapped from that game due to time constraints.
- The game as a whole was initially planned for the 64DD add-on but repurposed for cartridge after that peripheral's failure.
- If one uses a GameShark to put the multiplayer-only character Krusha into the main game, he will be referred to by name by the NPCs, and will have a few animations that he never uses in multiplayer. Whether this means that he was intended to be usable in single-player mode at some point or not is unknown.
- Snide's original reason for betraying K. Rool was that he was always given menial chores to do, and was turned down when he asked to work on the Blast-O-Matic.
- Early in development, the game was intended to combine 2.5D and linear 3D segments, in what the development team later described as a mix of Yoshi's Story and Crash Bandicoot. Neither Nintendo nor the Rare higher-ups much liked this gameplay style, however, and so the development team was told to scrap everything they had done and remake the game along the lines of Banjo-Kazooie, Ironic seeing that Banjo-Kazooie was going in the same gameplay direction at an earlier point and the franchise went down that direction in Donkey Kong Country Returns and for Mario in Super Mario 3D Land.
- The game originally had Donkey Kong wielding a realistic shotgun. The sight of this weapon horrified Shigeru Miyamoto so much that he grabbed a piece of paper and drew what would be the famous coconut gun that Rare would implement in the final game right then and there.
- This game holds the Guinness World Record for "most collectable items in a platform videogame." However, Guinness is incorrect in claiming there are 3,821 items to collect, as going by what they consider collectable, there are actually 4,841 items.
- Donkey Kong 64 is the only Nintendo 64 Rareware game that was released on the Virtual Console. However, it's weird for a lot of people that Nintendo doesn't have the license of the Rareware properties, but Jetpac is also in this game.
- The irony that this game is rated E when the rap says "hell" in Chunky's verse, while Super Smash Bros. Melee, the game is rated T while the same verse says "heck".
Reception
Donkey Kong 64 was the subject of universal acclaim at release. Critics praised the game's length and large amount of content, the variety brought about by the game's tasks and different player characters, and the graphics, although multiple outlets expressed disappointment that Donkey Kong 64 did not feel like a massive technological leap over the developer's previous work on Banjo-Kazooie despite requiring the Expansion Pak accessory. A reoccurring criticism of the game was that Donkey Kong 64 was derivative of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie, and not a revolutionary step like the critics judged Donkey Kong Country to be.
In a 1999 interview, Shigeru Miyamoto said of Donkey Kong 64 that Rare "really perfected the art" of making 3D action games and that "I bet you that it turns out to be the absolute best 3D action game available on any hardware - even including Dreamcast.", although he ultimately judged that Donkey Kong 64 would not be a game that would attract new players to the Nintendo 64.
In later years, critical reception to Donkey Kong 64 has been more mixed. Modern retrospectives of the Donkey Kong series and reviews of the game's Wii U rerelease have criticized various aspects of Donkey Kong 64's design such as the excessive gating of collectables and switches by characters, the tedium of having to backtrack to switch characters through the Tag Barrel, and the low quality and frustrating nature of many of the Bonus Stages. Publications such as Electronic Gaming Monthly blamed Donkey Kong 64 as one of the factors in the decreasing fortunes of the 3D platformer genre. Grant Kirkhope was quoted as saying the game and fellow Rare platformer Banjo-Tooie were "too much", and the game's lead tester Gavin Price mocked its high amount of collectibles in an interview.
Links
- [Nintendo Wiki]
- [Mario Wiki]
- [Smash Wiki]
- [Wikipedia]
Videos
References
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