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1. Antarctic Adventure (Famicom)
2. Nuts & Milk (Famicom)
3. Commando (Atari 2600)
4. Binary Land (Famicom)
5. Devil World (Famicom)
6. Disney's Aladdin (SNES)
7. Popeye (NES)
8. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
9. Ys: The Vanished Omens (Sega Master System)
10 Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter (Famicom)
11. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES)
12. Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD)
13. Otenba Becky no Daibouken (MSX)
14. Metroid (Famicom Disk System)
15. Mahou Kishi Rayearth (Game Boy)
16. Wabbit (Atari 2600)
17. Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy)
18. Warpman (Famicom)
19. Final Fantasy (NES)
20. Transformers: Convoy no Nazo (Famicom)
21. Arcade Archives: Moon Patrol (Switch eShop)
22. Gremlins (Atari 2600)
23. Arcade Archives: Ninja-Kid (Switch eShop)
24. Shining in the Darkness (Genesis)
25. Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Gate of Doom (Switch eShop)
26. Front Line (Atari 2600)
27. Donkey Kong 3 (NES)
28. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (Game Boy)
29. Exerion (Famicom)
30. Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Bad Dudes (Switch eShop)
31. Arcade Archives: Double Dragon (Switch eShop)
32. ACA NeoGeo: Ninja Combat (Switch eShop)
33. Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Wizard Fire (Switch eShop)
34. Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land (Game Boy)
35. Virtual Boy Wario Land (Virtual Boy)
36. Grand Master (Famicom)
37. Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Sly Spy (Switch eShop)
38. ACA NeoGeo: Top Hunter Roddy & Cathy (Switch eShop)
39. ACA NeoGeo: Shock Troopers (Switch eShop)
40. Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
41. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (SNES)

Okay now. Animal games.

Donkey Kong Country is a game I probably roll through once a year or so. Certainly the best non-Mario platformer ever. Flawless controls, excellent level design, and peerless music and graphics. I adore it. It's not perfect. Hunting for bonus areas isn't particularly fun (wish Rare went the Mario World route with full-fledged hidden stages), and the "101%" thing is stupid, trollish, and set a horrible precedent that future games would follow for some reason (Symphony of the Night's 200.6% can eat my azz).

This is my first time beating Donkey Kong Country 2 and, really, the first earnest attempt I've ever made at the game. What a let-down.

Granted, there is some ownage here. The controls remain excellent. I like the addition of Dixie Kong; the game balances character attributes well so you'll want to frequently swap back and forth between Diddy and Dixie. The soundtrack, while technically not as grand as that of its predecessor, is still very very good. That "Stickerbrush Symphony" piece is almost comically awesome (yeah I know, everyone else figured this out like 20 years ago).

The game is a chore though. It's long, bloated, challenging for all the wrong reasons, and lacks the smooth effortless "flow" of the original.

In Donkey Kong Country, difficulty and gameplay elements are introduced gradually. The game builds and builds, eventually reaching a wholly satisfying climax. Donkey Kong Country 2 is a game of gimmicks. Every stage seems to have a different one. Sticky honey on the walls and floors of a beehive. Strong winds that periodically switch direction. Mine cart races against the kremlings. Looping barrel mazes. Rising acid and crushing floors. A spider buddy that creates web platforms. While I did admittedly enjoy many environments, each new stage feels jarring and detached from its surrounding ones. It's like each one was designed by a different individual. The game lacks cohesion. It's also way too hard. There's no trial period to warm up to new gameplay elements. So many wasted lives and "cheap" deaths. Also, some of the levels just flat out suuuuuuuuuck. Eff those "bramble" stages in particular, cool music notwithstanding.

Oh, and there's "collectathon" nonsense here, which I chose not to acknowledge. And a beefed-up story about the Kong family, which is terrible.

I'm stumped by how this is rated so highly by most folks. The game reminds me of The Lost Levels. It looks like its superior predecessor, and kinda plays like it, but also has this weird sadistic extraneous ROM-hack quality that is incredibly off-putting. It's a game I wanted to like, and sometimes did, but ultimately I walked away disappointed.

I may try the third installment but I'm scurred about things getting even worse.

I feel that you probably won’t like DKC 3 even though at my favourite. It emphasises the worst of what you disliked about the second game, but it also builds upon the stuff you enjoyed in how well balanced the characters feel

Bone, give DKC3 a shot. While it still has the collectathon fever going overboard a bit too much, it's nothing that seriously blocks your progress or anything unless you want to 100% it. But DKC3 has some of the cooler more interesting boss fights, the difficulty seems more balanced again (still harder than DKC1 for sure, but let's admit the first is easy after awhile!)... and most importantly, DKC3 brings back COLOR. Over the years with my replays I think the bleak evil pirate island theme of DKC2 makes it kind of a drag unless you're really in the mood for that. If you liked the more tropical and blight colored flavors of the first game, DKC3 brings that back. Awesome caves, jungles, more super mysterious and scary-esque water stages with great atmosphere, mountains, snow levels again, factories, etc. Admittedly I'm not a huge fan of the first two worlds, but it gets way better after that. And as always there's some major musical standouts with a handful of tracks.

As I go back and replay the trilogy off and on, I'm starting to think DKC2 doesn't impress me as much anymore and DKC3 gets better over time. We agree on the first being the best though. But yeah definitely give DKC3 a fair shake, maybe you'll dig it. I think I know what you mean about DKC2 being a Lost Levels case... in comparison DKC3 feels different and like it's got its own personality.

How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

I started Donkey Kong Country 3. My first hour with it has been more enjoyable than my first hour with Donkey Kong Country 2.

pook99 wrote:How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

Those games are stinkers. Returns has some awful gimmicky Wii waggle controls that ruin the whole experience. The game is likely better on 3DS but I haven't played that version yet.

Tropical Freeze I never finished, though I played a few hours. The controls are back to "normal" but are still terrible. The Kongs feel heavy and bloated and are just a mess to maneuver. Bad times.

I'd rather play the original Donkey Kong on ColecoVision than either one of those games.

First 50

51. Knightmare Tower (iOS)
52. 80s Overdrive (3DS)
53. Hitman Go (iOS)

Hitman Go is hard to explain in text. It is, basically, a series of logic puzzles...that looks like a board game version of Square Enix’s Popular Hitman series. In it, you move an Agent 47 board game piece across a board, avoiding hazards and, occasionally, taking other pieces. Each stage has various goals, such as completion under a certain number of moves, obtaining a briefcase, or taking all of the other pieces on the board. You unlock new levels by completing stages and accomplishing these goals, which are sometimes mutually exclusive (I.e., on some levels, it is impossible to complete all of the goals in one run).

Hitman Go is fun and occasionally challenging. It also looks really neat. I am not sure I enjoyed it as much as Lara Croft Go, which I played through last year, but I did enjoy it. It also inspired me to start playing through the last game in the series, Deus Ex Go (which, so far, isn’t as good as Hitman Go or Lara Croft Go). Once I wrap it up, which I expect to do soon, I will have that series under my belt (and a lot more storage space on my iPad too...Those games are big!).

pook99 wrote:How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

I love them. lol, your mileage will vary I guess with how hit or miss they seem to be.

230. Golden axe 2(genesis)
231. Double Dragon Gold (openbor)
232. Bare knuckle 3 yesterday once more (openbor)
233. Super Mario Lost Levels (snes)

Mario Lost Levels has been a game that I have been meaning to play forever and I decided to put it on my summer games list to motivate myself to play it.

First things first, after finally playing through the game I could say for sure that I am very happy that we got our version of super mario 2 rather than the lost levels. US Super Mario 2 is an amazing game, and I would love to see a more modern version of a mario game set in the dream universe with throwable vegetables and wart instead of Bowser. We got Mario 2 in a time when companies were not afraid to completely change up its sequels and much like zelda 2, and castlevania 2, Mario 2 was radically different than its predecessor. As a kid, I loved the universe that Mario 2 presented us with, I loved the bright colorful graphics, the new world, enemies, vegetables, and all the other cool stuff that came with that game. If we got lost levels as a kid, I definitely would have been disappointed.

Thats not to say lost levels is a bad game, in fact quite the opposite, I really enjoyed lost levels, and I would even go as far to say that I enjoyed it more than the original super mario bros. I played the snes version so it is slightly easier than the nes version since you have unlimited continues and you could save your progress every level. These features make the experience much more enjoyable than it would have been if we got the game on the nes. I honestly could not imagine beating the game in one sitting, nor could I imagine having the patience to replay some of the more annoying levels repeatedly to progress in the game.

Having said all that, I enjoy difficult games, and I enjoyed the challenge that this game presents. There are some annoying features, most notably the lack of power ups, mushrooms are nearly impossible to come by which means you will play the vast majority of the game small and without the luxury of any safety net. The game also has an annoying habit of dropping a power up at a useless time or a time that is detrimental. For example, I found a hidden star on world 8-3, I was so excited, until I realized I needed to bounce off a turtle to make the jump right in front of the star and you cant do that while invincible. Stuff like that is super annoying and the game seems to really enjoy trolling the player.

I'm not sure quite how to rate the games difficulty in the grand scheme of gaming, it actually starts out pretty benign, I beat the first 4 worlds without continuing but then the difficulty ratchets up pretty steeply with world 7 and 8 being very frustrating filled with really tight jumps that require some parts memorization and a bit of trial and error. The last 2 levels were a nightmare and I beat the last level with literally 7 seconds left on the timer.

I'm glad I finally played this game, as an adult with a lifetime of gaming experience, I really appreciated the challenge and got a great feeling of satisfaction from beating each of the increasingly hard levels, it is a game I will probably revisit at some point, but there is no way this expansion pack would have captured my heart the way mario 2 did for me when I was 8 years old.

Xeogred wrote:

pook99 wrote:How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

I love them . lol, your mileage will vary I guess with how hit or miss they seem to be.

How do you think they stack up to the original trilogy?

pook99 wrote:

Xeogred wrote:

pook99 wrote:How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

I love them . lol, your mileage will vary I guess with how hit or miss they seem to be.

How do you think they stack up to the original trilogy?

I think they're close to the same level as DKC2-3 for me. The games are back to being simpler and less collectathon which I appreciate, still with some stuff you can get for the brutal hard extra levels or whatever. And you know what I love about DKC1? DK himself! So it's great that he's back and playable in these two. The difficulty is pretty high but totally fair and fun to me. The composer for Returns was Kenji Yamamoto and the OST even has some Metroid Prime-esque tones here and there, along with some great remixes of classic tracks and such. Returns doesn't have any underwater levels strangely, but it has a returning Factory world which I loved and a lot of levels in general. Tropical Freeze picks up the high difficulty but I think it was a little more forgiving. This one brings back David Wise, underwater levels, more playable Kong's which is neat, and though it has less levels overall I believe, the levels themselves were pretty dense and long. I'm not sure which one I prefer between these two, they both rock. I plan to get the 3DS version of Returns sometime and the Switch port of Tropical Freeze, so I'll replay them eventually.

I should also mention I'm generally not a fan of the 2.5D style visually, but I think these games look awesome. I have no complaints, I don't even like the Wii much but I don't recall anything about the waggle controls bugging me even if it wasn't ideal, it didn't stop me from enjoying Returns to the fullest.

Since you just conquered Lost Levels, I think you'd enjoy the challenge of Returns/Tropical Freeze.

Xeogred wrote:

pook99 wrote:How do Donkey Kong country returns and tropical freeze compare to the original DKC trilogy?

I love them. lol, your mileage will vary I guess with how hit or miss they seem to be.

I love them too~. I think they're fantastic games. They aren't exactly the same thing as the originals as far as the idea of their level designs go, but they're still excellent games totally worth picking up UwU