The History of Donkey Kong 64 | VideoGameDocs

[Music] [Music] okay here we go fin performance for you know the wor you can join in to put your hands together if you want to clap that's T your this monkey [Applause] rap Donkey Kong Nintendo's first big hit in the west and mamoto started as a lead designer in the games industry laid dormant for more than 10 years after one Smash Hit arcade game and two less well-received sequels that released from 1981 to 1983 while mamoto eventually shifted his Focus to the Mario Brothers series and The Legend of Zelda series thanks to Nintendo's focus on the NES and eventually SNES Nintendo still wanted to use their existing IP to make a big budget hit for the Super Nintendo by 1996 Donkey Kong had become a household name once again with the Donkey Kong Country series of games releasing three games over 3 years the Donkey Kong Country games pushed the limits of Graphics technology on the SNES and platforms themselves at the time of release with the emergence of the 3D era and their experience with the Nintendo 64 rare would release one more Home console Donkey Kong game before they were bought out by Microsoft in 2002 that game would be Donkey Kong 64 Donkey Kong 64 would be the first and only 3D platformer released in the Donkey Kong series with production taking nearly 3 years the game went through a myriad of changes I had the privilege of speaking with lead composer Grant Kirk hope and lead artist Mark Stevenson about what those changes look like and how the game shifted from a 2.5d successor to Donkey Kong Country into the 3D collectathon we all love to hate this is the history of Donkey Kong [Music] 64 rare opened its doors in 1985 birthed from the company ultimate play the game founded by Tim and Chris Stamper ultimate play the game had risen to fame using the ZX Spectrum to develop games such as jetpack night lore and saberwolf the company noticed that the ZX spectrum is really only popular in the UK and to establish itself in the larger video game Market they would need to look to other ways of play they then imported a famicom from Japan a more specialized machine compared to the ZX Spectrum which was a huge hit in Japan at the time and Nintendo was gearing up to release the console in North America and Europe under the name Nintendo Entertainment System the team imported the console and established rare as a a subdivision in 1985 with the main purpose to be to figure out how the famicom worked they ended up reverse engineering the machine to learn more about it and figure out how the games themselves ran while Nintendo claimed the famcom couldn't be reverse engineered ultimate play the game approached them with the information they received from their subsidiary rare showing several Tech demos to minoru arakawa the eventual president of Nintendo of America who at the time was a top executive for the company in Kyoto this impressive feat met Nintendo needed to respond big and they did providing an unlimited budget to the team allowing them to work on as many games as they wanted for the famicom the Stampers sold ultimate play the game to US Gold and exited the ZX Spectrum Market following the sale they instead set up a new studio through rare and set up rare Inc in Florida allowing them to maintain rare's relationship with us Publishers and maintain its operation outside of Europe while many maintain the Golden Age of rare as being the mid to late '90s era within the NES is life cycle rare would go on to produce more than 60 games alone for the system with several of those games being converted to the Game Boy some of their more well-known games include RC proam battle toads A Nightmare on Elm Street and many many more while rare did produce many games during this time according to stay pford rare was more focused on making as many games as possible none of over 60 games produced ended up being critical successes save for battle toads this resulted in rare being less Innovative and while the games were a good quality they weren't very special as the NES era began to wne Nintendo would announce and release the super famicom in 1990 and then the SNES in 1991 something that rare wasn't quite ready for with their high output of games from 1992 to 1994 rare underwent a few changes the main one was the dramatic decrease in output for games in 1993 alone rare released eight battle toads games with two of those being mostly developed by Arc system works the other two games they released were X the ball and snake battle and roll while they were developing and releasing several versions of battle toads rare would purchase silicon Graphics workstations with the intentions of creating 3D models and games for the in development Ultra 64 a company that had always prided itself as being a technological Powerhouse continued in that direction presenting a boxing demo to Nintendo using the SGI systems they had purchased while it was well known that the SNES was incapable of rendering the highquality 3D models the SGI systems could produce rare produced the models and then pre-rendered them as Sprites onto the cartridge like the reverse engineering of the famicom this impressed Nintendo so much that they decided to buy a 25% stake in rare that would gradually increase to 49% making rare one of Nintendo's Premier second party developers Nintendo viewed their partnership as so important they granted rare the license to create a new game using their 3D pre-rendered technology while it's up in the air whether it was Nintendo or the Stampers that asked for the Donkey Kong license Nintendo later gave them the opportunity to make a new game resulting in Donkey Kong Country while first shown off at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1994 many thought it was a 64-bit game prior to it being revealed that it was a Super Nintendo game Donkey Kong Country released later that year resulting in a staggering 500 ,000 units sold within a week setting the record for the fastest selling game at the time the game eventually reached 1 million copies sold in the US in its first 2 weeks on the market grossing around $15 million in its first holiday season Donkey Kong Country sold 6 million copies worldwide generating $400 million in Revenue smashing the estimated $140 million gross which was according to Peter M of Nintendo unprecedented Donkey Kong Country was a breakout hit for rare and Nintendo and they would continue this fantastic partnership through the snes's life cycle well into the Nintendo 64's life cycle as well rare would also continue using the Donkey Kong license creating Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3 for the SNES and the Donkey Kong Land series of games for the Game Boy with the Nintendo 64 releasing in Japan and North America in 1996 rare games would begin hitting the system in 1997 with blast core Gold N and the first Donkey Kong game Diddy Kong Racing a cart racing spin-off with the release of golden i7 in 97 and banjo kazui in '98 many were wondering what their next big game would be and many more were wondering when the next Donkey Kong game would come as [Music] well the year that Donkey Kong Country 3 would hit shelves for the Super Nintendo the Nintendo 64 would also hit the Market with it came the next Grand evolution in graphics but also the next evolution in Platformers Super Mario 64 a critical hit much like Super Mario World Super Mario 64 ended up changing the world of gaming while the PS1 was achieving a lot of success the tight platforming beautiful art Direction and wonderful level design of Mario 64 cemented that 3D was the way of the future and while Donkey Kong Country 3 was a success it began looking like a relic of its time compared to this new future that Nintendo had brought with the success of the Donkey Kong Country series it was obvious that rare would continue in that direction work began on a new Donkey Kong game almost immediately after Donkey Kong Country 3 wrapped up the team that worked on dkc3 continued to work together and started working on the next game unofficially titled Donkey Kong Country 4 Andrew Collard who served as the designer for Donkey Kong Country 3 Donkey Kong Land and was assistant designer on Donkey Kong Country 2 would lead the charge for this next game Donkey Kong Country 4 officially began development in 1996 starting off as a 2.5d platformer built for the Nintendo 64 while in this state the game spent about 18 months in active development starting in late 1996 and going until early to mid 1997 not much is known about the game other than its 2.5d nature according to Mark Stevenson the game's lead artist it was trying to follow the design structure of the original dkc games I guess you could reference something like Crash Bandicoot pick a level play the level from start to finish move on to the next level and repeat with no real need to visit or replay levels it was side on instead of into the screen like crash but you weren't fixed to the path like dkc you had some depth to the path so you could move in and out as well as progress sideways the team went with a fixed level and Viewpoint because they wanted to produce a game that had better graphics compared to some of the other Nintendo 64 games that were being shown at the time they were aiming for the success they had with Donkey Kong Country and its mind-blowing graphics and using a fixed Viewpoint helped achieve that goal and increase performance due to the limitations of the hardware and the fact that realtime 3D was in its infancy it didn't quite work out the main issue during development was that it was taking an enormous amount of time to create these point A to point B levels that would have little to no replay value like mentioned men previously I had the chance to speak with a few of the original developers of Donkey Kong 64 including Grant kir hope and Mark Stevenson for Donkey Kong 64 Mark Stevenson would serve as the lead artist and Grant Kirk hope would serve as the composer for the game as Donkey Kong was being converted into a 2.5d game one of rare's biggest titles was also being developed at the same time banjo kazui banjo also started development initially as a 2.5d game after starting production as project dream for the SNES when Mario 64 released it had a broad impact on the industry causing project dream to swap to 3D and according to Stevenson I remember being blown away by Mario at the time I think I was still working on dkc3 when I first saw Mario and it just made me long to work on the N64 as soon as possible I don't think Mario directly affected DK 64's plans I think that was more of a trickle down from the banjo team and their experiences as banjo started life very differently to how it ended up of course project dream later transitioned to the 3D collectathon known as banjo gazi while Donkey Kong 64 started as a 2.5d design it would follow banjo's footsteps moving to a new open level Concept in 1997 with this change in Direction members of the team would be shuffled around as well George Andreas ended up replacing Andrew Collard as game director due to his experience with banjo's development as assistant game design Mark Stevenson stayed on as lead artist and Mark Wilson was replaced by Richard Wilson as lead programmer due to Richard having more experience with the N64 at this point Grant kirkop served as composer replacing Evelyn novakovic who would still do the sound effects shagaru mamoto would oversee the project as producer and other members of Nintendo like Howard Lincoln and satoro iata would make appearances making sure the game ended up a product that Nintendo would be proud of there are some sources that state that after Donkey Kong Country 3 prior to the transition to a 3D Donkey Kong game Greg Maes who designed the first two Donkey Kong Country games led the charge to make a new Donkey Kong game for the Nintendo 64 however according to Mark and Grant that's not true males is listed in the support section of Donkey Kong 64 credits and Andreas is within the development team but according to some like retro Gamer magazine males is the one that spearheaded the game itself according to Stevenson Greg was never director on the game he did help out towards the end of development and designed the final krule boss fight in the boxing ring and according to Grant and then and then Greg was was on dream and that went on for a while until it turned to banjo so Greg didn't have anything to do with dk64 so that's not correct while it was heavily rumored to be in development for the Nintendo 64 disc drive Grant and Mark confirmed that that was a rumor as well so banjo was dream was and banjo was but I don't think DK C4 was I felt like I died to death of course the Nintendo 64 itself was delayed from its original orig 1995 release and the 64dd would also see numerous delays with the add-on never being released outside of Japan so it's possible that by the time that Donkey Kong Country 4 team started working on a 2.5d game they decided they didn't need the advantages of the 64 DD brought an early design pitch for the game lists it as Donkey Kong World detailing exactly what the game is about this document appears to have been once development was rebooted to a 3D title it specifically notes how the player will quote runaround a 3D landscape allaha Mario and banjo according to Stevenson going 3D was a whole different ball game because the technology at that point was in its infancy which comparing the pre-rendered detail of the Donkey Kong Country games to the fully rendered and textured 3D of Donkey Kong 64 becomes very evident from an art perspective you couldn't achieve anything visually comparable to the Donkey Kong Country games it was an incredible challenge to produce 3D graphics and building 3D models was really hard work they only had a few hundred polygons but it was tough using the tools we had to manipulate them Mark was able to work with nurbs while creating the models for the country games and often used procedural shaders admitting you didn't have to care how expensive a model was things were very different from the Nintendo 64 as it was all realtime 3D meaning Mark and the team had to work with polygons and different processes for texture mapping not to mention the limited texture size is the N64 allow marker called Plus for the majority of the team this is their first realtime 3D game a lot of us were learning on the job while basically starting from scratch with a new system that had to use polygons the animation of Donkey Kong and his crew ended up being a bit easier with 3D the animations are just data used to drive the joints in the models so are much less memory heavy so this opened up the scope to do considerably more animation for character than was previously possible even even to the point where this was the first project I worked on where we employed people to purely animate the core development team for Donkey Kong 64 consisted of 16 members George Andreas Simon kraic Evelyn novakovic Matthew Grover Brendan gun Robert Harrison Steve horseall Grant Kirk hope Chris Peele Neil price Mark Stevenson Carl Tilly Richard vaer Andrew Wilson Richard Wilson and Chris Woods of these team members I of course had the chance to speak with Mark Stevenson and Grant kir hope Mark worked at rare for about 20 years working on all three Donkey Kong Country games Cameo elements of power and was lead artist for Donkey Kong 64 Grant was a composer at rare for about 13 years working on Donkey Kong Land 2 Banjo Kazooie and Tui gold 97 and was the main composer for Donkey Kong 64 according to director George Andreas Donkey Kong 64 was hugely influenced by banjo Andreas recalls one of the first things Tim Stamper rare's co-founder told told me was make sure there's a lot to collect by the end of development Donkey Kong 64 would have an eye watering 3,821 collectibles in total looking back on his experience Andreas noted that he probably should have reigned himself in a little and made changes to the color-coded banana system a design move that would frustrate many players some of the main things that Andreas would work on to differentiate the game from banjo other than having more Collectibles was its cast of characters Andreas noted in a 2019 interview with Games Radar that quote having a cast of five characters which you could play and swap between gave it a slightly different Edge and it also created deeper level design as playing with each of the characters abilities allowed the designers to really stretch their legs the expectation was that once you enter a new area you'd Traverse it with one character and see a different puzzle element you'd think oh what would happen if Chunky Kong was here and it allowed the player to predict what puzzles they'd have to face with different characters and in theory keep the game fresh in all Donkey Kong 64 would have the player take control of five Kongs donkey Diddy the two returners and then tiny chunky and lanky would make their debut while Tim Stamper would push Andreas to make the game bigger than banjo other team members like Grant Kirk hope also wanted to differentiate the game as much as possible having the mindset of quote just try to make it not banjo yeah that I was felt like a dk64 was slightly darker than kazui and Tui at least that's the way I tried to do it and I tried to steer away from the uh that kind of banjo quirky trone thing for DK so I definitely wanted him I mean you know it's hard that's how how was in my mind whether or not in signs like that I don't know but the way I thought about it that's that's how I thought about it Kirk hope inspired of course by David weis's country soundtracks also Drew inspiration from Danny Elfman I I just feel like I pulled it at my own head MH um I did a lot of listening to Dan and stuff when doing B Kazi I love Dan back in the day I still know I loved him you know just kind of discovered him back then he the first Batman soundtra was just thought that was amazing so and Beetle Juice and things like that so I got a lot of that inspiration into banjo but when it came to DK I justel I just feel like it's there was nothing I listened to particularly that I would say would be a good thing to pin the DK soundtrack on it so I feel like it just I was just trying to make it not bany that's what that that's probably the biggest takeway i' take from that soundtrack as was convinc I needed to make it not banjo at all I tried you know I feel it still sounds like me so I do feel like you know we all have little composer signature sounds or signature cords if we like to use it so it just sound like you no matter what you even though you try not to he also holds That Donkey Kong 64 is darker than banjo which was his first lead composer spot at rare he steered away from the trone sound he went with in Banjo and only got descriptions of the levels for Donkey Kong 64 as he began composing in fact he worked on three games in total while working on Donkey Kong 64 which included gold 97 and banjo Tui his work was mainly split between the three just coming into the office and working on whatever he needed to work on like that I went I went from one to the next I right PD right for d64 right for banjo Tui do some sound effects and you know just get going round and round and until it was done but I think I feel like chei came out so I think D came up first TW came out next and PD came out next I think I might got that wrong but that's what feels like to me I feel like PD was after banjo Tui one interesting thing to note is that rare's team were split up at the office when rare was initially founded out of a barn they had kept the teams somewhat separate mainly to ensure they were just focused on their own game rather than checking out what other teams were doing when they moved to their new office during development the Donkey Kong 64 team was given their own space and while Grant Kirk Hope was a part of the development team he was given a different space initially sitting with the banjo team but was one of the the few that was allowed to jump between the various projects He was working on one of the biggest challenges for the development team was working with the Nintendo 64 itself of course the 64 was known as a developers nightmare due to its requirement of low-level programming to squeeze performance out of it this concept wasn't new to the rare team as they had always brought the best and were generally ahead of the curve with technological innovations maybe but I feel like you know rare was a prestigious company right so it attracted a lot of the good the best talent you know it's often the way it goes right rare was get we super well known after after the dkc games you know banjo came out in the N64 did really well you know I feel like you know it attracts people while I'm going work there because it's like oh they do well it's they're making money it's going to work there so you get the best don't you but also I feel like program isn't rare when I got there there wasn't so much there weren't so much colleag trained there were guys that been sat in the bedroom right assembl for spectrums right you know in you know making writing games in the in the in the free time so mhm it was very the code was like not the prettiest of code but it was very efficient and sometimes when people when people get trained at colleges universities they get to this kind of really perfect code but it's not very quick it's cumbersome so I think that you know a lot of that stuff back in those days was a bit like fly by the C pant you know you didn't really know what was going on half the time and you did your best you know so if it worked who cares if it was perfectly executed as long as it worked and it was quick and it worked fast no one cared right so I do feel like was a was a wild west you know in some respects back then you know so um I think that um we all just the musically wise once you learn that that process of get the sample put in you just did it over and over again right MH you know and once you once you Lear music software for sound effects this thing you used to cut the effects up and manipulate them and all the rest of it you know and all that when you once you got lot stuff under your belt and you knew it right yeah um there was no there's nothing more to learn that was it got it just kind of a and repeat process once you got there yeah I mean you know at the end of the day rightly music is the most important thing so once you've got the samples in there and you you know have to do it you have to write it right that's the hard part Market calls their challenge of trying to capture the graphical wow that the country games had and was one of their massive selling points we were basically building the game engine at the same time as making the game some stuff carried over from previous Nintendo 64 games developed elsewhere in the company but lots of new stuff had to be written as well especially when the ram pack came into the equation as we were tasked with showing off the value that's right according to Mark the ram pack was brought into development not specifically to fix a game-breaking glitch but to make it a selling point it's been heavily rumored that the expansion pack was added to Donkey Kong 64 late in development due to a game-breaking bug that needed the expanded Ram to fix it but according to a 2019 interview with Stevenson that story is a quote myth late in development there was a game breaking bug that was later fixed but that only affected a specific revision of the Nintendo 64 console the expansion pack would end up being used to create the real-time lighting system an effect that would allow the lights to draw the Rays during its first pass then just play it as an animation instead of continuously updating while working with the Nintendo 64 was difficult compared to the Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems assembl language the Nintendo 64 due to having realtime 3D was a lot more math heavy meaning the engineering team also had to learn new things when trying to build the game while the game probably did use some code from the banjo kazui engine it seems that most of it is its own engine entirely some of these engine differences are evident in Donkey Kong 64's use of different playable characters larger boss battles and cinematic set pieces as development continued Nintendo was always lurking in the background ensuring everything went according to plan the only big mishap that happened while creating Donkey Kong 64 is is the coconut gun incident The Story Goes that George Andreas was showing Mr mamoto Mr iata and Howard Lincoln a build of the game that included the infamous DK WAP after booting into the game Andreas swung on some Vines collected bananas the whole appeal of dony Kong 64 as Andrea States they were beginning to really smile and then I pressed the button to pull out the gun it wasn't a textured gun that you might expect but a realistic shotgun with bullets flying out and with horrifying sound effects I'm shooting beavers turn to my side and see this look of horror on Moto's face then he smiled and taking some paper and a pencil drew a coconut gun in front of us thus Theon that fired in spurts was born an interesting note about this anecdote Grant and Mark both noted that in terms of feedback whether it be extremely positive or negative the higher ups at rare always made the point to Shield the development teams from it I feel like rare did a Tim and Chris and a guy called Joel hulberg who was the was rare Miami which just a guy own an arcade in in um in Miami they didn't have any devel development there um but he but I think Chris and Tim got in with the Nintendo in the very first place through Joel because Joel knew them well because he earned a big arcade right um and so Tim and Joel and Chris stamp CH Tim Chris Stamper Joel hurg used to be a very effective barrier between Nintendo and the team so no matter what Nintendo shouted about we never about it speaking on the 2.5d version of the game and whether Nintendo provided feedback on it marker called I really couldn't say I'm not even aware if they saw this version but feedback like that would have only gone to the senior leadership team of the company mark would even state that the decision to change from a 2.5d game to a 3D game seemed to be purely an internal decision at rare though he couldn't say for sure Nintendo didn't pressure for a 3D game considering Nintendo would release relas Yoshi story in 1997 a sidescrolling platformer that allowed the player to go down different paths like the described 2.5d Donkey Kong game it's possible Nintendo didn't have a specific preference after switching from a 2.5d platformer to a more open world 3D platformer like its cousin banjo kazui Donkey Kong 64 would start to be revealed to the public ahead of its 1999 release date the king of Kongs is in the house with the next jumping jungle generation it's Donkey Kong 64 for Nintendo 64 the crowning achievement of maniacal Monkey [Music] Shines while the game wouldn't be officially unveiled until 1999 the earliest Rumblings from the American Games press came from IGN writing an article in July of 1997 claiming that Donkey Kong was headed to the Nintendo 64 disc drive there was no official confirmation from Nintendo on this and IGN speculated it would release sometime during the holiday season of 1998 later on in Nintendo Power number 104 Dan oen would also Echo some of IGN's comments informing readers that Ultra Donkey Kong was starting to appear in Japanese games list but would also State later in the Q&A that he couldn't say for sure that his 64-bit version of Donkey Kong was in the works then come January 1999 in Nintendo Power number 116 for power sub subcribers only a brand new look into Donkey Kong 64 was shown off with a screenshot of Diddy Kong in a minecart fighting a Kremlin according to the preview the game to be published by Nintendo will feature Diddy and Donkey spectacular lighting 3D polygonal environments a wide variety of levels full of cremlings and all the creative quirky and humorous touches that have earned rare such a claim while no release date was provided the screenshot included in the magazine would show up on rare's website on April 28th with a few other screenshots being released including one with Chunky Kong and Donkey Kong himself in Jungle Japes by May of 1999 E3 had begun and with it came huge announcements such as Nintendo developing their next Home console titled dolphin along with that Nintendo would unveil a full look at Donkey Kong 64 while press release footage would be sent out on the show floor itself Nintendo had a demo available of the game in this footage we can see the oddly terrifying Donkey Kong 64 statue with Donkey Kong and what looks like tiny Kong Diddy riding a mine cart and then the armadillo boss battle with Donkey Kong showing off some of the fancy lighting rare had been cooking up on the show floor players had a lot of different choices on what they could play some of which included Jungle Japes simply named Jungle Minecart 1 and Minecart 2 which were early builds of the minecart levels in Jungle Japes and funi Forest temper Temple which was Diddy Kong's section in the angry Aztec level boss one and Boss 2 being Army Dow and dogadon 2 respectively and many more one interesting thing to note is that within this E3 version of the game Donkey Kong and his pal still had the realistically modeled guns meaning these swap to Coconut guns must have come later in development Donkey Kong 64 would win best platformer via the critic's Choice Awards and many were expecting the game to be a huge seller IGN would go on to state that Donkey Kong 64 was a quote crowning achievement in terms of the gra graphics and sound on the 64 itself prior to launch Donkey Kong 64 would get one more showing at Nintendo's space World 1999 in August however this would end up being the same E3 demo that was used a few months prior according to IGN Donkey Kong 64 still had an e399 startup screen and overall they did enjoy getting to play the demo again in the August issue of electronic gaming monthly a two-page feature on Donkey Kong 64 was ran claiming it was about 60% complete they mentioned a multiplayer Race mode with boats and Slot Cars both would not make it until the final game to further promote the game kiosk demos of donkey young 64 began appearing in Toys R Us across stores in the united states allowing players to take a peak and play a version of the game made after E3 Nintendo power would also send out a VHS to subscribers of the magazine featuring gameplay footage of donkey young 64 and another upcoming rare game jetforce Gemini as marketing continued for the game mamoto himself would confirm that by mid October the game had gone gold and was indeed ready for release Nintendo would continue pushing the game as its Premier holiday season release with Nintendo spending an estimated $22 million on its marketing Nintendo would promote the game in theaters offering a 60-second ad for movie goers Billboards and of course the classic print and radio ads they would even promote and release a new version of the Nintendo 64 that would be titled jungle green and would come bundled with the game they would ALS also go on tour with the Beast is back promotion in North America which included a tour bus traveling across the country filled with Nintendo games for consumers to play as the holiday season came Nintendo would project sales of 2.5 million copies of donkey young 64 within 1 year and grew so confident that they would eventually push that number up to 4 million copies a 1.5 million increase over their previous Blockbuster game The Legend of Zelda acarine of time Nintendo would even move the release date of Mario Party 2 Perfect Dark and Pokemon Stadium into the next year to avoid competition with themselves with the marketing campaigns ramping up the release of donkey gong 64 would come and it was finally time to see if the world would truly go bananas for the Apes latest [Music] Adventure on November 22nd 1999 Donkey Kong 64 would hit North American store shelves while Europe and Japan would have to wait a few weeks with their versions releasing on December 6th and December 10th respectively the North American reception started to pour in the main gameplay of Donkey Kong 64 consists of platforming mine caring and mini gaming your way through DK Isle and it's many levels collecting bananas golden bananas banana medals blueprints boss keys and more the story is that King krule is back and this time him and his trembling comrades have kidnapped Donkey Kong's friends and are preparing the blast omatic to destroy DK Isle you the player take control of the great ape himself off to rescue his friends who then become playable characters and stop krule from destroying your home as DK begins his Adventure he meets k lumsy a giant kremling who refused to help K rule in his quest for power K lumsy tasks you with collecting the eight boss keys to help free him Donkey Kong while recovering his precious gold golden bananas ends up freeing and enlisting the help of Diddy Kong DK's best friend and sidekick since Donkey Kong Country lanky Kong a goofball orangutan who resembles a clown tiny Kong Dixie Kong's little sister who's known to shrink and Chunky Kong the strongest of them all while also being gentle and a bit cowardly each Kong gets their own abilities throughout the game including guns that shoot fruits or feathers instruments to play and more specific character ones like picking up a boulder flying around on a jetpack becoming tiny and inflating like a balloon the player uses the tag barrels littered throughout the world to switch Kongs to whichever you fancy at the moment most of the tag barrels also have spots on the ground that let you teleport to certain parts of the level the levels themselves are accessed via DK Isle and players must use a boss key and have a certain number of golden bananas to access the next level to complete the level players must then meet up with trough and scoff and will need to feed scoff with a certain number of bananas to open the boss level door each boss focuses on each Kong's unique ability and must be defeated by each specific Kong the Kongs can also enlist the help of rambi and engard familiar faces from Donkey Kong Country but only in specific levels the game consists of eight main levels Jungle Japes angry Aztec Frantic Factory gloomy gallion fungi Forest Crystal Caves creepy castle and Hideout Helm the primary Collectibles throughout the game are golden bananas the main collectible basically stars or Jiggies bananas which are color-coded per Kong and are used to feed scoff banana Bunch coins which allow the Kongs to purchase services such as weapons upgrades and instruments five banana coins a rare version of the banana Bunch coin that rewards five coins per Kong banana Metals which are given by collecting 75 bananas of each Kong's color boss Keys which are rewarded after defeating the boss blueprints which delays the blasto Matic from firing in the final level battle crowns which are given after completing battle arena pads and players must collect four of them to initiate the final boss and finally the two coins the rare rare coin and the Nintendo coin each coin is obtained by playing a classic game from each company's history for the rare rare coin players must earn 5,000 points playing jet pack in Cranky's lab and for the Nintendo coin players must beat the original Donkey Kong arcade game twice both of these coins are also required to obtain the final boss key and defeat KR R in total this leaves players with the ability to collect 3,821 items if they feel compelled to however the minimum requirements are 1,680 bananas 100 golden bananas eight boss keys at least one blueprint 15 banana medals four battle crowns the Nintendo coin and the rare rare coin outside of the single player mode the game also features multiplayer with players able to Duke it out in Monkey smash an open arena Deathmatch or battle arena a smaller platform mode where players must knock each other off in Monkey smash you have such games as survival coin horde wins Time Capture and capture pad and with battle arena you have wins coin horde survival capture and time with the single player mode alone tasking players to collect over 1,500 items just to even attempt the final boss it's understandable why reviewers and players looking back on Donkey Kong 64 would say it may have been too big for its own Bridges finally here performance for you if you know the words you can one of the most infamous parts of Donkey Kong 64 is of course the DK rap this wouldn't be a comprehensive history of Donkey Kong 64 if we didn't mention it it's worth noting that as the game hits door shelves and players shove the game into their console this would be the first impression the DK rap was initially brought up by the gamees director George Andreas taking inspiration from the popular '90s band Run DMC the song itself would be composed by Kirk hope and the full intention was for it to be a joke rap to introduce the characters the lyrics were performed and written by Andreas himself with Chris Sutherland helping out as well the chorus comprised of other members at rare including Greg and Steve Maes Ed Brian and Chris Peele the background tune for each Kong features the instruments that the characters possess a trombone for lanky a guitar for Diddy a triangle for junkie bong go for DK and a saxophone for tiny when the DK Rap Made its debut the joke part of the song was lost on many reviewers players and parents most people didn't like the rap when it first came out and the song was never localized or subtitled for the Japanese release shasat etoy designer on the Mother series ended up providing a translation for Japanese players on his personal website when the game released while the DK rap was not received well when it first released Kirk hope noted in our interview that of course kids that grew up with with the song found it funny and endearing the younger kids saw it for what it was but the older kids you know you get your teenagers they're like well I like rap music for real and this isn't it's not the Beasty Boys to me you know it don't sound like that I totally doesn't you know so that's that's I guess in that generation it didn't fa it didn't fall so well but in the young Generations everyone thought was hilarious so as a child my brother and I including our friends would sing along fondly whenever it came up in game or in the wonderful Smash Brothers Melee composition as dk64 a the DK rap would become a significant part of internet meme culture being remixed referen and growing in popularity since Donkey Kong 64's 1999 release the song would even make an appearance in illuminations the Super Mario Bros [Applause] movie though Kirk hope would go uncredited with the movie only crediting Donkey Kong [Applause] [Music] 64 holding a 90 on Metacritic Donkey Kong 64 released with near Universal Acclaim from reviewers of the time and won awards from Nintendo Power including Game of the Year added as an editor's Choice by Game Pro and was nominated for Game of the Year and console Game of the Year by aias interactive achievement awards now known as dice the game was praised for how large and ambitious it was and how the overall gameplay felt but unfortunately reviewers couldn't shake the feeling that it was a bit too much like banjo kazui in fact for reviewers of the game it became very commonplace to compare the two and to be fair it's understandable both are 3D Platformers made by Rare both featured the collectathon gameplay Loop albeit with quite a bit more content this time for Donkey Kong and the puzzle design was fairly similar the biggest thing that reviewers praised were the visuals again holding to the fact that it was one of the Nintendo 64's best looking games though some reviewers would disagree with this including IGN who stated that dk64 actually didn't look as pretty as banjo though its lighting effects and richer textures made a difference later on IGN would also praise the particle effects that were introduced and while they did like the dynamic lighting they felt as though it was a bit overused Nintendo 64 Magazine's criticism Drew from the fact that these enhanced effects were primarily decoration though some would play a role in Puzzles based on Illuminating paths slow down and Poppin were still an issue for the game even with the expansion pack being bundled in though this is an N64 game we're talking about so it's a bit expected the main cast of donkey Diddy lanky chunky and Tiny were praised for their unique personalities animations and classic rare humor the gameplay variety that these Kongs helped deliver would be a shining point of the game but it would also lead to one of the more controversial aspects of Donkey Kong 64 while some reviewers did praise the game for how big it was many would end up end up getting lost in the world game fan would write that quote the adventure found within is mastodonic and the game would get criticized for the backtracking and the large emphasis on collecting items the fact that players would have to play some levels multiple times with each Kong just to get certain items while helping create variety also caused burnout for some players though some like Gamespot would note that this would be a good thing for replay value the mini games included would also be met with praise helping to break up the pacing and it would be a quote welcome diversion which added to the fun of an already massive Adventure Cincinnati Inquirer while being showered with praise the game would become a big hit for Nintendo managing to reach above that 4 million Mark that they had estimated previously by hitting over 5 million units by the end of its Run the game would end up being Nintendo's primary weapon against the newly released Dreamcast for the holiday season and the game itself quickly became a best [Music] seller in the time after Donkey Kong 64 release rare would make a few more games for the Nintendo 64 such as perfect dark conquers bad fde and banjo tuille and they would even release Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube but the company would be purchased by Microsoft in 2002 ending the relationship that they and Nintendo once had as Donkey Kong's most prominent developer other than mamoto himself Donkey Kong would go on to have a bit of an identity crisis with donkey konga and Donkey konga 2 releasing 5 years later after Donkey Kong 64 these games were developed by Namco and were Rhythm games featuring the use of the DK Bongos Donkey Kong junglebeat would also release in 2004 2005 for North America and pal regions and would be developed by Nintendo EAD also featuring The DK bongos Jungle Beat was more in line with the country games considering it was a 2d platformer it would take another 5 years for Donkey Kong to get his own game with Donkey Kong Country Returns releasing and being developed by Retro Studios Donkey Kong Country Returns and its sequel Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze are hailed as some of the best 2D Platformers around with Tropical Freeze getting a ton of Praise since its release in 2014 while Donkey Kong may have had a few games since Donkey Kong 64 Donkey Kong 64 would end up being the first and last 3D platformer for the series in fact other than Super Mario Sunshine and the Galaxy games releasing later 3D Platformers began to fall from the spotlight of course we did have a few PlayStation offerings like Jack and Daxter or Sly Cooper but these are more platforming games not necessarily collectons like Donkey Kong 64 banjo kazui conquer bad Fay and to some extent the 3D Mario games in the days of the internet Donkey Kong 64 has gained a bit of notoriety mainly due to its sizable number of Collectibles retrospective reviews of the game have gone up in recent times and the main criticism too many Collectibles many think that it's simply excessive the number of things you have to grab and the idea of collecting a 100 bananas as each Kong totaling 500 bananas per level can become quite repetitive and time consuming with Tim Stamper asking George Andreas to keep adding more things it eventually created a bit of a bloated game game with too many collectibles in an interview George would acknowledge that this harmed the game and he would have liked to simplify it by allowing any Kong to grab any banana and to reduce the amount in general one of the biggest issues for Donkey Kong 64 was the fact that it couldn't escape the shadow of rare's last big hit banjo kazui while there were different teams for each game Donkey Kong 64 ended up being too closely related not bringing much new to this collectathon genre other than playing as five cool Kongs with games like this becoming more commonplace on the Nintendo 64 Gamespot would state that it would have fared better as a launch game some however like daily radar believe that dk64 was simply the best 3D platform game for the Nintendo 64 and Edge would state that it was quote a fine effort in its own right however like many found it a bit derivative and unimaginative compared to other 3D Platformers on the same system with all of it bloat and many many bananas to collect players would still remember the game for years to come thanks to its masterclass platforming and as the Cincinnati Inquirer wrote like the one screeners and sides scrollers of long ago the 3D Adventure is ready for an evolutionary step while dk64 may not deliver that advancement its mastering of elements that may have been done to death may just be the spark needed for that next [Music] leap while we don't quite know what a 2d Nintendo 64 Donkey Kong game would have looked like it's hard to imagine a world where the King of Swing didn't make the leap into 3D with how Donkey Kong 64 turned out in terms of its repetitiveness and backtracking we'll never know for sure if a 2d game would have done much better at the time 2D games were seen as a way of the past and while making a graphically impressive 2D game could be very easy it was seen by many gamers and reviewers at the time as not embracing the new 3D world that was being birthed at the end of the day Donkey Kong 64 was a solid success financially selling well over 5 million copies becoming the seventh bestselling Nintendo 64 game it didn't light the world on fire quite like Donkey Kong Country did but it still made its way into the hearts of many introducing three colorful new Kongs having a cool console bundle and unfortunately becoming a forgotten platforming Classic on a console that was on its way way out the door with the Dreamcast and PS2 on their way in and Nintendo having already announced the Nintendo 64 successor the dolphin still with Donkey Kong's inclusion in the Super Mario Bros movie and the inclusion of the Diddy Dixie and Chunky Kong it's possible we'll get to explore DK Isle once [Music] again [Music] hi everyone this is video game docs sorry I've been gone so long I've had a lot of stuff happen in this last year but I hope you enjoyed this video on Donkey Kong 64 I really am excited to start making videos again and I promise this time I won't go on a year-long Hiatus now that there the video is finally released if you want more information on where I've been or why I've been gone feel free to visit my patreon where I have a blog post up detailing what happened in the last year speaking of patreon I have one within that blog post are the questions and answers that Mark Stevenson gave me for this video and later this week I'll be posting the entire interview that I did with Grant Kirk hope the blog post you can check out by subscribing for free but the grant Kirk hope interview will be for paid members only check it out if you want to support the channel and help me continue making these videos the details on tiers are on the patreon page itself but there are some cool bonuses like joining my Discord voting on video topics and getting access to videos early also did you know that only about 6% of you are subscribed I'm glad you enjoy my content but if you could hit that subscribe button it would help out the channel a lot well that's all the time I've got I got to get back to playing Animal Crossing new Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS

Channel: VideoGameDocs

Views: 10,887

Keywords: Donkey Kong, Mario Movie, Donkey Kong 64, Diddy Kong, Donkey Kong Country, Rare, Rareware, Sea of Thieves, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 64, Retro, Retro Gaming, History, Documentary, Video Essay, Gaming, Gamer, Nintendo Online, Super Mario Bros Movie, Illumination, DK64, DK Rap

Id: m9tMuojJcT8

Length: 49min 53sec (2993 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023