I’d like to talk about these two games at once because my backlog is filling up, and I thought a comparison of these was apt. Why?

Well, two of my favourite games growing up were Donkey Kong Country 2 and Yoshi’s Island. Those probably stand out to me the most before we got our 64. These two games, then, are related to these, being the prequel and a sequel/spin-off respectively. Also, I never really played them at the time or at all until recently. The other way I can talk about them together is that they are both ground-breaking platformers that tried new things in the market at the time, but had differing levels of success.

There is a quote from Miyamoto at the time about DKC: “The success of this game proves that people will put up with mediocre gameplay if the graphics are good.” I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is that DKC was being hyped up a lot for its graphics (even though the gameplay and other aspects were great too), and I think old Miyamoto was bitter that it was outselling his project, Yoshi’s Island. I think both games have beautiful visual styles and great gameplay, although they are very different on both counts. Both were, in a way, responses to Super Mario World but they took the 2D platformer concept in very different directions.

I can tell this is going to be long. Bear with me, folks. DKC’s sequel refined further everything that made it great, and is superior in most ways. Yoshi’s Island on the other hand had a sequel the next generation which pushed even further away from the basic SMW style, off the wacky deep end. This is my opinion, of course.

So I guess the main thing I took away from these playthroughs is that sometimes you have to try new things, and sometimes they don’t work. DKC had a few mechanics that are dropped completely in the sequel, as they were awkward or not useful. That just may be my DKC2 familiarity talking, but I feel that the designers learned a lot from DKC to make the second one a much better game. Segue to YS, which introduces a buttload of things done differently to YI, and ends up even more awkward than DKC in comparison to my childhood favourites.

They are opposite ends. That’s not to say either is bad, they just frustrate me a lot more, especially when I can see what they’ve done wrong.

To give a bit more detail, there’s a lot to love in DKC. The atmosphere, the personality, the controls feel good. My main complaints are with the hit detection, the pointless bonuses, and the badly flow-breaking animal bonus levels. These are minor though, and the reason I tend to overlook it is I prefer the sequels, the new heights they reached, how they played with the formula, plus they have more internal consistency with each other than either has with DKC1. Each installment has its own different atmosphere that gives them unique feelings, which is a great thing and more than you can say for the Mario series (ok, no more cheap potshots). The music and backgrounds play a big part in this.

YS has less to recommend it on face value. It’s a little slow and wonky, the controls are a little weird and there are also a few hit detection issues here. Also, unlike its predecessor YI the music is less memorable and tends to reuse arrangements of the main theme for most areas (in this way it resembles YI’s true DS sequel). I find this boring, personally. The aesthetic is both overly cute but also a very interesting crafty style, with newspaper, cardboard, felt, etc backgrounds like Little Big Planet but low-res.

Unlike the more precise YI, the platforming and egg-throwing is more forgiving or loose, although if you miss a jump I found it very hard to recover. The game is quite short but it is built for multiple playthroughs, with each of the 6 worlds having 4 possible levels with one being played each go through. This gives it a lot of variety, and each run will be different. The structure is also unique, mostly left-to-right or down-to-up but some more complex structures with branching paths and the level ends when you eat 30 fruit, not reach a certain point or anything.

Speaking of structure, I guess I didn’t structure this review so well but I saw some commonality there. Basically I regard both these games as lesser installments in series that I adore, and therefore worth playing on the strength of their brethren alone. But I was pleased with each when I actually got to playing them, and with YS I appreciate its radically different style. I can look past DKC’s faults to see the germ of the great series it spawned, but its more abstract features that carry through are fantastic. I just think it’s popularly overrated. YS on the other hand is slightly underrated.

The Yoshi and DK series as wholes are way too big to include any of here, so maybe one day they’ll get the proper MiloScat treatment. I’m glad I’ve now experienced these as they’re so important and influential to the overall series, DKC in its design and music and YS in its contribution of sound effects to all subsequent Yoshi material, and the aesthetic that was adapted in many Mario sports games. But now I want to play the actual games I grew up with, so I’m gonna do that. Toodles.