Donkey Kong Country 2′s Animal Buddies, low-res pixel style!
The Animal Buddies, or Animal Friends, are one of the coolest part of the DKC games. And DKC2 is the best game ever made I reckon, so here’s a bunch of my favourite gaming companions (including the GBA remake, which added an ostrich racing minigame). This picture was drawn as an entry to the DKVine “DKC2 Relay” community event, which I am participating in by streaming DKC2′s Gloomy Gulch this coming Friday at 1pm AEDT.
Rambi the Rhino, Rattly the Rattlesnake, Squitter the Spider, Squawks the Parrot, Expresso II the Ostrich, Squeaks/Flapper the Parrot, Enguarde the Swordfish, Glimmer the Angler Fish, Clapper the Seal
Forgive me, but I can’t be expected to talk rationally about DKC2, one of my favourite games of all time. Everything about it is so perfect to me. Playing it on the Wii U is such a treat; it still looks and sounds amazing, the sheer artistry shining through and blending with the tight gameplay to give one of the best experiences on this or any console. Anyway I like it.
Land 2 is also good, insofar as it tries to emulate DKC2. Of course, the music is less rich, although Kirkhope’s chippy renditions of the Wise soundtrack have their own appeal (worse is missing tracks, leading to repetition of tracks like Lockjaw’s Locker). You don’t get colourful environments and backgrounds and the detailed sprites (I realised that the DKC sprites remind me of claymation… random aside). The level designs and even item placement are also a noticeable step down.
DKC is very straightforward, and DKC3 is very ambitious with many tacked-on systems. DKC2 is a nice middle ground with rewarding collectibles, challenging gameplay, interesting gimmicks, and variety in level design. I think one of the more important things in its design is how the aesthetics work with the gameplay; for example, there’s sticky honey in the bee hives and the levels base their platforming around that.
Much of this carries through to Land 2, but scaled back for the Game Boy. While Land 2 is regarded as a port, in truth almost everything is ported over, except for the levels themselves, the layouts of which are brand new. This means that playing it is playing a brand new game, just sharing the exact same characters and world. The interesting part is seeing new platforming situations and enemy placements being done with the same basic concept. It should be noted that Land 2′s engine is greatly improved from Land 1; while jumps are still fairly high, the control and momentum feel much closer to the SNES.
Playing DKC2 was a breeze; my muscle memory practically plays it for me, including finding most of the secrets. DKL2, on the other hand is unfamiliar and thus feels more challenging; although I think that some of the setups are inherently more difficult, it could just be that I haven’t done them so many times that they’re trivial. The secrets in Land 2 though either are actually trivial to find or occasionally unfairly located, in which case I recommend Mario Wiki’s pages on each level to find them.
I absolutely recommend both of these games. DKL2 is not just a downgraded port, it’s new levels using (downgraded) DKC2 assets. But it’s fair to say it’s “overlooked” while DKC2 more than earns the title of “classic”. Good times.
Beta DKC2 title screen. Note the word Quest in gold inside the chest, instead of floating in the air with the other words where it belongs. This lets us see more of the background, including the ship. It’s also a higher quality render compared to the title screen itself, obviously. This image was taken from page 1 of the German official DKC2 comic, which can be read in English here:
A while ago I posted a scanlation I had completed with the help of Caramelman for translation:
http://miloscat.tumblr.com/post/39620620143
Well, that post is obsolete now. I got my hands on some way better scans (higher quality, larger, no watermark), and when I found them I decided to redo the whole release. There were a few other issues I corrected as well, with small typos, some additions to the credits page since I’d also got the original comic’s credits, and a much better speech bubble technique that resulted in better looking speech bubbles. This new blanking technique that I’d discovered also dramatically sped up the pace at which I could do this: doing it the original way all over again would have been a daunting task. As it is, I pretty much breezed through it.
So here, now I present to you, version 2 of the DKC2 comic! I won’t repeat all the background and details, check out my original post linked above for all that stuff. I’ll just link to the new one.
I want to try using Flickr instead of the new Google pictures thing. It seems very good so far. The pictures look a bit small, but by clicking on them to zoom, there’s then a button called View All Sizes and you can see the original. Also for those interested in quality or archiving or more convenient viewing, there’s the cbz file download. A cbz is easy to work with, it’s just a zip file renamed so you can easily extract the images or use comic reading applications (CDisplay is apparently good for Windows, I use Simple Comic on Mac).
This time, both sources use the highest quality pngs exported straight from my working files. Who knows if that is the right thing, they’re a little big but after seeing the text artifacts on my previous jpgs I don’t want to compromise on quality. Also Flickr scales them down anyway so I don’t think size is an issue if you don’t want it to be.
Well, I’m very excited that I was able to improve so much on this comic. If you’ve already read it, it’s basically the same but if you want to reuse it, cut out panels or whatever, it’s now much better for that. Also if you previously downloaded it, delete the old one and get this one. Trust me. Ok here’s some links:
So when Nintendo apparently decided to remove the DKC trilogy from the Wii Shop (WHYWHYWHY, they answered my emails with weaselly non-answers)(at least we got warning in this country, unlike USA), I bought them before they disappeared. Good decision. Especially for 2 and 3, the ones I actually owned on the SNES, my muscles practically remember the moves for every level. I have had very little trouble getting through anything so far. And it’s just so fun doing that, running through again like a boss.
Anyway I don’t know how much I can say about this game. It’s one of my favourites of all time, a common stance for many gamers. I can make lots of comparisons, how it’s so much better than DKC1 in lots of ways, how there is no comparison between it and the comparatively bland Super Mario World, how it and Yoshi’s Island took different branches that are both excellent.
I don’t need to say too much though. This game is so very special to me, and I mean ideally its quality will come through to anyone who picks it up, but my eyes are so heavily tinted towards it. I just don’t feel I can say much meaningful commentary, you know?
So as I played this game, it all came flooding back. I remembered where every secret was. I slightly misremembered the instant 75 Kremkoins cheat so had to look it up (I used it to open the Lost World so I didn’t have to get all the bonuses- hey I know I can do it!). The physics and mechanics just feel so right. My absolute familiarity with this game makes it feel like the epitome of videogames. Since I know it so well, it seems like the best because it feels right.
Some levels of course are still just hard. Bramble Blast, Screech’s Sprint and Animal Antics all spring to mind as ones I died many times on in this playthrough. When I did play this as a child, there were levels I’d avoid as they were hard or less fun (the two haunted forest levels also come to mind). On the other hand, Rattle Battle, Rickety Race, Castle Crush, these are all levels I loved to replay many times, so I know them the best. And yes, I got to Krocodile Kore both as a child and now.
In fact, I managed to beat the secret final boss on my first time, as Diddy, without getting hit! I am so proud of that. :D
So let’s talk about the non-mechanics things about this game that make it great. The atmosphere is utterly wonderful, each new environment is vibrant, iconic, and yet tense and moody. The music is, oh, so good. The character designs are full of personality and charm, and the mostly-consistent pirate theme of the Kremling Krew makes for a cohesive collective identity for your foes. Especially good are the returning enemies with updated costumes.
Also, the bosses are leaps and bounds ahead of the original (both designs and the battles themselves). Speaking of comparisons, I think Rare were brave to turn the tables and put Donkey Kong - THE Donkey Kong, mind you - as the kidnapped victim you need to rescue. This meant he was not playable, and not even seen until the end of the game. This apparently was the source of some controversy, at the time and later from idiots, especially at major gaming publications. I didn’t mind about that in the slightest (still don’t).
Diddy is just so much more relateable for a kid. Dixie too, although obviously she’s a girl and I’m a boy. But I loved both of them. For many years Diddy was my ultimate Video Game Hero (that’s the subplot of this game by the way, him proving himself).
Anyway it’s probably this game that started my love of the DKU, Nintendo, and even videogames in general. Pure platforming gold, with heart. I give it a flablillion bananas out of 10. Emulate it now! It’s less immoral than ever! Oh and the GBA remake is good too, although the overly bright colours, chirpified soundtrack and smaller screen make it a diminshed experience (and the new minigames are not good), but the extra collectibles added that extra element for me to make it worthwhile to play (the map screens are also new, but uglier)(oh and there’s one extra boss).
It’s finally done! I’ve been working on this comic for a long time now, on and off. You may recall I previously released some DKC2 gag manga pages, and single pages from Kirby and Star Fox comics. All those mini-projects were practice for this.
This comic has never been translated before, as far as I know. It appeared in a 1995 “Special Edition” of the German Club Nintendo magazine. Some of these were free giveaways, not sure about this one though. It contains humour, action, and some game tips and covers most of the adventure through each world, up to the top of K. Rool’s Keep. It was written by Marcus Menold, John D. Kraft, Thomas Görg, and Markus Pfitzner, and was illustrated by Work House Co. Ltd., Tokyo.
This comic is important to me as it was the last Donkey Kong-related western comic that wasn’t available in English. Although Donkey and Diddy do appear in other regular Club Nintendo comics, those are mostly cameo appearances in ensemble comics and not a retelling (as this is) or unique Kong adventure. Incidentally, many other Club Nintendo comics have been translated online. The other DK ones are on the DKVine forums, and Opentrain are about 1/3rd of the way through the regular print run comics. There’s also 3 on the Bomberman wiki.
But back to this release. This started when Caramelman from the DKVine forums offered to help me translate it, as he is German. Big thanks to him for translating the whole thing, each line, into English. He did a great job and even tried to adapt the idioms, etc. I have handled cleaning the scanned pages (mostly the speech bubbles), editing the script and typesetting. Thanks also to my wife Everbloom for helping out with the final editing stages and for painting the beautiful credits page art. Special thanks to my parents-in-law for some small German clarifications. Scans were sourced from nintendo-power.de, they’re not great scans in terms of fidelity but consistent and level. They have all of the special edition comics there in the original German.
I should also say that my editing philosophy was not strictly literal translations. If something was idiomatic or awkward in the German I changed it. Throughout I emphasised flow in English rather than 100% the same words as the original. I also added a few little lines for the sake of a joke that weren’t there originally. Hopefully I wasn’t too blatant about that. Having said that, several lines in the German rhymed like the characters were singing or chanting (for humour, I guess), I mostly tried to make the line rhyme in English too.
Ok, so that’s the comic. I recommend everyone take a look, if only because I spent so much effort on it. I’m very happy with how it turned out. It’s a fine reminder of a time when the world of games could be immersive but still fun and silly. It also has some admittedly very funny faces. I could say a lot about the value of these types of things in helping develop personalities for characters but I’d better just stop prattling and post the links.
A while ago I posted a scanlation I had completed with the help of Caramelman for translation:
