SNES: DKC2 – Diddy’s Kong Quest
November 13, 2008 - 9:43 am - Posted by Sean
Capitalizing on the huge success of the first Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo released this excellent sequel featuring new characters, new areas to explore, different types of barrels, and the ability to purchase helpful items.
It’s basically the same as the first game with more of everything. This edition stars Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong, a female whose long blonde hair looks like a big banana.
There are some new moves like the ability to climb ropes, and imaginative stage locations like a pirate ship and haunted amusement park. The graphics look slightly more detailed, if that’s even possible, and the explosions are noticeably better.
When Diddy completes a stage, he does a rapper impression that made me laugh out loud. If you enjoyed the original Donkey Kong Country, you’ll flip over this excellent follow-up.
I never really gave Donkey Kong Country 2 an entire shot due to my friends who are fans of this game and there opinions towards this. I did play some of the 1st one and loved the music in the original DKC. I still would not mind firing this title up and basking in what many liked about it.
I personally prefer the original Donkey Kong Country over this enjoyable sequel but I really do like the graphical improvements that RARE and Nintendo made on it. The Super Nintendo is still a very playable game system with a lot of decent titles still floating around.
I’ll be honest, I never really liked the graphics of the DKC games. I realize that they were really impressive for the time and that still screenshots don’t show the fluidity of the characters, but they all still look like nothing more than really nice claymation photographed at very low resolution to me.
The weird thing is, you look at what companies like Vanillaware are doing with sprites nowadays (like in Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire) and it blows the DKC series’s pre-rendered graphics out of the water. I suppose that just proves that given enough time everything comes full circle, though.
Yeah, that is one of the reasons I also never picked it up. but still I try and keep an open mind to see how this one plays, in terms of mechanics and game design. As much as I love Vanillaware’s production aesthetic and programing, I hate how there actual game design is decked out. Masamura Sword, Odin Sphere and even Princess Crown have that “the boss or enemy’s you see, off the bat” are like the entire stage. It’s ironic, drawn so so so well yet not really capitalizing on the depth and submersion, one could have with visual quality.