• Tag Archives Rare

  • Donkey Kong Country (Super NES)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Donkey Kong Country was released in 1994 by Rare for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In terms of graphics, sound, and game play, this game really represents the peak of 2D side-scrolling platform gaming in the 16-bit era. This game was also a major revival for the Donkey Kong franchise which really hadn’t seen a major new releases since the Atari 2600 era arcade ports.

    At a high level, Donkey Kong Country is a traditional platformer like many others. It is just particularly well executed. It follows the adventures of Donkey Kong and his sidekick, the newly introduced Diddy Kong, as they seek to recover their stolen bananas from the evil King K. Rool and his various minions. The plot isn’t anything groundbreaking but the plot in a game like this is hardly the most important thing.

    The most important aspect of Donkey Kong Country is the excellent game play. The controls are among the best for such games leaving you no reason to be frustrated on that front. You can control either Donkey Kong or Diddy Kong each of which has their own strengths and weaknesses. Donkey Kong is larger and stronger and can more easily defeat stronger enemies. However, Diddy Kong is smaller and faster. These differences add a bit of a strategic element to the game when it comes to choosing the appropriate character for a given situation.

    The levels feature a ton of variety which is always important in this kind of game (or any game really). Each level has a multitude of challenges, hidden secrets, and items to collect. The environments are also quite varied featuring locals such as industrial factories, jungles, ice caves, etc. Each of these of course has new obstacles to overcome.

    One of the more unique aspects of Donkey Kong Country is the ability to summon animal companions. Various animals can be summoned to assist you including Rambi the Rhinoceros (who can charge through enemies), Expresso the Ostrich (who provides increased speed and height), and others.

    Donkey Kong Country also broke new ground when it came to graphics on 16-bit systems. Rare used a method of creating pre-rendered 3D models (using SGI Challenge workstations) and then turning them into 2D sprites. At the time it came out, nothing else looked remotely like Donkey Kong Country. All aspects of the graphics were pretty amazing including the character models, character animations, and the detailed environments and backgrounds. The soundtrack and sound effects were equally well done. Creating the score was a major project in itself with theme music appropriate to each level.

    If all of that weren’t enough, Donkey Kong Country offers tons of replayability and an excellent difficulty curve. The game starts off pretty easy with difficulty ramping up as you progress through the levels. It never gets so hard as to be frustrating. For more advanced players, the true difficulty and replayability of the game comes from completing levels 100% by exploring all areas, collecting all necessary items and completing all challenges.

    Donkey Kong Country was a huge success for Rare and was the game that really brought them into the spotlight. It was a huge influence of future platformers, not the least of which are its own sequels including Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble.

    There have been a variety of ports and re-releases over the years. There was a port of this game on the Game Boy Color in 2000 that was a pretty faithful conversion. There was another release on the Game Boy Advance in 2004 which was nearly identical to the Super NES original. There were also a few releases of the original Super NES version on the Virtual Console for the Wii, 3DS and Wii-U. The most recent re-releases have been as part of the Super NES Classic Edition in 2017 and via Nintendo Switch Online in 2020.

    If you are a platform game fan then this game is a game you don’t want to miss and if you enjoy this one, you’ll probably enjoy the two sequels mentioned above as well. There have been additional sequels and spinoffs over the years but the original is still something special. Perhaps more than any other game, Donkey Kong Country was responsible for keeping the Super NES relevant in the face of the impending PlayStation and Saturn releases (the N64 wouldn’t be released until a couple of years later) and in claiming ultimate victory in the 16-bit wars.


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  • Time Lord (NES)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Time Lord (NES)

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/170647078694/doiner-nes-time-lord

    No, Time Lord doesn’t have anything to do with Doctor Who even though that’s exactly what it sounds like. Time Lord is a completely unrelated game for the NES that involves traveling to various time periods in Earth’s history in order to defeat an alien force that is attacking in those time periods in order to change history and make Earth easier to conquer in the present. You get to use various weapons found in the time period you are in from swords to lasers and everything in between. Despite not being Doctor Who related, it still sounds pretty cool. Another plus is that this game was developed by Rare. Rare is known today for having developed some pretty incredible games.

     

    Unfortunately, as this game proves, not everything Rare touched was gold, especially in the early days (Time Lord was released in 1990). This game just doesn’t really live up to its cool sounding story. The game plays like a fairly typical sides scrolling platform adventure game. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that and the graphics are fairly decent as well. The problem comes with the difficulty and the repetitive nature of the game. While the different levels / time periods look different enough, they all really play very much the same. The lack of variety combined with the difficulty make this a hard game to finish. It doesn’t help that the game is timed. If you don’t defeat the enemy by January 1st, 3000 then you will self destruct along with your time machine. The game starts in the year 2999 and a day bases every 6 seconds in real-time so if you do the math you have a little over 36 minutes to beat the game. The difficulty would be more bearable if not for the repetitive nature of the game.

     

    As far as I know, this game has never been re-released or had a sequel. The good news is that if you really want to give it a try, original cartridges are fairly cheap and easy to come by. If you are a Rare completist or maybe just enjoy especially difficult and frustrating games then this may just be the game for you.





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  • NARC (NES)

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    Narc was first a 1988 arcade game and was the first to be released by Williams after being acquired by Midway. Several ports were made to various home systems in 1990 including to the Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, and NES. The home computer versions were all done by Ocean software while the NES port was done by Rare and published by Acclaim.

    Most of the home ports were pretty average. I think the reason NARC is remembered today is because it was a controversial game at the time. It was one of the first games with this level of violence. The goal of the game is to arrest or kill various junkies, drug dealers and king pins culminating with Mr. Big. In the manual for the NES version of the game it was described as the first video game with a strong anti-drug message. Ironically, all references to drugs were removed from the NES version.

    Nintendo has always had seemingly odd censorship rules. In this particular game, references to drugs were removed but most or all of the violence was retained. However, the splash of blood on the cover was changed to be yellow so it didn’t look like blood.

    Midway Arcade Treasures 2 released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube had an emulated version of the arcade version of the game (with a few glitches) and in 2005 there was a remake of the game (also controversial) for the PS2, Xbox and PC.

    The ad and screenshots above are all from the NES version.

    http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/158615816812/tarpittales-bust-mr-big





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