this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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Anyone tell that fool that CRTs were literally the only kind of TV that existed at the time
Admittedly, this game doesn't look particularly good on a CRT, either.
The hype about the visuals being "3D" was so weird and misinformed, and you could absolutely tell at the time.
It was pseudo-3D, I remember reading an article about how they made the sprites, but can't find that... wikipedia has
Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3D graphics
and they used SGI workstations to create the models and animations before compressing/converting them to 2D sprites
Rare invested their NES profit in Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) Challenge workstations with Alias rendering software to render 3D models. It was a significant risk, as each workstation cost £80,000.
(sharing bc I thought that's a crazy amount of money for 1992)
Meanwhile, Nintendo positioned this method to compete with Aladdin, which simply hired Walt Disney animators to do the sprites.
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I mean, other types of displays definitely existed.
In that era you had CRTs or Rear Projection TVs.
Rear Projection was bigger (55" 4:3) but often times was susceptible to burn-in and had a worse quality picture compared to a CRT
Before LCDs it was plasma which until the the late 2000s had more technical advantages over LCD Refresh rate, contrast. LCDs couldn't really match them until the 2010s (I never had a plasma display though so I don't fully understand plasma)
DLP was a thing and could get up to and over 80" while maintaining quality but DLP could not be wall mounted as they were quite big like rear projection screens
Before LCDs it was plasma which until the the late 2000s had more technical advantages over LCD Refresh rate, contrast. LCDs couldn't really match them until the 2010s
glances at Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD TV from 2007 currently in living room
still works really well
fucking 80 lbs
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Soundtrack is pretty good I guess?
Invalid opinion. Soundtrack is peak.
One of my favorite albums of all time is the soundtrack to globulous, a sphere based tetris clone for early iphones which has since been discontinued. I've never played it, never will, the soundtrack is a stand alone journey! I would put Globulous OST up there with Enigma MCMXC a.D.
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No pre-order bonus
No battle pass
not even skins
Video game disregarded.
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Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer.
I know this is rage bait, but DKC was fantastic. I remember when Blockbuster video held a contest where you could play a game, and if you had the best score in the entire store you could win free movie rentals for a year. And if you did good enough, you could qualify for a “The Wizard” style video game competition in California. I played the shit out of this game to practice for weeks. I learned all the spots where you could drop down a hole and instead of dying, you get some rewards. I went in to this blockbuster ready to get my family a year of free movie rentals and possibly a trip to California. The first hole I dropped down I died. They had a modified version of the game that didn’t have these secrets in it. I was entirely unprepared. I played my 3 turns and did pretty terrible. After we left the blockbuster my parents had to run into a store and I just waited in the car. I literally cried cause I was so disappointed in how bad I did.
What do you mean a modified version? What or the point of that if they are sending people to a contest after? Unfair.
There's a 1.2 version that fixed several bugs and glitches, including at least one warp
Edit: Actually, this completely checks out! https://www.mariowiki.com/Donkey_Kong_Country_Competition_Cartridge
The actual game consists of a few select levels from Donkey Kong Country with the addition of a point counter and a few minor tweaks to encourage scoring, the goal being to score as many points as possible. The tree house and banana cave at the start of Jungle Hijinxs have been disabled, and all of the animal tokens in the early levels have been replaced with Banana Bunches, making it impossible to reach the bonus round without the usage of a cheating device
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Just FYI. I lucked out and won my local Blockbuster stores version of this contest 🙂 Made it to the state finals, but was too young to compete and got kicked out. (I was 11.) But you better believe I rented a free movie every month. Sometimes got away with 2 haha 😂
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The sound design was amazing. I can still hear the boing from jumping on a tire. The success jingle echos still.
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monke
He's right you know
You fucking idiot
You absolute baffoon
Donkey Kong Country let 2nd player play at the same time as you
Yes, but... how likely do you think it is that Anon has even one friend?
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On the one hand, I didn't like it that much when it came out. It's not that I hated it or hated on it, just wasn't my thing. Mario games were far superior platforming experience all around, in my opinion.
Graphics for the time and platform were great. If you weren't there at the time and your frame of reference is modern (32-bit or later) graphics, of course they suck. But that's hardly fair or objective, when it comes to understanding why they were well-regarded AT THAT TIME.
But, I'll add this: A number of my friends' kids were introduced to 8-bit and 16-bit games first, in lieu of exposing them to toxic modern phone/tablet games. And the SNES Donkey Kong game(s) were/are amongst the games that the kids enjoyed and played the most. So, there's something to that, if you ask me.
The soundtrack is pretty good tho
My parents had a pretty good stereo, and I loved to just listen to the water level soundtrack.
I was just listening to this set sooner today. After hitting hard for an hour, she close with the water level soundtrack (58:30).
There we go again with that generational divide horseshit. Plenty of people from baby boomers to (probably) Gen Alpha have liked it, for various reasons. Stop trying to pin your ridicule on whatever generation you happen to dislike.
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It wasn't that bad, but it was absolutely overrated. Good soundtrack though.
Idk, I think the game was pretty sick
I have a solid memory of my roommate and I hitting Mine Cart Madness, and when I finally made it through we whooped and hollered so much the upstairs neighbor got mad and came down to shush us, at 4 PM on a Saturday
I always chose Diddy
I always feel like Diddy controls better than Donkey somehow (even though that's probably untrue), and the fact that he holds barrels in front means you can safely run forward into an enemy without getting hurt. That made all the difference to me as a kid.
Plus he wears a cool hat!
Diddy all day. His cartwheel felt so much snappier than Donkey's roll. I felt like I could jump farther with him.
I remember the reviews of the first re release for the GBA, they were similar to this one from 4chan.
Even 4chan can't deny how good the soundtrack is
I won't deny the technical achievement that this game was for Nintendo, and the coup it was for Rare (at the time). And i would never take pot-shots at anyone's joy of nostalgia around this game: Not all of my own favorite picks are winners. But I absolutely agree with this greentext. I recall getting this game new and just feeling underwhelmed by it.
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It looked pretty good for the time. Couldnt do real time 3D rendering and also be fast (StarFox was truly 3D; but iirc also ran at like 15fps and had to use a special chip in the cart to do that), so they compromised with sprites made from pre-rendered 3D models.
It also had great level design and memorable music.
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I played Donkey Kong Country on a Gameboy Colour (I had a SNES but never got the SNES version) and I thought it was one of the best games ever 😭 still remember tryin to get past that mine cart level lol
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