Episode 156 - The Three Genres - Donkey Kong 64

Oooh, banana. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for Simian
September, we’re going to be talking about Donkey Kong 64, the only
3D Donkey Kong collectathon platformer that’s fit to print. This
game certainly has a reputation, it’s almost infamous, so we
thought it would be interesting to see if that reputation is
warranted coming back to it after all this time. DK 64 is a
platformer, as mentioned, and one that is in the vein of Rare’s
prior N64 classic Banjo Kazooie. The difference, primarily, is that
in DK 64, the game centers around the fact that you have five
characters to play as, all with unique abilities, forcing you to
swap characters many times to complete objectives and collect all
the bananas, coins, golden bananas, etc. (seriously, there’s a lot
more). This is probably the most important aspect of its design,
because while it opens up a ton of space for design to create a
bunch of challenges in a relatively small space, it also forces the
player to constantly be mindful of who they’re playing as and what
they need to progress. This is cool, for sure, but it can also be
extremely annoying and, by design, time-consuming to have to
continually swap Kongs to do something as simple as grabbing coins
off the ground. It has a solid game underneath it all, though, so
depending on your tolerance for these annoyances, it can definitely
be worth going back to check out, if for no other reason than the
kickass soundtrack and the absurdity that gave this game its
cultural impact. We’re going to be talking about games
preservation, the signature style of Rare’s music team, and in a
stunning return to form, we determine what food DK 64 is most like.
Thank you for joining us again this week! We barely squeaked this
one out within Simian September proper, so I hope y’all don’t mind
our diminished output recently. We’ve been podcasting remotely for
a bit and are still working the kinks out, so give us some time and
things should get relatively back to normal. Did you have opinions
on DK 64 before you played it? Do you think the game holds up or
does it deserve its current status as a meme? Let us know down in
the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be
entering into October, which means horror games, an original
concept pioneered by us and no one else, so we’re going to be
kicking that off by talking about this year’s Dead Space remake. We
hope you’ll join us then…if you dare!