March 19, 2016
DKU Honourable Mentions

The DKU, or Donkey Kong Universe, is a concept that was invented by some dorky teenagers to describe a shared universe created by Rare starting with Donkey Kong Country. Diddy Kong Racing introduced Banjo and Conker, who had their own games which had their own spinoffs. This is the basis of the website DKVine, where I am a forum member and occasional contributor.

Despite having a wide variety of games to cover, there are still a lot that almost were included the description of the DKU but couldn’t be covered, according to the Rools. The community still appreciates these and so I created a thread discussing these “Honourable Mentions”.

The staff liked it, and reached out to incorporate it into the main site. After much time and effort spent writing and gathering screenshots on my part, and on their end much technical jiggery-pokery and behind the scenes obstacles, the overall games list and first chunk of content has finally been published.

I’m quite happy with how it turned out, so if you’re interested in the sort of video game enthusiasm I trade in please check it out here. More updates will come as I write them.

February 12, 2015
I am definitely no artist. But I wanted to be the third person to draw a fanart of Spuzzwick’s DKU Comix character Archduke Ferdisand. Behold my pathetic skills!
The design was from memory, except I forgot the moustache and the fact that his vest...

I am definitely no artist. But I wanted to be the third person to draw a fanart of Spuzzwick’s DKU Comix character Archduke Ferdisand. Behold my pathetic skills!

The design was from memory, except I forgot the moustache and the fact that his vest doesn’t have arms.

July 17, 2014
[Review] F-1 Race (GB)

Well, I didn’t play this game by choice. I’m (slowly) working on an article for DK Vine about all the games tangentially related to the DKU that the site doesn’t cover per se but could still be considered when thinking about that universe. You may remember my long-ago post about the Honourable Mentions thread I started. Site staff have approached me to expand it, which means lots of writing, and lots of screenshots.

To get a single screenshot of Arcade DK, I had to play through almost all this game. I recently posted the results of that, with screenshots showing the full animations of each cameo character, in GBC palettes. I’m proud of that, especially because the game was pretty hard.

Without savestates, I don’t know how I could have done it. I can imagine kids getting good at, especially with the multiplayer mode which is apparently not bad. But I’m a busy adult with lots of games to play, I can’t focus on this one. It was ok though, the game is well put together and nicely presented. With the hardware they were working with, it’s a competent enough racing game. The cameos by beloved characters sweetens the deal (and of course is the only reason I would ever consider playing it).

At home we had for our Super Nintendo a copy of “Nigel Mansell’s World Championship Racing”. I always found the game boring, the only fun to be had was getting up to speed then crashing into a barrier and there weren’t even any damage mechanics. Even the name meant nothing to me, as he’s popular in Britain but not really over here. It was more in depth than this though, with customisable parts and pit stops.

I didn’t really have fun playing F-1 Race. I’ve also now obsoleted its main draw by posting those screenshots, if I can give myself that much credit. The world of racing sims is pretty alien to me, so I don’t know if this is a good example, but it’s a Nintendo first-party title so it’s a quality product. I just know I’m never touching it again.

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