That’s exactly what I was hoping to do! Want people who may have been swayed by the hate train to give this game a shot! I love me some DK64! I also love your videos!
It feels SOOOO GOOD to finally see someone defending this gem of a game. My brother and I were baffled when we found out that apparently the intenet hates this game. As kids we'd be GLUED to the screen. Especially my brother (he's the one who actually went for the 101%). My favorite N64 collect-a-thon and my second favorite of that console.
I can't help but assume that basically anytime there is a major contingent of people griping about stuff like this game that the majority have probably never played it and are just jumping on the bandwagon. It's not a perfect game by any means but also why does it need to be?
oh I can relate to this comment, I too used to play this with my brother and I was the one getting 101%. It really suprises me to find out that people hate this game and also DKC3.
My only memory of this game was my step dad walking in while I was playing, looking at it for two seconds as DK swam in the water and saying "that's one smart monkey, huh?" and then walked away.
I always felt DK64 is supposed to have a ton of collectibles, because 1999 wasn't really a time where someone could have instant access to a digital catalog to play other games if they got bored. Back then, our parents bought this game at the store, and we played it because we only had that, and a few other games. While I'm a big fan of Banjo-Kazooie, the biggest problem to me is: BK can beaten in like under 2 weeks of casual play (1world/day.) DK64 alleviates that by just having more things to collect.
Back in the day, collect-a-thons were not a genre. DK64 was an adventure game with a bunch of collectables. Today, people think the maim purpose of the game is to collect evey single thing. It's not. The goal is to complete it. This is where Banjo-Kazooie nailed it. Banjo-Kazooie didn't add too much, making the line between adventuring and collecting much more cohesive. People's mentality about collect-a-thons have changed, because the way we play games have changed. I used to get as far as possible in games as quickly as I could, because I wanted to explore. In Banjo-Kazooie, I couldn't wait to unlock the next note door or next world, so I wouldn't worry about collecting everything. As an adult, I'm far more meticulous. I'm able to delay my curiosity of what's ahead in order to beat games more thoroughly. I believe this is, to a degree, true for most people. Collect-a-thons are rare nowadays, so I imagine they can feel a bit tedious or overwhelming to younger players who aren't used to collect-a-thons. That's my take. I haven't watched the video, but that's my pre-watch theory.
BOTW and TOTK are also bad...if you see them as a collectathon. Lots of useless stuff to collect that takes a lot of time, but that's not the sense of the game...same with DK64. It's really a dumb criticism for the game that I never heard until a few years ago. Some gamers forget that games are supposed to be fun and played the way you want, and not a "mission" to 100% everything all the time. Sometimes that is fun too, but imo most time it isn't and you don't need to do it to have fun.
In that era, a game being long was the best thing that could happen, you could play a ton of hours for a fair price and with a world as vividly as dk64 i think its underestimated the levels of fun the game can produce
As a fellow DK64 defender, I have quite a bit to say actually. But there are a few points I'd like to make. Firstly with the game's length. I find it a bit odd that people complain about the game's length and number of collectables while praising games like Mario Odyssey with its hundreds of power moons. I 101 percented DK64 blind and clocked in with 36 hours on my save file. Compare that to my blind Odyssey playthrough which went well over 100 hours. Yes, having to backtrack IS annoying every now and then. But it never really felt all that tedious. And for me at least the worlds hit that sweet spot of being just big enough to feel satisfying, while not being too big to feel daunting to find everything in, like Sand and Metro Kingdom from Odyssey. Secondly is the minigames. I understand a lot of the frustration. Believe me, I've felt it too. But part of that frustration isn't DK64's fault. The Nintendo 64 had issues with lag, and Rare knew this. Many of the minigames were designed with this lag in mind to make the games function. But since most people nowadays will be playing this game on the Wii U or emulators, the minigames are going to be significantly harder than they were intended to be. It's the same reason Canary Mary's races are a nightmare on the Xbox port of Banjo Tooie. They're more powerful systems without the issue of lag. (Though Beaver Bother admittedly sucks no mater what console you're playing on.) At the end of the day, no. I don't think DK64 "Killed the the platforming genre." I think there's a lot of contributing factors that went into their decline. Shooting games were on the rise, Playstation were capitalizing on it, and soon Xbox would do the same. (Rare saw their popularity even back then. Goldeneye was a huge hit. Meanwhile DK64, Tooie, Jet Force Gemini and Conker all had gunplay of some kind. ) If anything, I'd say Rare was just too ambitious. It just wasn't the time for the games to be as big as they wanted them to be. I know that sounds a bit biased, I know DK64 has legitimate flaws with its level design and pacing. But claiming it's this unplayable, genre-killing marathon of a game has always seemed unfair. ESPECIALLY considering some of its complaints are praised in other platformers.
assuming no walkthroughs, I'm not sure I believe that you did this game in 36 hours blind but odyssey took over 100 hours. I'd believe both being the same even but odyssey is just shorter no matter how you slice it, not THREE TIMES longer lol
Indeed. I 100% DK64 back in the day but got burnt out on Mario Odyssey and Yoshi’s Crafted World. The too many collectibles argument doesn’t fly with me. My biggest complaint at the time was framerate lag. That was the main reason I preferred Banjo-Kazooie.
@@oswinner9265 it’s crazy now I feel I need to replay the game. Maybe I’m just so desensitized to it on the 64! I was noticing it in my Earthworm Jim 3d playthrough but not because of dips but because when you look in first person the frame rate blasts off to 60 and then dips back to 30 when you disengage first person. It’s so weird.
@@bobbysworldofficial in what way could Odyssey not be longer than an N64 title? All the collectibles really don't take that long when there are teleporters and character switching barrels everywhere. I've spent longer on the desert area of Odyssey than the first 3 DK64 areas combined. DK is densely packed and the maps are actually quite small
As someone who is completely OCD about collecting every possible thing in a game world no matter how useless, DK64 satisfies this itch like few other. DK64 doesn't have too many collectibles- your favorite game doesn't have enough.
You know what I was thinking today while playing GTA San Andreas? "Damn, this game has a lot of hidden collectibles and minigames, there's so much to do it's insane for a game this old" And then I realized nobody complains about Grand Theft Auto games having too many hidden items, or having too many optional mini games (with a few sprinkled into the main story, like every other adventure game). It's honestly insane the amount of hate people are dumping on these old N64 classics all of sudden. I suspect the majority of them are either literal kids who didn't grow up with the games, or they are 30-45 year old nintendo nerds who played Yooka Laylee and then transfer that game's shortcomings to it's spiritual predecessors.
Yes I think you’re right! But I have found that a lot of the younger generation I talk about this game too is really receptive and end up liking it! I think Fortnite and TikTok culture is really influencing them bad.
I played this game as a kid and really enjoyed it. My friends and me would talk about where some of the collectables were and our progress. My first play through was incredible and it was exactly what I wanted it to be. The second time I played the game all the way through, I was getting kind of annoyed switching kongs. That was pretty much my only problem. I went back to play the game and used a bunch of glitches. This really made the game cool.
Man the speed running community has found so many glitches to get through that game so quick it’s awesome. I have done some of those as well and I was moving pretty fast! Love it!
@jiggylookback That's pretty rad. They definitely broke the game. I found a bunch of glitches as well. Once you know what to look for, it is easy to discover glitches. My first play through, I didn't do any glitches at all. Also, the game worked perfectly and wasn't buggy at all. The glitches aren't so obvious. The game also wasn't buggy for me. I think people are just following the crowd when they give these negative reviews. In my opinion, donkey Kong 64 was better than Banjo Kazooie for multiple reasons. Let's take losing a life with banjo Kazooie and starting the level again and losing all your collectibles. Dk 64 was a great collectathon. Still to this day, I play similar games. Dk 64 was fantastic. If anything, it's like mario 6 If you want to beat the game, you can and avoid most collectibles. But for us Fans of the genre, the point of the game is taking on the challenge of collecting e everything. I definitely give dk64 a 👍. practically perfect game for us collecathon addicts
I think the 'too many collectibles' complaint is one of those weird things someone says online and everybody just agrees with without actually thinking about. I played DK64 when it came out, to completion if memory serves, and I've completed it a couple of times since then. My biggest complaints are: * The minigames. There is no way around this one. In the best case, minigames are a welcome reprieve from the regular gameplay. A short quick burst to shake things up a bit now and again. But in DK64, whenever I have to do a minigame, my heart sinks. Beaver Bother is far and away the worst offender, but this applies to all of them, just to a lesser degree. During one playthrough, I actually started to just skip some Bananas, even though I'm a hardcore completionist. ** Way too many moves / upgrades are basically 'button presses' that only serve to gate some areas. The musical instruments, some of the pad / barrel abilities, and even the guns are just that. *** (related to **) The stage design is blatantly segmented, with every level having some mini-areas set aside for each Kong. In the most blatant examples, there are a bunch of doors next to each other, each reserved for a different Kong. E.g. Gloomy Galleon and Crystal Cave **** The Kongs play very similar. They all have a weapon and an instrument that work all the same, and apart from their special moves, they feel very similarly. ***** Least important, but still. Why did they come up with Tiny, when she is super similar to Dixie? I have no idea why that was necessary. Use her hair twirl. She can shrink, sure. If Donkey can turn invisible all of a sudden, why shouldn't she get a new ability? Let her keep the guitar, and give Diddy some other instrument (IF all the Kongs actually need one!). Diddy could even get the sax.
Absolutely agree on the minigames, I swear that beaver corale one is bugged. You could get it on the edge, be biting the beaver's tail and it'll just 180 and slip past you right back to the edge of the map.
Still got my original childhood copy that came with my jungle japes green see-through n64 and matching controller. It may be a bit rough to complete but it'll always hold a special place in my heart as my personal favorite DK game
That Jungle Green 64 is so cool looking! I always wanted one. Someday when my RUclips takes off I’m getting it! For now my Gold 64 will suffice. I grew up with the original base colored one.
@@jiggylookback As much as I can understand that the game does have it’s fair share of fans, you can’t deny that switching characters should’ve been easy and would’ve saved time, if it was reserved within a pause menu. To me, having to change characters by backtracking is an inconvenience. I’m not saying I hate the game, just that there needs some quality control is all.
Honestly "Too many collectibles" doesn't even sound like a real complaint, especially in this modern age full of big open world games with loads and loads of collectibles. BoTW's Korok seeds immediately come to mind for this.
I agree. But it’s partly the design of the layout of the collectibles for sure. But if people collect 100 korok seeds in a massive open world this doesn’t seem so bad. Lol
Correction for both of you, it was 900… yeah they were not intending ANYONE to get them all lol. I mean the reward for actually doing so kinda speaks for itself…
It’s optional in most modern games not the entire game itself, to be fair. Though I think we can all agree that complaining about collecting things in a collect-a-thon is dumb.
For real. It was just expanding on the foundation that Banjo Kazooie laid for 3D platformers except with a DK twist. I'd argue that it's a better follow-up to Banjo Kazooie than Banjo Tooie.
I honestly think the whining about backtracking is insane. It's one of the funnest parts of tooie too. Returning to a level beefed up with new abilities to use and exploit and finding more and more stuff keeps things nice and fresh despite the length of it all. Being able to fully explore a DK64 level on the first go would mean they'd need to cut like half the content or it'd be obscenely long. There's nothing wrong with leaving it incomplete and returning. Literally the only issue is adding a few more Kong switch spots. "Backtracking" in this instance means breaking up the linear progression with familiar yet distinctly new areas in more bite sized forms. And yeah it's a bit ironic people whine it's too buggy cuz of all the speedrun specific tricks it has...but no one has the same complaints about Ocarina of Time which is one of the most mangled and broken videogames in history. Neither affects a casual playthrough.
Also yeah this and Tooie are Kirkhope’s masterpieces. The grand and whimsical theme of DK Isles, the Japes remix of Jungle Hijinx whose new sections fit right into the swing vibe of the original, the eerie playfulness of Frantic Factory, and the chaotic boss remixes of each stage theme, along with K Rool’s menacing motif, it may be different from Wise’s slower, atmospheric focus, but it’s wonderful in its own way
I always thought it was stupid how people will say this game should've had less content just because they personally feel compelled to do absolutely everything. Like they're staking their pride on 100% completing a game for children from the 90s instead of just having fun with it.
@@toooydoeur When did you even start gaming? Because the term "Collect-a-thon" literally didn't exist until WELL after this game was made. DK64 was a 3D Platformer, just like Banjo-Kazooie, Mario 64 and its ilk. You can't go and hold a product to an arbitrary standard that literally didn't exist
Tbh this game would’ve been much better if you could go through the main story campaign with multiple players. It would reduce the need to backtrack and switch Kongs so often.
@@ericlizama8552 it’s fun to have multiple Kongs and they don’t play exactly the same. But i get what you're getting at! I preferred Diddy or Tiny myself I like speedy characters.
When this game first came out, I used to hold it up as a model of the "perfect game," by which I meant I couldn't think of anything that could be added or removed to make it better. That take didn't age well. I first came to realize its flaws after seeing the "Switch Kongs Anywhere" option in randomizers and boy did THAT improve the game SIGNIFICANTLY.
Sentiments and opinions change over time, but too be honest this game does hold up pretty well! It has its flaws but to see modern things like the switch Kongs mod really shows how underneath it is a fundamentally good game! Except beaver bother…
Nobody I knew back in the 90's actually collected everything. That wasn't even a thought that entered our heads. For every collectathon game we just collected exactly enough to progress, then moved on to the next area. The only time we kept on collecting was when we ran out of new games to play and our parents wouldn't get us any new ones, so we had to keep playing our old ones. And all the extra collectibles made DK64 the best game in that scenario, since there was always new stuff to grab whenever we booted it up for the 1,000th+ time. People complaining about it now forget that it was usually one of only a few games in a kid's library at the time, and having something new to collect instead of just starting back at the beginning again was awesome!
To many collectables? It's a collectathon game, and you barely need half of them to complete the game. I do agree that Bananas and Coins could have been set up better.
As someone who just recently discovered the randomizer community for this game, this video is spot on. I just completed an all collectibles run of the vanilla game and now I get to discover new ways to play DK64 with the randomizer, never requiring that I 101% the game but rather just get to K. Rool. It's a true gem of a game in all facets including story, gameplay, music, and bonus features.
I can see people not being a fan of this game, but I still greatly enjoy it. I’ll pop it in every so often, relax and gather up the many many collectables the game has to offer. Speaking as someone who played the DKC series before this, complaining about the cast seems silly. I was surprised that Dixie didn’t make it into the game, but I do like Tiny as a part of the cast. All around, a fun group of characters. I think one thing that would alleviate complaints would be to allow free swapping of characters. Just to give a break on the backtracking. I think I’ve seen this implemented in the randomized version of the game and it seems like it’d do the trick. I could even see it working if you create a pair of Kong’s that you can switch between outside of the tag barrels. That’d be a nice nod to the DKC series, where you did work as a pair and were able to swap between the two. Either way, I’m all for this great game getting a worthy defense! 👍
I definitely loved this game as a kid, although I revisited it as an adult and couldn't get into it even with nostalgia goggles. While the blanket statement "too many collectibles" is a shaky premise for the reasons you mentioned, I think when people say that they're actually channelling the frustration of the back-tracking and just attributing it to the number of collectibles rather than the real issue; the tedious set of steps between them. Which then makes me wonder, why was it so fun as a kid? My first thought is that child's sense of mystery and wonder. I remember being legitimately excited to enter each new world and even more excited to unlock all 8 keys. Not only do we become jaded as adults, at risk of sounding like a boomer (despite being full millennial) I think the age of the internet has basically killed that aspect of gaming. With social media, streaming & content creators, it's almost impossible to avoid being exposed to most parts of a game that you're interested in before you experience it yourself. That sense of wonder was definitely compounded by the technical achievement - as mentioned by most reviewers, for the time, the graphics were good and the game was massive. We were still in the stage of "bigger is better" as technology rapidly improved. As kids during that time, we hadn't really experienced a game of that scale, which was extra appealing because many of us would only really have one new game at a time and have to make the most of it. As far as we were concerned, finishing the game was bittersweet; an achievement but also a sad moment as the game had "run out". As you said, the theme/atmosphere is excellent and it "feels" exactly as you'd want from a DK 3D platformer. There's no real issue with the level layouts, theme & terrain, it's just the way the "stuff" inside is placed that really hurts. Along with that, my personal biggest issue with the gameplay that I REALLY noticed as an adult is how many different "moves" are literally just "press button" in a different skin. Having to "upgrade" your ground pound/musical instruments is especially egregious. Overall, I guess I kind of feel like it's a product of its time but we were the lucky ones who got to experience it. Thanks for the video!
You’re not wrong. A big draw to this as a child was the exploring. Finding every little detail and collectible. The age of knowing everything because it’s on the internet doesn’t help this game. I also agree having to upgrade your ground pound and things is lame. Just make it what it needs to be from the start. But overall I think the gameplay is still fun. I still love this game even going back to it as an adult but I acknowledge it has faults.
As someone that was 29 when this first came out, I can't completely agree with this. I loved it when it first came out too. I played it again last year and enjoyed it for the most part but it did have some issues. The collectibles did get annoying. I wanted to collect them all, but there were just entirely too many. I also got annoyed with some of the mini-games or even worse when you would go through some complicated platforming only to not get a banana but instead have to complete a crappy mini-game in order to get the banana.
DK64 is another game I love a lot. I do acknowledge that certain design decisions are a bit much, but honestly, the amount of collectibles never bothered me as a kid, and still didn't when I replayed it recently lol That said, I think the ideal situation ‐ at least imo - would be to have a more planned out "route", with character-specific collectible chains meeting in places with a Tag Barrel more often
@@jiggylookback True... my brain would mourn the loss of color variety, but that's not actually important lol (unless... each level could have a uniqur color? hmm)
I played and beat this game again a couple months ago, and I still adore it, despite its couple of completely broken minigames I can't defend. You basically just summed up all my thoughts. Love the game's creativity, characters, quirk, exploration, music, variety. Just a couple things that hold it back, but still a fun experience.
I agree 100%. It's so weird how much of a hatedom this game has gotten. A lot of the stuff people nowadays complain about it are things we loved about it as kids.
Thank you for making this. You nailed it. I was actually considering making a similar video, but your thoughts match mine almost exactly (if I ever do make the video, I'll be sure to give yours a shout-out!). It became popular to bash this game for its collectibles and that just caught on. It's an easy hook to design a video around. Like you said, you can avoid so much of the stuff in this game and still have plenty for what's required to beat it. It's probably the only game that gets judged so unfairly based on what it takes to complete it, not just beat it. We don't really do that for any other games. Anyways, thanks again. I enjoyed the video.
A master piece of the 3D platforms, when I see a Top 20 N64 games and this Rare gem is not included I going bananas!! this game was amazing back in 1999 and it still kicks 95% of most 32bit/64bit game´s asses (it even knocks out some of the first Dreamcast or PS2 games), the term "goog" is not enough for this title, is TOP 5 best 3D platformers of all time material. So for the gentleman that made this video praising DK64: you are my man
Back in the day, We (me and my brothers) used to rent this game for the weekend, it was one of my favorites alongside smash bros and goldeneye. The problem with renting was I never get to finish and I had to wait another weekend to rent again... Now you made me realize I can emulate and finally finish this gem, thank you!
It's important to remember that back when this came out online gaming wasn't a thing and that these games were expensive; more expensive that AAA titles today when adjusted for inflation. So, if you were an only child (and couldn't always rely on siblings for multiplayer) and you you were only buying two or three games per year, then having a game with this much stuff to do was incredible. I LOVED it as a kid. Even the backtracking wasn't an issue, never felt like a chore. I confess I haven't played it for over 20 years and it may not hold up so well now, but it was perfect for the era in which it was designed.
The whole thing is pretty simple to me: the game has a great atmosphere; the levels are super colorful, fun and varied; the characters are charismatic and memorable; the soundtrack is great. That's enough for it to be a very good game IMO. It does have some flaws - the backtracking can be annoying at times, but it's nothing huge. There's a lot to collect, but you don't need to get everything unless you want to 101% it. I just can't overlook the fact that I love the game's ambience, levels, and humor. And just listen to the music and the sound design - the whole thing oozes with personality. It was fantastic especially for Donkey Kong fans. And having played the game when it was released, for the N64, I must say that it was pretty incredible back then seeing the size of DK Island and all these places. You didn't get that kind of stuff back then; walking on a huge beach, swimmimg to and from islands, it really felt like this big world and adventure, it was amazing for the 90s. Today people are less impressed by it (we have things like enormous open world games, after all) but back then it was a really big deal. Remember that just one generation prior all we had were 2D games.
I agree with you that if you don't care about 100%ing the game, it could even be considered a masterpiece by some. The problem is that it is a collect-a-thon, and the number of people who like collect-a-thons and the number of those who like collect-a-thons who also like checking off every box by collecting everything are almost 1-to-1. The collect-a-thon fan who doesn't care about leaving a level before collecting everything is the exception--the point of the genre really lends to it. I think if the fans of the genre who have this critique can let go of their desire to 100% it and try to enjoy it on its own terms, it would be a much more fun experience. Maybe maintaining some kind of parameter in its place, like "collect all of the minimum of what is needed for each level before leaving," could replace the satisfaction they get from box-checking.
Yeah I mean. I love collecting everything and that was part of the fun for me. But it takes a lot of time for it in this game. There are mods that fix some of the elements of the game that cause it to be a real drag which is dope!
@@jiggylookback Right! The mod that lets you switch out kongs at any time would fix the back-tracking issue you mentioned, so maybe I'll try giving it a go at some point
Remember though this game’s main target audience was children, and most of us were children when we first played it. As fans of collecathons, we all like to be able to get to 100%, but when we were kids I don’t think we were as focussed on that. Most kids even back then were eager to get just enough collectibles to unlock the next boss or level, and that’s a perfectly valid way to play this game. In fact, it’s arguably how it was designed to be played by most players. And if you play this game that way, you get a lot more enjoyment for the time you put in, and the awkward collectibles become much less of an issue.
From the day that Donkey Kong 64 released on N64 all the way up to the Wii U era, people really hated this game with a passion. When the Nintendo Switch Online service launched, people began begging Nintendo to bring this game back on the NSO Service + Expansion Pass, even to this day when it's Still not re-released yet. Me: "... Oh, NOW PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN DONKEY KONG 64!? Where was this energy from all these years this whole time?"
True. I only just learned about the memory leak, and now I've learned it's not actually an issue. lol I never had a problem with "backtracking" I honestly loved all the different colored bananas. This game was so fun to explore. And I played all 3 DK country games before DK64, and I still loved this cast. This is a great video. Thanks for coming to the defense of the kongs. SUBSCRIBED! :)
Possibly my favourite game of all time. 101% completed it three times. The worlds…the characters….the art direction…the MUSIC The collectibles are even amazing in this game. Few games have actually made me feel like I really want to find everything and this is one of those games where I joyfully do it. It’s just so satisfying getting those 100 bananas with each character and 5/5 bananas etc. And like you said…the game only requires like less than half to beat it so if you’re not into it, it’s not grindy AT ALL. The backtracking is also really satisfying because you get to come back to old areas with new characters and unlock new areas within those old areas. It’s very refreshing. And all the levels are so awesome that it really feels cozy and warm being able to return to each of them for a new look. The mini games I also love. Oddly enough once you discover the ‘tricks’ to even the most frustrating mini games, they become easy and satisfying since you know how to win easily. Beaver bother is easy, and so is bug bash. You just have to know the mechanics really well. It’s kinda like once you discover the exact attack patterns and move combinations to swiftly defeat a dark souls boss. What was once infuriating becomes very satisfying because of your insider knowledge. Anyways… yeah the modern hate on this game is absolutely a ‘hate wagon’ that got started only a few years ago when a couple people did some retros on it hating it and everyone followed like sheep. It just became the popular opinion. Nobody can think for themselves these days
I agree with you on all counts! Thats why I made this video to show it IS a good game and it doesn’t deserve the hate it’s getting these days! Also why I lead with the positive reviews it got at release! Love me some DK64
I loved DK64. I replayed it so many times. Even after growing up. Still loved every minute. Here's hoping we get a remake withing my ~50 years left on this planet, but people seem to hate it so it may not ever happen.
Great game and video. I think the biggest thing with DK64 is you definitely have to play the game with a mindset of patience and taking your time to experience things rather than speeding through most challenges through it like with what tends to happen with most other platformers. I remember experiencing a bug as a teenager, I was in the basement with my sister trying to turn on the game and it just didn't want to turn on and when it finally did, the audio was slowed down and deepened and it scared us both so much that we didn't touch the game for a month straight and only played it when our dad was around.
That’s amazing. I actually used to love finding those things! Tho Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was the game I always tried to glitch through walls and stuff!
I absolutely love this game, and at the same time, it's kinda funny how people complain about the collecting in this game, while they have no problem trying to collect EVERYTHING in the Zelda games, Metroid games, Kirby games, Yoshi games, etc...
Man, I can see why you enjoy DK64 so darn much. The lighting, the music, K. Rool at his most diabolical, it's all here. Heck, there's a lot to collect to, which I see nothing wrong with (inherently). And Chunky and Lanky are amazing. However, I just can't say this game is 100 (or 101%) all there. Tiny Kong is WAY too similar to Dixie Kong (who is a fan-favorite for a reason), and with all the backtracking, it feels like I'm playing the game 5 times over in levels, covering ground I've already since covered before. Despite all this, and an overall sour taste I feel in my mouth, I see a good game buried in DK64. It shines with the hub of DK Island & Crocodile Isle, Jungle Japes is great with how it is paced (along with parts of Creepy Castle) and it finishes strong with Hideout Helm and the spectacular K. Rool Duel. There is good fun to be had in DK64, but it is held back by some baffling decisions that just arbitrarily extend playtime. And I've come to that conclusion from a casual AND 101% playthrough.
happy to see someone on youtube who loves this game its my fav DK game i 101% the game i never had that much trouble with it i had a lot of fun with it
I had an N64 as a kid and somehow missed this gem at that time, none of my friends had it either. I think it got overshadowed a bit by Zelda. I’m playing it through now for the first time in my 30s and having a blast! Also there are 650 comments and you have replied to almost all of them- impressive!! New subscriber!
Thanks so much for subscribing. So I try to respond to every comment on my channel because I told myself when I started my RUclips journey back in 2022 I wanted to be someone who actively engaged with his community and I also just want to talk about games I love and learn. I’ll admit it’s getting a little crazy with this one but I’m trying to get em all! I appreciate you watching :)
That's the problem with today's generation. They're so entrenched in ever-advancing graphics and a changing game industry that they shit all over older generation games. No respect for their elders. This game was an epic part of my childhood.
Was shocked when I got older and learned that this game had so many complaints. I enjoyed my time exploring every nook and cranny in this game and thought the collectibles were mostly fair since you don’t have to come even close to 100% completion to beat it. In fact, if they added just a little more mechanical diversity in the kong’s movesets, they could easily expand and add even more. Okay, yeah, the banana and coin placement could be reworked, but I never personally had an issue with it. My only real major complaint about this game was being forced to beat the original DK arcade game. That sucked, and saying it took me a long time to beat is an understatement. In fact, I never did as a kid. I came back to this game 15 years later and managed to beat it.
@@WindmageZyphos same pretty much. I didn’t beat this game until I was like 13 because I couldn’t figure out how to get the Nintendo coin. My issue wasn’t the arcade machine, but KNOWING I needed to play the arcade machine lol
The biggest issue for me was trying to get a high score in jetpack and beating the original donkey kong just to finish the game. It also had the same slow movement of rare platformers. It also takes longer to collect the golden bananas compared to stars or jiggies.
I thought DK64 was amazing when it came out. I loved having such a huge game in my collection. My only complaint was the continued tradition of recycled bosses. That's purely nitpicking.
I actually had that complaint as well. I loved the bosses we had but always wanted a new one because when they were introduced they had charm and cool designs!
Beautiful retrospective! It's a good point that we are drawn to certain qualities in games and you showed plenty to appreciate with Donkey Kong 64 - my favorite game ^-^ Love how you spoke about the common issues and brought forth the positive characteristics - such as the characters themselves and how players only need to collecting a certain amount of items to finish the game
This is great and is making want to give DK64 another go. I do like some of the collecting in it, even though I do wish it had what mods included: switching Kongs instantly. I do think, and this is prob a subjective thing on my part, that my main issue is the level design. The levels after a while feel like they lack a bit of direction and structure. Banjo Kazooie generally used central landmarks [like Clanker, the big snowman, the mansion, the tall tree etc] and that made the levels understandable to navigate after quickly looking around - something I felt DK64 lacked. Still, I have fond memories of renting this game and I can properly complete it now...if my backlog weren't getting bigger.
The levels are a lot bigger than Kazooies hence the warp pads. I think those were intended to be markers. I honestly didn’t have a huge problem with that, but it was a thing I see what you mean!
I have been playing this game for over twenty years and I only have a few complaints. 1: the tag system, this was remedied by downloading the Tag Anywhere patch. 2: The Beetle Races, extremely difficult as you have to collect a certain amount of coins and beat the beetle to the finish. Sadly haven't been able to find a way to make that easier. 3: The Rabbit Races, for the same as above. Otherwise this is a great game and I'll continue playing it till I'm dead.
DK64 only needed some minor changes to become a great game. I maintain it's biggest problem is that too many collectables were only obtainable by one kong, and the Kong barrels were always too far. You'd have to comb each area at least 3 times with 3 different kongs to get everything, even if it's just bananas and coins. Two solutions: A) Allow players to change kong anywhere, except for special rooms only accessible by one or two kongs. B) Make all the Collectables obtainable by all kongs, except for Gold Bananas, and maybe a 2nd major collectable. All the other kong specific things like the music platforms can stay. It sounds petty, but changing the rainbow coloured Bananas to all yellow would probably let people warm up more to the game at least.
I legit feel the biggest fix to donkey kong 64 would be removing the DK barrel and just letting you switch with the d pad (which isn't used at all in the game) up gives you Diddy, down gives Tiny, left gives Lankey, right gives Chunky. If you're already one of those 4 pressing their corresponding button nets you DK
this was one of those games that my friends and i played to death back in the day, so when i replayed it a few years ago i had no issues with figuring out where to go and what to do, sure the backtracking and variety of collectibles can be a problem but it was never something i ever really noticed simply because there was always somewhere else to go with that character. the one issue i always had was the availability of the kong barrels but even then it wasnt something that i noticed until i was an adult and it was pointed out to me. Thanks for making this video ill have to check out the rest of them! also with beaver bother, sure it was tough when i first jumped back into it but i dont remember it being all that hard, i think that you need to just overcompensate how far you need to travel to get them to go in the hole, although i noticed in your video one of them standing right on the precipice and not walking in so maybe there is a bit of BS in this one.
Literally one of the first games I played ever, I was like 5 or 6 when I played it for the first time, and I was floored by the sense of exploration and the music was amazing, I have loved this game ever since, the only real complaint I have is Diddy's jetpack controls. But yeah the Rare games are the reason Grant Kirkhope is my favorite video game music producer, I'm currently in my second playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur after finishing Yooka-Laylee and I just can't get enough. Great video man, I'm gonna go check out more of your videos :)
I was the same age range! Back when it released! Thanks for watching! I def have more content if you like this and even more to come! This Friday is going to be the greatest Rare related video I’ve ever made so be ready!!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎮 *Defending Donkey Kong 64: Introduction and Background* - Introduction to the speaker's passion for defending Donkey Kong 64. - Overview of the game's release and development history. - Discussion on initial positive reviews and the shift in public opinion over time. 02:01 🍌 *Addressing Criticisms: Too Many Collectibles* - Explanation of the game's collectibles and their significance. - Refutation of the notion that 100% completion is necessary to enjoy the game. - Analysis of the organization of collectibles and potential improvements. 04:30 🕹️ *Critique of Mini-Games and Characters* - Evaluation of mini-games, including both enjoyable and problematic ones. - Discussion on the game's character cast and player perceptions. - Refutation of criticisms regarding character selection and tag barrel placement. 06:57 🎶 *Appreciation for Game Elements* - Praise for the game's music, graphics, and sound design. - Positive assessment of gameplay mechanics, controls, and variety of moves. - Reflection on the game's enduring appeal and the need for reassessment of its merits. Made with HARPA AI
Great video. I remember being 10 years old and Christmas of 99 myself and my sister received the green DK64 bundle and Ocarina of Time. I’ll never forget that day! I’m almost 35 now haha, how time does go by fast
I'd like to see this game remade. Maybe give the levels more clearly defined sections designated towards each Kongs. The game already does this but it could still be segmented a little better. Having DK follow bananas and end up at a door that Chunky has to open for Tiny is a little all over the place. I'd like to see the collectable requirements be set so if one Kong finds everything they can find, they can beat the game, and then maybe have a unique final boss and ending.
You just earned yourself a new subscriber. This is my childhood and I love it! I can't wait for Crowd Control version of this to drop so I can stream it in all its glory with the craziness added!
DK64 is awesome. "You don't have to collect it all" THANK YOU. I get so sick of hearing people complain that 100% is tedious. Its like... Thats pretty much every collectathon ever 😅 Theres so little backtracking and tedium when all youre doing is getting enough to move on. Also, people seem to think they need to change kongs every time they see a different colored collectible but you don't. Just collect the ones you can when you come across them and you will get enough.
I did my 101% (Including every banana and coin accessible without glitches) playthrough a year ago and ended with a final time at around 32 hours, though that was with prior knowledge of the game. It was pretty fun, but the latter part of the game (Creepy Castle onwards) was a massive pain. It wasn't the number of collectibles that were the problem at all, it was the minigames. You would do something that previously in the game would just give you a banana, instead it'd give you a minigame barrel as the reward, and most of the minigames are honestly pretty bad tbh, and some are genuinely nearly impossible. One of the ones where you have to shoot the target and avoid the kongs was genuinely so ridiculously precise with its timing that after multiple hours of attempts, I just decided to cheat and use the slow feature on the emulator I was using. Other than that, fun game.
People tend to forget that games back then didn't have a lot to do and most are rather short games. This game put in so much I spent literal summers trying to collect everything and I loved every bit of it. I can see the complaints today but back then this game game us so much to do as kids so screw anyone and everyone that has issues with my favorite game 😊
One of my favourite childhood games! Played it again recently and... still loved it. It's not perfect of course and has its issues, just like every game every made. But it's nowhere near deserving of the hate it gets these days. Honestly you know what I think the problem is? The "zoomer" mindset most people have now. No one just PLAYS a game anymore. They load it up for the first time and already have a 100% collectibles walkthrough on their second monitor. They won't progress until they've researched what they might miss out on by doing so. It's just a terrible way to approach games, people are literally optimising the fun out of their own hobby.
Yes. Where is the exploration and self discovery? Everyone tries to find the answers immediately. Games like Fortnite (no hate just an observation) have instant gratification for kids playing and it’s mindless. They just don’t make them very often like they used to. And they aren’t enjoyed like they used to be.
This is the fourth video I’ve seen in a while that is defending this game. I’m so happy to see this. This game is my childhood, more than any other game on the system. I don’t get why people have to complain about all the collectibles when you said in your video yourself that you don’t even have to collect everything just to experience what the game has to offer. I also love other games in the system from rareware. You have yourself a new subscriber. 👍🏻
DK64 is all about exploring and remembering where stuff was while doing another task at the moment. people who complain about 10 seconds ''backtrack'' to find a tag barrel are just trolls tbh. i always loved it that i had to remember locations where i had to come back with a different kong. it's like that you have to do 5 different storys in each world which always was an extremely nice feature to me. and after all the effort you get one of the best bossfights on the platform as a reward.
Great video! I last played it years ago, and the issue of bugs never came up for me. People probably play it so much more now, and have discovered so much that's easier to notice. I loved it so much! I never owned it so I didn't get to beat it but I longed for it. Oh and that Beaver Bother game was frustrating as hell! Thanks for this lookback!
I'm 100% prone to nostalgia bias, without a doubt! I also played DKC 1-3 before 64... However, I totally agree with you about the cast. They're all great characters in my opinion! It's important to not let nostalgia for the good old days blind you from the joy of everything else that came after that! :D Excellent video, my friend!
People also forget the graphics and lighting was basically wizardry in an N64. Loved the game, but never tried collecting everything. Also, I the changes in collectibles and gun usage is something I’ve been saying. Giving the guns different functions would even give a meteoidvania element
@@brutusmagnuson315 yes!! Like Chunkys could breakdown walls and Lanky’s could be the only one with a precision shot, while Tiny’s popped balloons. I just would like that!
The biggest problem with the cast is that it doesn't meaningfully feel like 5 distinct characters, it feels like 1 character repeated 5 times. All of them have the same move speed and jump height/length, and extremely similar movement abilities. Tiny is the only one who organically interacts with level geometry via the ponytail twirl. The vast majority of the time, a barrier to entry is a music/ground pound/gun etc. Panel, which all kongs interact with in the same way mechanically. A gap only tiny can cross feels a lot more gratifying than a door that can only be opened by a ground pound switch, which all 5 kongs can do, but has a particular kong's face on it. The Banjo Tooie transformations feel like a fully realized version of what the DK64 kongs should have been.
I swear, the Wii U Virtual Console release is somehow subtly messed up. If people are complaining about bugs or similar issues, I can believe it if the Wii U is how they played it. I've had no issues with emulation or the original hardware. For people who are really skeptical about giving DK64 a shot, I highly recommend playing with the Switch Kongs Anywhere emulator cheat. It's a shame it's charm is being downplayed, it always felt like a Banjo-Kazooie 1.5 or Banjo-Halfie to me.
I'm probably just an old guy ranting but I was 13 when this game came out and I absolutely loved it and definitely made my 1999 school holidays a great time. At the time I wasn't able to buy many games so I thought that the amount of content was great since I had a lot of time to spend playing and not many options. For it's time it was quite a looker too, honestly compared to first generation Dreamcast games, it looked remarkably well and better than most N64 games. I loved it back in the day and Frankly most people did. The hate this game gets nowadays is a strange and recent fad. I can understand why, for someone playing it for the first time will find the collectibles excessive and all but for it's time it was a lot of value for your money. I haven't checked on it in a lot of years and maybe I won't other than to show it to my youngest kid someday but I totally agree with you @jiggylookback this is still a good game and definitely deserves to be defended
Beaver Bother isn’t based on luck. The trick to that is you need to press the B button while you are beside the beavers. Once you do that, the beavers will move to the opposite direction of whichever side of them you scare them from. If you are in front of a beaver and you press the B button, then they’ll turn around and run in the opposite direction. That’s how you direct them to where you want them to go. It takes some getting used to but after a couple tries you’ll get the hang of it and it’s really easy. If you just run around constantly pressing the B button, then you’re going to scatter them everywhere and mess everything up.
I 100% understand the mechanics of Beaver Bother, but they are broken. You can get the beavers to the hole and they are blocked from falling in. It is def a super buggy mini game. If it was fixed it'd be fine.
Playing this game as a kid was really fun. I got invested with the music, levels, puzzles and have grown to love the characters. Never minded the backtracking nor the amount of stuff to collect in this game. Only thing I really hated was that Nintendo coin. That Donkey Kong arcade game was difficult. To make matters worse was you needed it to get to the final part of the game, alongside the Rareware coin
The new wave sentiment of hating this game is literally, "It's got too much content!" Me: OK? It's hard to 100%! Me: Do you 100% every game you play? Cause most people don't The DK rap is cringe! Me: You're cringe.
On the point of "You don't have to collect everything." I get what you're saying, but arguably the point of a Collectathon isn't "How much do I have to do to win." I'd argue that the sub-genre itself thrives upon the idea of doing everything, finding everything, getting every little bit you can out of the game. Furthermore consider as well that the forebears DK64 is built upon, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy and Banjo-Kazooie, explicitly dangle that full completion carrot in your face, making it a point that not only should you get 10X%, you WANT to get 10X%. You've got to get Cranky's praise, you've got to put Diddy on top of that Video Game Heroes podium, you've just got to know what's in those secret photos Mumbo is waving around and find out more about Banjo-Tooie. Completion is the end-goal of a collectathon, beating the game isn't. At least, that's how I feel, and in my personal opinion, completing DK64 is *exhausting.* Sure, you don't have to get 101%. You don't. But they didn't put the completion percentage on your save file just because they thought it would look nice there.
I guess my point is less “they want you to collect everything” and more “if you don’t want to you don’t have to”. I agree the point of collectibles to collect them, but I don’t think it’s required to enjoy the game tho I think it adds to it myself! But if people do not want to collect things which I do highly encourage they don’t have to. When it’s all said and done they shouldn’t use that as a reason to not play this game. It’s a good game! Personally I like shooting for the 101%. But I did it several times and took my time I wasn’t trying to chug through it to get to the next game. Play styles also have an effect.
@@jiggylookback Despite the tone of my previous comment, I definitely don't hate DK64. 3D Collectathons are probably my favorite sub-genre of all time and I've played, if not at least dabbled, in every single one I could get my hands on. There was a good while where as a kid when I didn't own the game, I was absolutely in love with the game after playing it on a rental and seeing later levels through a different save file. You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. But I'm also a completionist, to a degree. I won't drive myself insane over things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, like the colored bananas, which don't actually contribute to percentage, while Medals do, and I always like to keep in mind the "margin for error" these games have in what you're "allowed" to miss while still getting everything, like how you can miss two Jiggies in BK and still get the Health Upgrade right before the final fight. But DK64 is definitely a game I have a complex history with. I understand that, much like reviews at the time noted, they wanted to make a bigger, badder Banjo-Kazooie, and that's fine, but even then for sheer size it's a bit much. Scale is often what I mean when I say completing the game is exhausting, and I'm of the mindset that DK64 is too much, and Banjo-Tooie definitely starts pushing it in the back-half, which sadly isn't a lesson they seemed to have learned with Yooka-Laylee, but that's another discussion. As for playstyles, I love to be efficient with most things, it's why Banjo-Kazooie is evergreen to me. Circumnavigating every level and knowing the best, cleanest route to sweep through and find everything is invigorating to me, and the general design of DK64, which seems to be mostly designed for you to avoid each world five times, and knowing which order to scour in for the most efficient way through can be tough to figure out sometimes. But I think we can all agree, no matter what your playstyle is, or how much you want to complete, asking you to play Beaver Bother twice in one level is enough to break anyone's spirit.
@@lightninstriker10 we can all agree on Beaver Bother. You have a great point about the cleanness of Banjo Kazooie and collecting. Only 1 instance of backtracking. Most people definitely prefer to clear levels as they come at least mostly. Tooie and DK64 definitely suffer from padded backtracking. As a kid and exploring tho I loved discovering all these things! We should really get a NSO release. Dang!
I had a lot of genuine fun playing the multiplayer with friends back in the day. My personal gripe with the game is having to beat the original Donkey Kong for the coin. It took me way too long and I was miserable at it. I enjoyed Jetpac though and had fun.
I played DKC games first and i still adored the 64 cast. Great video man. Doing right by this game and fair, logical and passionate analysis. Cheers bro! 👌
I remember exploring this game for HOURS at a time as a kid, it wasn't a game for me, it was an experience. The music, the atmosphere, the simple gameplay. We also didn't have a lot of video games growing up, so l didn't have an arsenal to compare it to. And I never felt like all the items were required like a checklist [or you didn't progress,] just something to get along the way and you WILL get along the way. It was more like a treasure hunt. 4:23 - I also thought that made it more fun for me to backtrack with a different Kong too, it never felt like a chore, because you felt like by going to said area with a different Kong meant that you may unlock more secrets with them. I don't even blame nostalgia either, because I recently downloaded a ROM and began playing again, back to the old fun feelings of just escaping into the world and unlocking every stage slowly but surely. Its therapeutic. Sure its not comparable the most fully realized AAA title out there, but its something to do.
@@xxTheLocketxx yes! I played again recently and same! I really enjoy it. It has the same quality to me the show the office does. I can just relax and enjoy the vibes without lots of stress.
The argument of "too many collectables" is definitely a "let me think like everyone else" statement. You can literally beat the game in 1 sitting if you wanted to. It's not a problem not liking the game, but calling it a bad game just isn't fair. We're at a point now where these old games are really showing their age now that gaming in general is looked at more analytically rather than having the "fun factor" they used to. I personally can't stand playing Ocarina of time, but i can think back to 1998 and think damn this game must've been incredible. DK 64 deserves the same credit. Yes it's aged, but pretend you're 6-7 years old in 1999. This game was a dream for those of us who had nothing else to do or play
The only time back-tracking ever annoyed me in this game was with the day/night mechanic in the Forest level, otherwise I never felt as though it was excessive or bothersome, and it is absolutely worth it to have to back-track a little in order for the scale of content the game has to offer to exist with the 5 different characters. The positives of this design aspect far outweigh the negatives for me. While there are definitely changes that could benefit the game, I feel like this game in particular gets ridiculed for all of its “product of its time” aspects far more than other old games do. I recently played through Pokemon Blue and I love that game, but it is very archaic with countless design flaws, and it seems like despite that it is looked back on fondly and those aspects of it are seen as “charming”… (okay I’ll admit, using a glitch to play through with a Mew is quite fun, but still the game has glaring issues) But either way, I feel like you can play ANY game from that far back and you are CERTAIN to deal with some aspect of it that doesnt hold up. I think that’s to be expected and I dont fault old games for being old games, but for some reason it seems like DK64 in particular is given no grace at all, and I dont get it. Still one of my favorite games. Also I actually enjoy most of the mini games, and dont hate any 🤷♂️
I just replayed this to 101% completion on a livestream. Honestly imo the slot machine is the only mini game I really dislike. Beaver bother is a close second, but it’s just a little jank. The concept for it is fine. I do agree fungi forest was the only level I felt I really had to backtrack to different areas a ton with a different Kong and a different time of day, but still wasn’t too bad. I overall still really had fun and loved it!
@ I wouldnt say I dislike the slot machine, its probably the most boring mini games but theres nothing like annoying or agonizing about it, just not that interesting. I understand why some people hate Beaver Bother, because theres definitely times where its like “HOW DID YOU NOT FALL IN THE HOLE???” but I kinda enjoy that its difficult and forces me to be precise. I in general like challenging things. Also the more I thought about it I also dont like the back-tracking in Gloomy Galleon with the different water heights changing what is accessible. I’ve 101% played through this game like 10+ times so I dont mind it that much, since I just know to expect it going in, but I do wish Fungi Forest and Gloomy Galleon both had ways to change the time/water in each area of the levels.
@ yes I agree. If they did that on each level it would make them both much better. Just quick access to changing things so you don’t have to go across the whole level. At least in Gloomy Galleon you have warp pads and an easy track back to the other side. Fungi Forest is easy to get lost if you aren’t paying attention to the color of the tunnels
Nice to see people spreading positivity on DK64. I was hoping my childhood wasn't a lie 😂 It did annoy me that I had to keep switching kongs to get everything but I actually liked running through and exploring the worlds at that time. Even with SM64 and SA/SA2 I spend alot of time in the hub worlds just looking at the scenery.
I recently 101%'d this game for the first time and yeah, I think it was fun, played great, looked great, and especially, sounded great. My only problem with this game is that damn broken Beaver Bother minigame, it nearly made me go INSANE several times. Go suck a lemon, Beaver Bother! Honestly every complain I've seen about this game just comes across as arrogant and silly. It just comes across like some people trying to act like they're hard to please or something lol.
As someone who loved this game when it first came out, I want to start this off by saying that I do agree with a lot of the points you've made, but I think you brushed over one of the most egregious parts of the game. Yes, you do have to get the Nintendo and Rareware coins to finish the game, but you're completely ignoring the fact that that's incredibly difficult, but not because of how you can access them, but because of what you need to do once you do access them. In all the other mini games, they last about a minute long each at worst, and they were built with several game mechanics and controls in mind. However, to get the aforementioned coins, you need to play through two classic video games, Jetpac, and the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game. The former is simple enough because you don't need to get too far in the game to get the coin, but the latter is easily the worst part of the entire game, not just because it's difficult, but because it's required. The game does not ease you into the 1981 DK game, and you have to beat the entire game's four levels twice, with the second time on hard mode, to get the Nintendo coin, without getting a game over in any of the four levels. As an adult with decades of gaming experience at this point, I can do it pretty easily these days, with maybe some slight struggles as I readjust. But as a kid, and this game was intended for kids, I was literally sobbing trying to to beat this challenge because all I wanted to do was beat the final boss, considering I had done literally everything else. I would have rather they didn't make this aspect a requirement, because it added a frustrating challenge to access the final boss. Don't get me wrong, DK64 is a good game. But is it as good as Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie? No. Those games were designed better and had clear expectations of their players that stayed true from beginning to end. DK64 tried to do that, but it wasn't anywhere near as successful.
Personally I brushed over them because I didn’t have an issue with them. The only issue I had was actually knowing to get the 64 coin you had to play the DK arcade. I was playing Jetpac after I got the rare coming wondering where it was. But I didn’t find difficulty in it like others seem too. But fair point!
One of the goats of the console. I'll always remember getting the game and the guide. Having to slam that expansion pack in to power this beast of a game. Seeing the green jungle console that just fit the game so well. The fact that the collectible chasing never ends is part of what I like about it. I always loved seeing something in one level and then realizing later that you have to go back with a new character or ability
The one thing that every defender misses on the topic of collectibles is that a huge chunk of the color bananas are condensed into balloons and bunches. You aren't collecting 4000 individual bananas. Like 60% of them are in the form of 5s and 10s. And they're on the ground. They're not Korok seeds where you have to do things just to get them. And again, let me remind you, THEY AREN'T 4000 INIDIVIDUAL PICK UPS!
The minimum required bananas to collect is actually 2,650 if you want to complete the game at 101%. In Creepy Castle you actually need to get a bare minimum average of 80 bananas for each Kong to face the boss. Remember, Hideout Helm doesn’t actually have any Bananas or Golden Bananas, just the Banana Medals and 1 Battle Arena for a Crown.
thank you for offering a counter weight to this debate!
That’s exactly what I was hoping to do! Want people who may have been swayed by the hate train to give this game a shot! I love me some DK64!
I also love your videos!
Someone who doesn't like the DK Rap is not going to enjoy many games at all 'cause they obviously don't know how to have fun.
Agreed
It feels SOOOO GOOD to finally see someone defending this gem of a game. My brother and I were baffled when we found out that apparently the intenet hates this game. As kids we'd be GLUED to the screen. Especially my brother (he's the one who actually went for the 101%). My favorite N64 collect-a-thon and my second favorite of that console.
I STAND FOR DK64!
I can't help but assume that basically anytime there is a major contingent of people griping about stuff like this game that the majority have probably never played it and are just jumping on the bandwagon. It's not a perfect game by any means but also why does it need to be?
oh I can relate to this comment, I too used to play this with my brother and I was the one getting 101%. It really suprises me to find out that people hate this game and also DKC3.
@@andresgarro9095 RIGHT?!
@@jiggylookback maybe you can make a video defending DKC3 🤭
My only memory of this game was my step dad walking in while I was playing, looking at it for two seconds as DK swam in the water and saying "that's one smart monkey, huh?" and then walked away.
LOL 😂 I mean he can talk so yeah he’s pretty smart
That is the most dad thing I’ve ever heard.
I can’t believe the cast is something that’s complained about! It’s one of its strongest areas!
Yeah I heard that all on my Twitter response. Crazy!
I agree, you think people weren't complaining when DK wasn't playable in DKC2 or DKC3(as well as Diddy in it) when they first came out? What nonsense.
Why replace Dixie with Trixie or whatever
Would've been better with Dixie not Tiny
Should have had all the DKC characters. Dixie, Funky, and Kiddy
I always felt DK64 is supposed to have a ton of collectibles, because 1999 wasn't really a time where someone could have instant access to a digital catalog to play other games if they got bored. Back then, our parents bought this game at the store, and we played it because we only had that, and a few other games. While I'm a big fan of Banjo-Kazooie, the biggest problem to me is: BK can beaten in like under 2 weeks of casual play (1world/day.) DK64 alleviates that by just having more things to collect.
Yes! For the time it was really awesome to have so much content in one game!!
Back in the day, collect-a-thons were not a genre. DK64 was an adventure game with a bunch of collectables.
Today, people think the maim purpose of the game is to collect evey single thing. It's not. The goal is to complete it.
This is where Banjo-Kazooie nailed it. Banjo-Kazooie didn't add too much, making the line between adventuring and collecting much more cohesive.
People's mentality about collect-a-thons have changed, because the way we play games have changed. I used to get as far as possible in games as quickly as I could, because I wanted to explore. In Banjo-Kazooie, I couldn't wait to unlock the next note door or next world, so I wouldn't worry about collecting everything.
As an adult, I'm far more meticulous. I'm able to delay my curiosity of what's ahead in order to beat games more thoroughly.
I believe this is, to a degree, true for most people.
Collect-a-thons are rare nowadays, so I imagine they can feel a bit tedious or overwhelming to younger players who aren't used to collect-a-thons.
That's my take. I haven't watched the video, but that's my pre-watch theory.
Collect-a-thons you might say were always a "Rare" thing
@Truxple and you never need too lol
BOTW and TOTK are also bad...if you see them as a collectathon. Lots of useless stuff to collect that takes a lot of time, but that's not the sense of the game...same with DK64. It's really a dumb criticism for the game that I never heard until a few years ago. Some gamers forget that games are supposed to be fun and played the way you want, and not a "mission" to 100% everything all the time. Sometimes that is fun too, but imo most time it isn't and you don't need to do it to have fun.
@@Ray_2112 yeah just enjoy how you have lots of choices but you don’t have to complete everything. Rule 1 of gaming: have fun.
And here I was as a kid refusing to move on till I found everything. I even made a crappy geocities guide on how to 100% the game.
In that era, a game being long was the best thing that could happen, you could play a ton of hours for a fair price and with a world as vividly as dk64 i think its underestimated the levels of fun the game can produce
Update: My Nephew now LOVES this game.
Awesome he’s happy to have an awesome uncle
My nephews love the multiplayer mode. It's a game they choose most often when they come to my place.
That is awesome!@@LuffyMcDuck
That’s cute
He saw the light
I'm a simple man, I see DK64, I click.
Samesies honestly. 😎
Ditto!
The DK Rap is better then every mainstream rap song
It slaps pretty hard.
Very false tbh, but it's better than a lot of it.
@@sheetinthestreet5903 I am mildly joking Im generally not into mainstream rap either lol
It's the only good rap song in the world
Were people actually insulting the DK Rap? I can't believe that, it's a classic.
As a fellow DK64 defender, I have quite a bit to say actually. But there are a few points I'd like to make.
Firstly with the game's length. I find it a bit odd that people complain about the game's length and number of collectables while praising games like Mario Odyssey with its hundreds of power moons. I 101 percented DK64 blind and clocked in with 36 hours on my save file. Compare that to my blind Odyssey playthrough which went well over 100 hours. Yes, having to backtrack IS annoying every now and then. But it never really felt all that tedious. And for me at least the worlds hit that sweet spot of being just big enough to feel satisfying, while not being too big to feel daunting to find everything in, like Sand and Metro Kingdom from Odyssey.
Secondly is the minigames. I understand a lot of the frustration. Believe me, I've felt it too. But part of that frustration isn't DK64's fault. The Nintendo 64 had issues with lag, and Rare knew this. Many of the minigames were designed with this lag in mind to make the games function. But since most people nowadays will be playing this game on the Wii U or emulators, the minigames are going to be significantly harder than they were intended to be. It's the same reason Canary Mary's races are a nightmare on the Xbox port of Banjo Tooie. They're more powerful systems without the issue of lag. (Though Beaver Bother admittedly sucks no mater what console you're playing on.)
At the end of the day, no. I don't think DK64 "Killed the the platforming genre." I think there's a lot of contributing factors that went into their decline. Shooting games were on the rise, Playstation were capitalizing on it, and soon Xbox would do the same. (Rare saw their popularity even back then. Goldeneye was a huge hit. Meanwhile DK64, Tooie, Jet Force Gemini and Conker all had gunplay of some kind. ) If anything, I'd say Rare was just too ambitious. It just wasn't the time for the games to be as big as they wanted them to be. I know that sounds a bit biased, I know DK64 has legitimate flaws with its level design and pacing. But claiming it's this unplayable, genre-killing marathon of a game has always seemed unfair. ESPECIALLY considering some of its complaints are praised in other platformers.
Agreed
assuming no walkthroughs, I'm not sure I believe that you did this game in 36 hours blind but odyssey took over 100 hours. I'd believe both being the same even but odyssey is just shorter no matter how you slice it, not THREE TIMES longer lol
Indeed. I 100% DK64 back in the day but got burnt out on Mario Odyssey and Yoshi’s Crafted World. The too many collectibles argument doesn’t fly with me.
My biggest complaint at the time was framerate lag. That was the main reason I preferred Banjo-Kazooie.
@@oswinner9265 it’s crazy now I feel I need to replay the game. Maybe I’m just so desensitized to it on the 64!
I was noticing it in my Earthworm Jim 3d playthrough but not because of dips but because when you look in first person the frame rate blasts off to 60 and then dips back to 30 when you disengage first person. It’s so weird.
@@bobbysworldofficial in what way could Odyssey not be longer than an N64 title? All the collectibles really don't take that long when there are teleporters and character switching barrels everywhere. I've spent longer on the desert area of Odyssey than the first 3 DK64 areas combined. DK is densely packed and the maps are actually quite small
As someone who is completely OCD about collecting every possible thing in a game world no matter how useless, DK64 satisfies this itch like few other. DK64 doesn't have too many collectibles- your favorite game doesn't have enough.
You know what I was thinking today while playing GTA San Andreas?
"Damn, this game has a lot of hidden collectibles and minigames, there's so much to do it's insane for a game this old"
And then I realized nobody complains about Grand Theft Auto games having too many hidden items, or having too many optional mini games (with a few sprinkled into the main story, like every other adventure game).
It's honestly insane the amount of hate people are dumping on these old N64 classics all of sudden. I suspect the majority of them are either literal kids who didn't grow up with the games, or they are 30-45 year old nintendo nerds who played Yooka Laylee and then transfer that game's shortcomings to it's spiritual predecessors.
Yes I think you’re right! But I have found that a lot of the younger generation I talk about this game too is really receptive and end up liking it!
I think Fortnite and TikTok culture is really influencing them bad.
I played this game as a kid and really enjoyed it. My friends and me would talk about where some of the collectables were and our progress. My first play through was incredible and it was exactly what I wanted it to be. The second time I played the game all the way through, I was getting kind of annoyed switching kongs. That was pretty much my only problem. I went back to play the game and used a bunch of glitches. This really made the game cool.
Man the speed running community has found so many glitches to get through that game so quick it’s awesome. I have done some of those as well and I was moving pretty fast! Love it!
@jiggylookback That's pretty rad. They definitely broke the game. I found a bunch of glitches as well. Once you know what to look for, it is easy to discover glitches.
My first play through, I didn't do any glitches at all. Also, the game worked perfectly and wasn't buggy at all. The glitches aren't so obvious. The game also wasn't buggy for me.
I think people are just following the crowd when they give these negative reviews. In my opinion, donkey Kong 64 was better than Banjo Kazooie for multiple reasons. Let's take losing a life with banjo Kazooie and starting the level again and losing all your collectibles.
Dk 64 was a great collectathon. Still to this day, I play similar games. Dk 64 was fantastic. If anything, it's like mario 6 If you want to beat the game, you can and avoid most collectibles. But for us Fans of the genre, the point of the game is taking on the challenge of collecting e everything. I definitely give dk64 a 👍. practically perfect game for us collecathon addicts
I think the 'too many collectibles' complaint is one of those weird things someone says online and everybody just agrees with without actually thinking about.
I played DK64 when it came out, to completion if memory serves, and I've completed it a couple of times since then.
My biggest complaints are:
* The minigames. There is no way around this one. In the best case, minigames are a welcome reprieve from the regular gameplay. A short quick burst to shake things up a bit now and again. But in DK64, whenever I have to do a minigame, my heart sinks. Beaver Bother is far and away the worst offender, but this applies to all of them, just to a lesser degree. During one playthrough, I actually started to just skip some Bananas, even though I'm a hardcore completionist.
** Way too many moves / upgrades are basically 'button presses' that only serve to gate some areas. The musical instruments, some of the pad / barrel abilities, and even the guns are just that.
*** (related to **) The stage design is blatantly segmented, with every level having some mini-areas set aside for each Kong. In the most blatant examples, there are a bunch of doors next to each other, each reserved for a different Kong. E.g. Gloomy Galleon and Crystal Cave
**** The Kongs play very similar. They all have a weapon and an instrument that work all the same, and apart from their special moves, they feel very similarly.
***** Least important, but still. Why did they come up with Tiny, when she is super similar to Dixie? I have no idea why that was necessary. Use her hair twirl. She can shrink, sure. If Donkey can turn invisible all of a sudden, why shouldn't she get a new ability? Let her keep the guitar, and give Diddy some other instrument (IF all the Kongs actually need one!). Diddy could even get the sax.
Agreed on a lot of counts. But I do like most of the levels!
I never found beaver bother that hard since I discovered that they fall in when herded indirectly.
It was that tnt outlast minecart that I hated
Absolutely agree on the minigames, I swear that beaver corale one is bugged. You could get it on the edge, be biting the beaver's tail and it'll just 180 and slip past you right back to the edge of the map.
Still got my original childhood copy that came with my jungle japes green see-through n64 and matching controller. It may be a bit rough to complete but it'll always hold a special place in my heart as my personal favorite DK game
That Jungle Green 64 is so cool looking! I always wanted one. Someday when my RUclips takes off I’m getting it! For now my Gold 64 will suffice. I grew up with the original base colored one.
@@jiggylookback As much as I can understand that the game does have it’s fair share of fans, you can’t deny that switching characters should’ve been easy and would’ve saved time, if it was reserved within a pause menu. To me, having to change characters by backtracking is an inconvenience. I’m not saying I hate the game, just that there needs some quality control is all.
Still have my green controller
Honestly "Too many collectibles" doesn't even sound like a real complaint, especially in this modern age full of big open world games with loads and loads of collectibles. BoTW's Korok seeds immediately come to mind for this.
I agree. But it’s partly the design of the layout of the collectibles for sure. But if people collect 100 korok seeds in a massive open world this doesn’t seem so bad. Lol
More like 600 seeds. Almost impossible without a guide.
Correction for both of you, it was 900… yeah they were not intending ANYONE to get them all lol. I mean the reward for actually doing so kinda speaks for itself…
It’s optional in most modern games not the entire game itself, to be fair. Though I think we can all agree that complaining about collecting things in a collect-a-thon is dumb.
For real. It was just expanding on the foundation that Banjo Kazooie laid for 3D platformers except with a DK twist. I'd argue that it's a better follow-up to Banjo Kazooie than Banjo Tooie.
I honestly think the whining about backtracking is insane. It's one of the funnest parts of tooie too.
Returning to a level beefed up with new abilities to use and exploit and finding more and more stuff keeps things nice and fresh despite the length of it all. Being able to fully explore a DK64 level on the first go would mean they'd need to cut like half the content or it'd be obscenely long. There's nothing wrong with leaving it incomplete and returning. Literally the only issue is adding a few more Kong switch spots. "Backtracking" in this instance means breaking up the linear progression with familiar yet distinctly new areas in more bite sized forms.
And yeah it's a bit ironic people whine it's too buggy cuz of all the speedrun specific tricks it has...but no one has the same complaints about Ocarina of Time which is one of the most mangled and broken videogames in history. Neither affects a casual playthrough.
Oh I got a Tooie video coming soon! All true!
I love both Tooie and DK64.
Also yeah this and Tooie are Kirkhope’s masterpieces. The grand and whimsical theme of DK Isles, the Japes remix of Jungle Hijinx whose new sections fit right into the swing vibe of the original, the eerie playfulness of Frantic Factory, and the chaotic boss remixes of each stage theme, along with K Rool’s menacing motif, it may be different from Wise’s slower, atmospheric focus, but it’s wonderful in its own way
I agree! I listen to this soundtrack, Tooies soundtrack, BK Rejiggyed and the Diddy Kong Racing soundtrack all the time!
I always thought it was stupid how people will say this game should've had less content just because they personally feel compelled to do absolutely everything. Like they're staking their pride on 100% completing a game for children from the 90s instead of just having fun with it.
It's not fun is the thing and it's also a collectathon lol the goal is to get everything
@@toooydoeurthe goal is actually to do whatever you want
@@ohno5559 the goal is to collect stuff and it isnt even fun to do that lol
@@toooydoeur
When did you even start gaming?
Because the term "Collect-a-thon" literally didn't exist until WELL after this game was made. DK64 was a 3D Platformer, just like Banjo-Kazooie, Mario 64 and its ilk.
You can't go and hold a product to an arbitrary standard that literally didn't exist
@@Birdsflight44 and it's a mediocre tedious one at that
Tbh this game would’ve been much better if you could go through the main story campaign with multiple players. It would reduce the need to backtrack and switch Kongs so often.
Co-Op would be SIIICCCKKKK
Simplest QoL: Switching between Kongs on a simple Button and so more fun and less backtracking!
Then what's the point of having multiple kongs?
@@ericlizama8552 it’s fun to have multiple Kongs and they don’t play exactly the same. But i get what you're getting at!
I preferred Diddy or Tiny myself I like speedy characters.
@@ericlizama8552
Yes thats a point! But it were a good alternative menu-option for fans that don‘t like backtracking!
When this game first came out, I used to hold it up as a model of the "perfect game," by which I meant I couldn't think of anything that could be added or removed to make it better. That take didn't age well. I first came to realize its flaws after seeing the "Switch Kongs Anywhere" option in randomizers and boy did THAT improve the game SIGNIFICANTLY.
Sentiments and opinions change over time, but too be honest this game does hold up pretty well! It has its flaws but to see modern things like the switch Kongs mod really shows how underneath it is a fundamentally good game!
Except beaver bother…
Nobody I knew back in the 90's actually collected everything. That wasn't even a thought that entered our heads. For every collectathon game we just collected exactly enough to progress, then moved on to the next area. The only time we kept on collecting was when we ran out of new games to play and our parents wouldn't get us any new ones, so we had to keep playing our old ones. And all the extra collectibles made DK64 the best game in that scenario, since there was always new stuff to grab whenever we booted it up for the 1,000th+ time. People complaining about it now forget that it was usually one of only a few games in a kid's library at the time, and having something new to collect instead of just starting back at the beginning again was awesome!
Man Collecting everything was my favorite thing back in the day I explored this game for years.
To many collectables? It's a collectathon game, and you barely need half of them to complete the game. I do agree that Bananas and Coins could have been set up better.
As someone who just recently discovered the randomizer community for this game, this video is spot on. I just completed an all collectibles run of the vanilla game and now I get to discover new ways to play DK64 with the randomizer, never requiring that I 101% the game but rather just get to K. Rool. It's a true gem of a game in all facets including story, gameplay, music, and bonus features.
I love the randomizer! Did that on stream a while back! So fun!
I can see people not being a fan of this game, but I still greatly enjoy it. I’ll pop it in every so often, relax and gather up the many many collectables the game has to offer. Speaking as someone who played the DKC series before this, complaining about the cast seems silly. I was surprised that Dixie didn’t make it into the game, but I do like Tiny as a part of the cast. All around, a fun group of characters.
I think one thing that would alleviate complaints would be to allow free swapping of characters. Just to give a break on the backtracking. I think I’ve seen this implemented in the randomized version of the game and it seems like it’d do the trick. I could even see it working if you create a pair of Kong’s that you can switch between outside of the tag barrels. That’d be a nice nod to the DKC series, where you did work as a pair and were able to swap between the two.
Either way, I’m all for this great game getting a worthy defense! 👍
You’re totally right! And yeah it’s a vibe it somehow takes me back to my childhood and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich exploring dk isle
I definitely loved this game as a kid, although I revisited it as an adult and couldn't get into it even with nostalgia goggles. While the blanket statement "too many collectibles" is a shaky premise for the reasons you mentioned, I think when people say that they're actually channelling the frustration of the back-tracking and just attributing it to the number of collectibles rather than the real issue; the tedious set of steps between them. Which then makes me wonder, why was it so fun as a kid?
My first thought is that child's sense of mystery and wonder. I remember being legitimately excited to enter each new world and even more excited to unlock all 8 keys. Not only do we become jaded as adults, at risk of sounding like a boomer (despite being full millennial) I think the age of the internet has basically killed that aspect of gaming. With social media, streaming & content creators, it's almost impossible to avoid being exposed to most parts of a game that you're interested in before you experience it yourself.
That sense of wonder was definitely compounded by the technical achievement - as mentioned by most reviewers, for the time, the graphics were good and the game was massive. We were still in the stage of "bigger is better" as technology rapidly improved. As kids during that time, we hadn't really experienced a game of that scale, which was extra appealing because many of us would only really have one new game at a time and have to make the most of it. As far as we were concerned, finishing the game was bittersweet; an achievement but also a sad moment as the game had "run out".
As you said, the theme/atmosphere is excellent and it "feels" exactly as you'd want from a DK 3D platformer. There's no real issue with the level layouts, theme & terrain, it's just the way the "stuff" inside is placed that really hurts. Along with that, my personal biggest issue with the gameplay that I REALLY noticed as an adult is how many different "moves" are literally just "press button" in a different skin. Having to "upgrade" your ground pound/musical instruments is especially egregious.
Overall, I guess I kind of feel like it's a product of its time but we were the lucky ones who got to experience it. Thanks for the video!
You’re not wrong. A big draw to this as a child was the exploring. Finding every little detail and collectible. The age of knowing everything because it’s on the internet doesn’t help this game.
I also agree having to upgrade your ground pound and things is lame. Just make it what it needs to be from the start. But overall I think the gameplay is still fun.
I still love this game even going back to it as an adult but I acknowledge it has faults.
As someone that was 29 when this first came out, I can't completely agree with this. I loved it when it first came out too. I played it again last year and enjoyed it for the most part but it did have some issues. The collectibles did get annoying. I wanted to collect them all, but there were just entirely too many. I also got annoyed with some of the mini-games or even worse when you would go through some complicated platforming only to not get a banana but instead have to complete a crappy mini-game in order to get the banana.
Criminally underrated channel, keep it up love your vids
Thanks so much! I really appreciate that!
Totally agreed. Just subscribed myself!
@@ogre706 thanks so much!!!
"Ooooh banana" has been my ringtone for years. That's how much I love this game.
DK64 is another game I love a lot. I do acknowledge that certain design decisions are a bit much, but honestly, the amount of collectibles never bothered me as a kid, and still didn't when I replayed it recently lol
That said, I think the ideal situation ‐ at least imo - would be to have a more planned out "route", with character-specific collectible chains meeting in places with a Tag Barrel more often
I still believe that having every Kong able to collect any banana would solve a lot of issues. Maybe even the blueprints too
@@jiggylookback True... my brain would mourn the loss of color variety, but that's not actually important lol (unless... each level could have a uniqur color? hmm)
I played and beat this game again a couple months ago, and I still adore it, despite its couple of completely broken minigames I can't defend. You basically just summed up all my thoughts. Love the game's creativity, characters, quirk, exploration, music, variety. Just a couple things that hold it back, but still a fun experience.
Exactly! It’s still a gem in my eyes!
It’s refreshing to hear someone praise this game
It deserves to be praised! So many good things about it!
I agree 100%. It's so weird how much of a hatedom this game has gotten. A lot of the stuff people nowadays complain about it are things we loved about it as kids.
Thank you for making this. You nailed it. I was actually considering making a similar video, but your thoughts match mine almost exactly (if I ever do make the video, I'll be sure to give yours a shout-out!). It became popular to bash this game for its collectibles and that just caught on. It's an easy hook to design a video around. Like you said, you can avoid so much of the stuff in this game and still have plenty for what's required to beat it. It's probably the only game that gets judged so unfairly based on what it takes to complete it, not just beat it. We don't really do that for any other games. Anyways, thanks again. I enjoyed the video.
Thanks so much! Let me know if you ever put a video out I’d love to watch it! Appreciate you watching mine!
A master piece of the 3D platforms, when I see a Top 20 N64 games and this Rare gem is not included I going bananas!! this game was amazing back in 1999 and it still kicks 95% of most 32bit/64bit game´s asses (it even knocks out some of the first Dreamcast or PS2 games), the term "goog" is not enough for this title, is TOP 5 best 3D platformers of all time material. So for the gentleman that made this video praising DK64: you are my man
Haha DK64 is the reason I started my channel. I hated that people bash it all the time. It’s one of my favorites!
Back in the day, We (me and my brothers) used to rent this game for the weekend, it was one of my favorites alongside smash bros and goldeneye. The problem with renting was I never get to finish and I had to wait another weekend to rent again... Now you made me realize I can emulate and finally finish this gem, thank you!
Oh man you NEED to finish it! You got this!
Nintendo has to put this game on the Switch 64 app one day.
They really do!
It's important to remember that back when this came out online gaming wasn't a thing and that these games were expensive; more expensive that AAA titles today when adjusted for inflation. So, if you were an only child (and couldn't always rely on siblings for multiplayer) and you you were only buying two or three games per year, then having a game with this much stuff to do was incredible. I LOVED it as a kid. Even the backtracking wasn't an issue, never felt like a chore. I confess I haven't played it for over 20 years and it may not hold up so well now, but it was perfect for the era in which it was designed.
When I got this I was an only child my brother came along way later. I don’t know if he ever really played it.
DK64 was one of the first games I remember playing alongside Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Red and it’s still one of my all time favorite games to this day
Pokemon snap slaps hard!
The whole thing is pretty simple to me: the game has a great atmosphere; the levels are super colorful, fun and varied; the characters are charismatic and memorable; the soundtrack is great. That's enough for it to be a very good game IMO. It does have some flaws - the backtracking can be annoying at times, but it's nothing huge. There's a lot to collect, but you don't need to get everything unless you want to 101% it.
I just can't overlook the fact that I love the game's ambience, levels, and humor. And just listen to the music and the sound design - the whole thing oozes with personality. It was fantastic especially for Donkey Kong fans.
And having played the game when it was released, for the N64, I must say that it was pretty incredible back then seeing the size of DK Island and all these places. You didn't get that kind of stuff back then; walking on a huge beach, swimmimg to and from islands, it really felt like this big world and adventure, it was amazing for the 90s. Today people are less impressed by it (we have things like enormous open world games, after all) but back then it was a really big deal. Remember that just one generation prior all we had were 2D games.
I agree on all counts! Well said!
I agree with you that if you don't care about 100%ing the game, it could even be considered a masterpiece by some. The problem is that it is a collect-a-thon, and the number of people who like collect-a-thons and the number of those who like collect-a-thons who also like checking off every box by collecting everything are almost 1-to-1. The collect-a-thon fan who doesn't care about leaving a level before collecting everything is the exception--the point of the genre really lends to it.
I think if the fans of the genre who have this critique can let go of their desire to 100% it and try to enjoy it on its own terms, it would be a much more fun experience. Maybe maintaining some kind of parameter in its place, like "collect all of the minimum of what is needed for each level before leaving," could replace the satisfaction they get from box-checking.
Yeah I mean. I love collecting everything and that was part of the fun for me. But it takes a lot of time for it in this game.
There are mods that fix some of the elements of the game that cause it to be a real drag which is dope!
@@jiggylookback Right! The mod that lets you switch out kongs at any time would fix the back-tracking issue you mentioned, so maybe I'll try giving it a go at some point
@@nickw8160 yeah def give it a shot. Other mods are great too for it! It’s got some good ones!
I never cared about 100% any game anyway let alone DK64. Just get me to the end of the main story and I'm happy.
Remember though this game’s main target audience was children, and most of us were children when we first played it. As fans of collecathons, we all like to be able to get to 100%, but when we were kids I don’t think we were as focussed on that. Most kids even back then were eager to get just enough collectibles to unlock the next boss or level, and that’s a perfectly valid way to play this game. In fact, it’s arguably how it was designed to be played by most players. And if you play this game that way, you get a lot more enjoyment for the time you put in, and the awkward collectibles become much less of an issue.
From the day that Donkey Kong 64 released on N64 all the way up to the Wii U era, people really hated this game with a passion. When the Nintendo Switch Online service launched, people began begging Nintendo to bring this game back on the NSO Service + Expansion Pass, even to this day when it's Still not re-released yet.
Me: "... Oh, NOW PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN DONKEY KONG 64!? Where was this energy from all these years this whole time?"
Yeah for real. I’ve always loved this game. It was the first one I got on my N64. What a glorious first game.
True. I only just learned about the memory leak, and now I've learned it's not actually an issue. lol
I never had a problem with "backtracking" I honestly loved all the different colored bananas. This game was so fun to explore.
And I played all 3 DK country games before DK64, and I still loved this cast.
This is a great video. Thanks for coming to the defense of the kongs. SUBSCRIBED! :)
Heck yeah! Love the cast too! Thanks for watching and subbing 😎
Possibly my favourite game of all time. 101% completed it three times.
The worlds…the characters….the art direction…the MUSIC
The collectibles are even amazing in this game. Few games have actually made me feel like I really want to find everything and this is one of those games where I joyfully do it. It’s just so satisfying getting those 100 bananas with each character and 5/5 bananas etc. And like you said…the game only requires like less than half to beat it so if you’re not into it, it’s not grindy AT ALL.
The backtracking is also really satisfying because you get to come back to old areas with new characters and unlock new areas within those old areas. It’s very refreshing. And all the levels are so awesome that it really feels cozy and warm being able to return to each of them for a new look.
The mini games I also love. Oddly enough once you discover the ‘tricks’ to even the most frustrating mini games, they become easy and satisfying since you know how to win easily. Beaver bother is easy, and so is bug bash. You just have to know the mechanics really well. It’s kinda like once you discover the exact attack patterns and move combinations to swiftly defeat a dark souls boss. What was once infuriating becomes very satisfying because of your insider knowledge.
Anyways… yeah the modern hate on this game is absolutely a ‘hate wagon’ that got started only a few years ago when a couple people did some retros on it hating it and everyone followed like sheep. It just became the popular opinion. Nobody can think for themselves these days
I agree with you on all counts! Thats why I made this video to show it IS a good game and it doesn’t deserve the hate it’s getting these days! Also why I lead with the positive reviews it got at release! Love me some DK64
I can’t hate this game. It’s just a cozy ass game that I grew up playing.
Yes it is cozy!
I dont remember anyone hating it when it came out.
It really wasn’t! It’s a more modern online sentiment.
I loved DK64. I replayed it so many times. Even after growing up. Still loved every minute.
Here's hoping we get a remake withing my ~50 years left on this planet, but people seem to hate it so it may not ever happen.
I hope we do too
Great game and video. I think the biggest thing with DK64 is you definitely have to play the game with a mindset of patience and taking your time to experience things rather than speeding through most challenges through it like with what tends to happen with most other platformers.
I remember experiencing a bug as a teenager, I was in the basement with my sister trying to turn on the game and it just didn't want to turn on and when it finally did, the audio was slowed down and deepened and it scared us both so much that we didn't touch the game for a month straight and only played it when our dad was around.
That’s amazing. I actually used to love finding those things! Tho Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was the game I always tried to glitch through walls and stuff!
I absolutely love this game, and at the same time, it's kinda funny how people complain about the collecting in this game, while they have no problem trying to collect EVERYTHING in the Zelda games, Metroid games, Kirby games, Yoshi games, etc...
Right?! It’s nuts
Man, I can see why you enjoy DK64 so darn much.
The lighting, the music, K. Rool at his most diabolical, it's all here.
Heck, there's a lot to collect to, which I see nothing wrong with (inherently).
And Chunky and Lanky are amazing.
However, I just can't say this game is 100 (or 101%) all there.
Tiny Kong is WAY too similar to Dixie Kong (who is a fan-favorite for a reason), and with all the backtracking, it feels like I'm playing the game 5 times over in levels, covering ground I've already since covered before.
Despite all this, and an overall sour taste I feel in my mouth, I see a good game buried in DK64. It shines with the hub of DK Island & Crocodile Isle, Jungle Japes is great with how it is paced (along with parts of Creepy Castle) and it finishes strong with Hideout Helm and the spectacular K. Rool Duel.
There is good fun to be had in DK64, but it is held back by some baffling decisions that just arbitrarily extend playtime.
And I've come to that conclusion from a casual AND 101% playthrough.
Heck yeah
happy to see someone on youtube who loves this game its my fav DK game i 101% the game i never had that much trouble with it i had a lot of fun with it
Yeah it’s one of my fav games! I love it!
I had an N64 as a kid and somehow missed this gem at that time, none of my friends had it either. I think it got overshadowed a bit by Zelda. I’m playing it through now for the first time in my 30s and having a blast! Also there are 650 comments and you have replied to almost all of them- impressive!! New subscriber!
Thanks so much for subscribing.
So I try to respond to every comment on my channel because I told myself when I started my RUclips journey back in 2022 I wanted to be someone who actively engaged with his community and I also just want to talk about games I love and learn. I’ll admit it’s getting a little crazy with this one but I’m trying to get em all!
I appreciate you watching :)
That's the problem with today's generation. They're so entrenched in ever-advancing graphics and a changing game industry that they shit all over older generation games.
No respect for their elders.
This game was an epic part of my childhood.
Mine too!
Was shocked when I got older and learned that this game had so many complaints. I enjoyed my time exploring every nook and cranny in this game and thought the collectibles were mostly fair since you don’t have to come even close to 100% completion to beat it. In fact, if they added just a little more mechanical diversity in the kong’s movesets, they could easily expand and add even more.
Okay, yeah, the banana and coin placement could be reworked, but I never personally had an issue with it. My only real major complaint about this game was being forced to beat the original DK arcade game. That sucked, and saying it took me a long time to beat is an understatement. In fact, I never did as a kid. I came back to this game 15 years later and managed to beat it.
@@WindmageZyphos same pretty much. I didn’t beat this game until I was like 13 because I couldn’t figure out how to get the Nintendo coin. My issue wasn’t the arcade machine, but KNOWING I needed to play the arcade machine lol
The biggest issue for me was trying to get a high score in jetpack and beating the original donkey kong just to finish the game. It also had the same slow movement of rare platformers. It also takes longer to collect the golden bananas compared to stars or jiggies.
I thought DK64 was amazing when it came out. I loved having such a huge game in my collection. My only complaint was the continued tradition of recycled bosses. That's purely nitpicking.
I actually had that complaint as well. I loved the bosses we had but always wanted a new one because when they were introduced they had charm and cool designs!
This needs to be on the NSO! If it can be on the WiiU Virtual, it can be on the NSO!
I agree 100%
That one topic that never sleeps.
Beautiful retrospective! It's a good point that we are drawn to certain qualities in games and you showed plenty to appreciate with Donkey Kong 64 - my favorite game ^-^ Love how you spoke about the common issues and brought forth the positive characteristics - such as the characters themselves and how players only need to collecting a certain amount of items to finish the game
Thanks so much! I really appreciate you watching! I have the BEST video coming out end of the week so hope you’ll stay tuned!
This is great and is making want to give DK64 another go. I do like some of the collecting in it, even though I do wish it had what mods included: switching Kongs instantly. I do think, and this is prob a subjective thing on my part, that my main issue is the level design. The levels after a while feel like they lack a bit of direction and structure. Banjo Kazooie generally used central landmarks [like Clanker, the big snowman, the mansion, the tall tree etc] and that made the levels understandable to navigate after quickly looking around - something I felt DK64 lacked. Still, I have fond memories of renting this game and I can properly complete it now...if my backlog weren't getting bigger.
The levels are a lot bigger than Kazooies hence the warp pads. I think those were intended to be markers.
I honestly didn’t have a huge problem with that, but it was a thing I see what you mean!
I have been playing this game for over twenty years and I only have a few complaints.
1: the tag system, this was remedied by downloading the Tag Anywhere patch.
2: The Beetle Races, extremely difficult as you have to collect a certain amount of coins and beat the beetle to the finish. Sadly haven't been able to find a way to make that easier.
3: The Rabbit Races, for the same as above.
Otherwise this is a great game and I'll continue playing it till I'm dead.
"The DK Rap is a joke" - The Actual Grant Kirkhope
It's a funny bop though
DK64 only needed some minor changes to become a great game.
I maintain it's biggest problem is that too many collectables were only obtainable by one kong, and the Kong barrels were always too far. You'd have to comb each area at least 3 times with 3 different kongs to get everything, even if it's just bananas and coins.
Two solutions:
A) Allow players to change kong anywhere, except for special rooms only accessible by one or two kongs.
B) Make all the Collectables obtainable by all kongs, except for Gold Bananas, and maybe a 2nd major collectable. All the other kong specific things like the music platforms can stay.
It sounds petty, but changing the rainbow coloured Bananas to all yellow would probably let people warm up more to the game at least.
I agree with that! It just makes sense
I legit feel the biggest fix to donkey kong 64 would be removing the DK barrel and just letting you switch with the d pad (which isn't used at all in the game) up gives you Diddy, down gives Tiny, left gives Lankey, right gives Chunky. If you're already one of those 4 pressing their corresponding button nets you DK
this was one of those games that my friends and i played to death back in the day, so when i replayed it a few years ago i had no issues with figuring out where to go and what to do, sure the backtracking and variety of collectibles can be a problem but it was never something i ever really noticed simply because there was always somewhere else to go with that character. the one issue i always had was the availability of the kong barrels but even then it wasnt something that i noticed until i was an adult and it was pointed out to me. Thanks for making this video ill have to check out the rest of them!
also with beaver bother, sure it was tough when i first jumped back into it but i dont remember it being all that hard, i think that you need to just overcompensate how far you need to travel to get them to go in the hole, although i noticed in your video one of them standing right on the precipice and not walking in so maybe there is a bit of BS in this one.
That particular thing happened to me in beaver bother constantly lol it’s cursed
Literally one of the first games I played ever, I was like 5 or 6 when I played it for the first time, and I was floored by the sense of exploration and the music was amazing, I have loved this game ever since, the only real complaint I have is Diddy's jetpack controls. But yeah the Rare games are the reason Grant Kirkhope is my favorite video game music producer, I'm currently in my second playthrough of Kingdoms of Amalur after finishing Yooka-Laylee and I just can't get enough. Great video man, I'm gonna go check out more of your videos :)
I was the same age range! Back when it released!
Thanks for watching! I def have more content if you like this and even more to come! This Friday is going to be the greatest Rare related video I’ve ever made so be ready!!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🎮 *Defending Donkey Kong 64: Introduction and Background*
- Introduction to the speaker's passion for defending Donkey Kong 64.
- Overview of the game's release and development history.
- Discussion on initial positive reviews and the shift in public opinion over time.
02:01 🍌 *Addressing Criticisms: Too Many Collectibles*
- Explanation of the game's collectibles and their significance.
- Refutation of the notion that 100% completion is necessary to enjoy the game.
- Analysis of the organization of collectibles and potential improvements.
04:30 🕹️ *Critique of Mini-Games and Characters*
- Evaluation of mini-games, including both enjoyable and problematic ones.
- Discussion on the game's character cast and player perceptions.
- Refutation of criticisms regarding character selection and tag barrel placement.
06:57 🎶 *Appreciation for Game Elements*
- Praise for the game's music, graphics, and sound design.
- Positive assessment of gameplay mechanics, controls, and variety of moves.
- Reflection on the game's enduring appeal and the need for reassessment of its merits.
Made with HARPA AI
Whoa that’s crazy. That added more detailed chapters then I ever could! Nice!
Great video.
I remember being 10 years old and Christmas of 99 myself and my sister received the green DK64 bundle and Ocarina of Time.
I’ll never forget that day!
I’m almost 35 now haha, how time does go by fast
Dude I wish I had that bundle.
It took way too long to finally have a video of a youtuber defending this game, thank you.
I got you 😎
I'd like to see this game remade. Maybe give the levels more clearly defined sections designated towards each Kongs. The game already does this but it could still be segmented a little better. Having DK follow bananas and end up at a door that Chunky has to open for Tiny is a little all over the place. I'd like to see the collectable requirements be set so if one Kong finds everything they can find, they can beat the game, and then maybe have a unique final boss and ending.
You just earned yourself a new subscriber. This is my childhood and I love it! I can't wait for Crowd Control version of this to drop so I can stream it in all its glory with the craziness added!
Heck yeah! Thanks for subbing!
DK64 is awesome. "You don't have to collect it all" THANK YOU. I get so sick of hearing people complain that 100% is tedious. Its like... Thats pretty much every collectathon ever 😅 Theres so little backtracking and tedium when all youre doing is getting enough to move on. Also, people seem to think they need to change kongs every time they see a different colored collectible but you don't. Just collect the ones you can when you come across them and you will get enough.
Part of the charm for me WAS collecting everything. I loved it!
I did my 101% (Including every banana and coin accessible without glitches) playthrough a year ago and ended with a final time at around 32 hours, though that was with prior knowledge of the game. It was pretty fun, but the latter part of the game (Creepy Castle onwards) was a massive pain. It wasn't the number of collectibles that were the problem at all, it was the minigames. You would do something that previously in the game would just give you a banana, instead it'd give you a minigame barrel as the reward, and most of the minigames are honestly pretty bad tbh, and some are genuinely nearly impossible. One of the ones where you have to shoot the target and avoid the kongs was genuinely so ridiculously precise with its timing that after multiple hours of attempts, I just decided to cheat and use the slow feature on the emulator I was using.
Other than that, fun game.
That’s a good point. You do something and your reward is a Mini game barrel
People tend to forget that games back then didn't have a lot to do and most are rather short games. This game put in so much I spent literal summers trying to collect everything and I loved every bit of it. I can see the complaints today but back then this game game us so much to do as kids so screw anyone and everyone that has issues with my favorite game 😊
Yeah I loved exploring forever in that game!
One of my favourite childhood games! Played it again recently and... still loved it. It's not perfect of course and has its issues, just like every game every made. But it's nowhere near deserving of the hate it gets these days. Honestly you know what I think the problem is? The "zoomer" mindset most people have now. No one just PLAYS a game anymore. They load it up for the first time and already have a 100% collectibles walkthrough on their second monitor. They won't progress until they've researched what they might miss out on by doing so. It's just a terrible way to approach games, people are literally optimising the fun out of their own hobby.
Yes. Where is the exploration and self discovery? Everyone tries to find the answers immediately.
Games like Fortnite (no hate just an observation) have instant gratification for kids playing and it’s mindless.
They just don’t make them very often like they used to. And they aren’t enjoyed like they used to be.
This is the fourth video I’ve seen in a while that is defending this game. I’m so happy to see this. This game is my childhood, more than any other game on the system.
I don’t get why people have to complain about all the collectibles when you said in your video yourself that you don’t even have to collect everything just to experience what the game has to offer.
I also love other games in the system from rareware. You have yourself a new subscriber. 👍🏻
I do as well! Happy to have another fan on board
DK64 is all about exploring and remembering where stuff was while doing another task at the moment. people who complain about 10 seconds ''backtrack'' to find a tag barrel are just trolls tbh. i always loved it that i had to remember locations where i had to come back with a different kong. it's like that you have to do 5 different storys in each world which always was an extremely nice feature to me. and after all the effort you get one of the best bossfights on the platform as a reward.
It’s probably why I have such a good memory. I was training since I was a kid to remember stuff 😂
Great video! I last played it years ago, and the issue of bugs never came up for me. People probably play it so much more now, and have discovered so much that's easier to notice. I loved it so much! I never owned it so I didn't get to beat it but I longed for it. Oh and that Beaver Bother game was frustrating as hell! Thanks for this lookback!
Can honestly say of all my years of playing since 1999 I experienced one invisible wall otherwise not much of an issue. It’s a good game :)
I'm 100% prone to nostalgia bias, without a doubt! I also played DKC 1-3 before 64...
However, I totally agree with you about the cast. They're all great characters in my opinion!
It's important to not let nostalgia for the good old days blind you from the joy of everything else that came after that! :D
Excellent video, my friend!
Tiny Kong!!!! Thanks for watching :)
People also forget the graphics and lighting was basically wizardry in an N64. Loved the game, but never tried collecting everything.
Also, I the changes in collectibles and gun usage is something I’ve been saying. Giving the guns different functions would even give a meteoidvania element
@@brutusmagnuson315 yes!! Like Chunkys could breakdown walls and Lanky’s could be the only one with a precision shot, while Tiny’s popped balloons. I just would like that!
The biggest problem with the cast is that it doesn't meaningfully feel like 5 distinct characters, it feels like 1 character repeated 5 times. All of them have the same move speed and jump height/length, and extremely similar movement abilities. Tiny is the only one who organically interacts with level geometry via the ponytail twirl.
The vast majority of the time, a barrier to entry is a music/ground pound/gun etc. Panel, which all kongs interact with in the same way mechanically. A gap only tiny can cross feels a lot more gratifying than a door that can only be opened by a ground pound switch, which all 5 kongs can do, but has a particular kong's face on it.
The Banjo Tooie transformations feel like a fully realized version of what the DK64 kongs should have been.
I mean can we just agree Tiny is the best Kong?
I’m with you.
I swear, the Wii U Virtual Console release is somehow subtly messed up. If people are complaining about bugs or similar issues, I can believe it if the Wii U is how they played it. I've had no issues with emulation or the original hardware. For people who are really skeptical about giving DK64 a shot, I highly recommend playing with the Switch Kongs Anywhere emulator cheat. It's a shame it's charm is being downplayed, it always felt like a Banjo-Kazooie 1.5 or Banjo-Halfie to me.
I can see that for sure! I never played the Wii U one I don’t think. But love the 64 version for sure
I'm probably just an old guy ranting but I was 13 when this game came out and I absolutely loved it and definitely made my 1999 school holidays a great time. At the time I wasn't able to buy many games so I thought that the amount of content was great since I had a lot of time to spend playing and not many options. For it's time it was quite a looker too, honestly compared to first generation Dreamcast games, it looked remarkably well and better than most N64 games. I loved it back in the day and Frankly most people did. The hate this game gets nowadays is a strange and recent fad. I can understand why, for someone playing it for the first time will find the collectibles excessive and all but for it's time it was a lot of value for your money. I haven't checked on it in a lot of years and maybe I won't other than to show it to my youngest kid someday but I totally agree with you @jiggylookback this is still a good game and definitely deserves to be defended
Beaver Bother isn’t based on luck. The trick to that is you need to press the B button while you are beside the beavers. Once you do that, the beavers will move to the opposite direction of whichever side of them you scare them from. If you are in front of a beaver and you press the B button, then they’ll turn around and run in the opposite direction. That’s how you direct them to where you want them to go. It takes some getting used to but after a couple tries you’ll get the hang of it and it’s really easy.
If you just run around constantly pressing the B button, then you’re going to scatter them everywhere and mess everything up.
I 100% understand the mechanics of Beaver Bother, but they are broken. You can get the beavers to the hole and they are blocked from falling in. It is def a super buggy mini game. If it was fixed it'd be fine.
Playing this game as a kid was really fun. I got invested with the music, levels, puzzles and have grown to love the characters. Never minded the backtracking nor the amount of stuff to collect in this game. Only thing I really hated was that Nintendo coin. That Donkey Kong arcade game was difficult. To make matters worse was you needed it to get to the final part of the game, alongside the Rareware coin
I’m with you in the exact same way. Lol
Donkey Kong 64 really needs its own "Super Mario 64 DS" with the tweaks you suggested.
That’d be cool except on switch
I love how the phrase “too many collectables” and “a game for babies” exsists about the same game: is it too complex or too simplistic? PICK ONE!
@@mlpfanboy1701 the game for babies comment was a joke….
The too many collectibles is a common criticism…
The new wave sentiment of hating this game is literally, "It's got too much content!"
Me: OK?
It's hard to 100%!
Me: Do you 100% every game you play? Cause most people don't
The DK rap is cringe!
Me: You're cringe.
@@NobleAbsinthe sounds about right.
On the point of "You don't have to collect everything." I get what you're saying, but arguably the point of a Collectathon isn't "How much do I have to do to win."
I'd argue that the sub-genre itself thrives upon the idea of doing everything, finding everything, getting every little bit you can out of the game. Furthermore consider as well that the forebears DK64 is built upon, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy and Banjo-Kazooie, explicitly dangle that full completion carrot in your face, making it a point that not only should you get 10X%, you WANT to get 10X%.
You've got to get Cranky's praise, you've got to put Diddy on top of that Video Game Heroes podium, you've just got to know what's in those secret photos Mumbo is waving around and find out more about Banjo-Tooie.
Completion is the end-goal of a collectathon, beating the game isn't.
At least, that's how I feel, and in my personal opinion, completing DK64 is *exhausting.*
Sure, you don't have to get 101%. You don't.
But they didn't put the completion percentage on your save file just because they thought it would look nice there.
I guess my point is less “they want you to collect everything” and more “if you don’t want to you don’t have to”.
I agree the point of collectibles to collect them, but I don’t think it’s required to enjoy the game tho I think it adds to it myself! But if people do not want to collect things which I do highly encourage they don’t have to.
When it’s all said and done they shouldn’t use that as a reason to not play this game. It’s a good game!
Personally I like shooting for the 101%. But I did it several times and took my time I wasn’t trying to chug through it to get to the next game. Play styles also have an effect.
@@jiggylookback Despite the tone of my previous comment, I definitely don't hate DK64.
3D Collectathons are probably my favorite sub-genre of all time and I've played, if not at least dabbled, in every single one I could get my hands on.
There was a good while where as a kid when I didn't own the game, I was absolutely in love with the game after playing it on a rental and seeing later levels through a different save file. You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
But I'm also a completionist, to a degree. I won't drive myself insane over things that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, like the colored bananas, which don't actually contribute to percentage, while Medals do, and I always like to keep in mind the "margin for error" these games have in what you're "allowed" to miss while still getting everything, like how you can miss two Jiggies in BK and still get the Health Upgrade right before the final fight.
But DK64 is definitely a game I have a complex history with. I understand that, much like reviews at the time noted, they wanted to make a bigger, badder Banjo-Kazooie, and that's fine, but even then for sheer size it's a bit much.
Scale is often what I mean when I say completing the game is exhausting, and I'm of the mindset that DK64 is too much, and Banjo-Tooie definitely starts pushing it in the back-half, which sadly isn't a lesson they seemed to have learned with Yooka-Laylee, but that's another discussion.
As for playstyles, I love to be efficient with most things, it's why Banjo-Kazooie is evergreen to me. Circumnavigating every level and knowing the best, cleanest route to sweep through and find everything is invigorating to me, and the general design of DK64, which seems to be mostly designed for you to avoid each world five times, and knowing which order to scour in for the most efficient way through can be tough to figure out sometimes.
But I think we can all agree, no matter what your playstyle is, or how much you want to complete, asking you to play Beaver Bother twice in one level is enough to break anyone's spirit.
@@lightninstriker10 we can all agree on Beaver Bother.
You have a great point about the cleanness of Banjo Kazooie and collecting. Only 1 instance of backtracking.
Most people definitely prefer to clear levels as they come at least mostly. Tooie and DK64 definitely suffer from padded backtracking.
As a kid and exploring tho I loved discovering all these things!
We should really get a NSO release. Dang!
I had a lot of genuine fun playing the multiplayer with friends back in the day. My personal gripe with the game is having to beat the original Donkey Kong for the coin. It took me way too long and I was miserable at it. I enjoyed Jetpac though and had fun.
Haha yeah it was a problem for me too. Not the game itself but knowing that’s what I needed to do
I played DKC games first and i still adored the 64 cast. Great video man. Doing right by this game and fair, logical and passionate analysis. Cheers bro! 👌
Thanks for watching! Appreciate the kind words!
I remember exploring this game for HOURS at a time as a kid, it wasn't a game for me, it was an experience. The music, the atmosphere, the simple gameplay. We also didn't have a lot of video games growing up, so l didn't have an arsenal to compare it to. And I never felt like all the items were required like a checklist [or you didn't progress,] just something to get along the way and you WILL get along the way. It was more like a treasure hunt.
4:23 - I also thought that made it more fun for me to backtrack with a different Kong too, it never felt like a chore, because you felt like by going to said area with a different Kong meant that you may unlock more secrets with them.
I don't even blame nostalgia either, because I recently downloaded a ROM and began playing again, back to the old fun feelings of just escaping into the world and unlocking every stage slowly but surely. Its therapeutic. Sure its not comparable the most fully realized AAA title out there, but its something to do.
@@xxTheLocketxx yes! I played again recently and same! I really enjoy it. It has the same quality to me the show the office does. I can just relax and enjoy the vibes without lots of stress.
The argument of "too many collectables" is definitely a "let me think like everyone else" statement. You can literally beat the game in 1 sitting if you wanted to.
It's not a problem not liking the game, but calling it a bad game just isn't fair. We're at a point now where these old games are really showing their age now that gaming in general is looked at more analytically rather than having the "fun factor" they used to. I personally can't stand playing Ocarina of time, but i can think back to 1998 and think damn this game must've been incredible. DK 64 deserves the same credit. Yes it's aged, but pretend you're 6-7 years old in 1999. This game was a dream for those of us who had nothing else to do or play
Heck yeah it was. And you’re totally right. It’s like a mob mentality.
The only time back-tracking ever annoyed me in this game was with the day/night mechanic in the Forest level, otherwise I never felt as though it was excessive or bothersome, and it is absolutely worth it to have to back-track a little in order for the scale of content the game has to offer to exist with the 5 different characters. The positives of this design aspect far outweigh the negatives for me. While there are definitely changes that could benefit the game, I feel like this game in particular gets ridiculed for all of its “product of its time” aspects far more than other old games do. I recently played through Pokemon Blue and I love that game, but it is very archaic with countless design flaws, and it seems like despite that it is looked back on fondly and those aspects of it are seen as “charming”… (okay I’ll admit, using a glitch to play through with a Mew is quite fun, but still the game has glaring issues)
But either way, I feel like you can play ANY game from that far back and you are CERTAIN to deal with some aspect of it that doesnt hold up. I think that’s to be expected and I dont fault old games for being old games, but for some reason it seems like DK64 in particular is given no grace at all, and I dont get it. Still one of my favorite games.
Also I actually enjoy most of the mini games, and dont hate any 🤷♂️
I just replayed this to 101% completion on a livestream.
Honestly imo the slot machine is the only mini game I really dislike. Beaver bother is a close second, but it’s just a little jank. The concept for it is fine.
I do agree fungi forest was the only level I felt I really had to backtrack to different areas a ton with a different Kong and a different time of day, but still wasn’t too bad.
I overall still really had fun and loved it!
@ I wouldnt say I dislike the slot machine, its probably the most boring mini games but theres nothing like annoying or agonizing about it, just not that interesting. I understand why some people hate Beaver Bother, because theres definitely times where its like “HOW DID YOU NOT FALL IN THE HOLE???” but I kinda enjoy that its difficult and forces me to be precise. I in general like challenging things.
Also the more I thought about it I also dont like the back-tracking in Gloomy Galleon with the different water heights changing what is accessible. I’ve 101% played through this game like 10+ times so I dont mind it that much, since I just know to expect it going in, but I do wish Fungi Forest and Gloomy Galleon both had ways to change the time/water in each area of the levels.
@ yes I agree. If they did that on each level it would make them both much better. Just quick access to changing things so you don’t have to go across the whole level.
At least in Gloomy Galleon you have warp pads and an easy track back to the other side. Fungi Forest is easy to get lost if you aren’t paying attention to the color of the tunnels
Nice to see people spreading positivity on DK64. I was hoping my childhood wasn't a lie 😂 It did annoy me that I had to keep switching kongs to get everything but I actually liked running through and exploring the worlds at that time. Even with SM64 and SA/SA2 I spend alot of time in the hub worlds just looking at the scenery.
I did the same haha and enjoying the music!
I recently 101%'d this game for the first time and yeah, I think it was fun, played great, looked great, and especially, sounded great. My only problem with this game is that damn broken Beaver Bother minigame, it nearly made me go INSANE several times. Go suck a lemon, Beaver Bother!
Honestly every complain I've seen about this game just comes across as arrogant and silly. It just comes across like some people trying to act like they're hard to please or something lol.
Beaver Bother forever blows lol
As someone who loved this game when it first came out, I want to start this off by saying that I do agree with a lot of the points you've made, but I think you brushed over one of the most egregious parts of the game. Yes, you do have to get the Nintendo and Rareware coins to finish the game, but you're completely ignoring the fact that that's incredibly difficult, but not because of how you can access them, but because of what you need to do once you do access them.
In all the other mini games, they last about a minute long each at worst, and they were built with several game mechanics and controls in mind. However, to get the aforementioned coins, you need to play through two classic video games, Jetpac, and the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game. The former is simple enough because you don't need to get too far in the game to get the coin, but the latter is easily the worst part of the entire game, not just because it's difficult, but because it's required. The game does not ease you into the 1981 DK game, and you have to beat the entire game's four levels twice, with the second time on hard mode, to get the Nintendo coin, without getting a game over in any of the four levels. As an adult with decades of gaming experience at this point, I can do it pretty easily these days, with maybe some slight struggles as I readjust. But as a kid, and this game was intended for kids, I was literally sobbing trying to to beat this challenge because all I wanted to do was beat the final boss, considering I had done literally everything else. I would have rather they didn't make this aspect a requirement, because it added a frustrating challenge to access the final boss.
Don't get me wrong, DK64 is a good game. But is it as good as Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie? No. Those games were designed better and had clear expectations of their players that stayed true from beginning to end. DK64 tried to do that, but it wasn't anywhere near as successful.
Personally I brushed over them because I didn’t have an issue with them. The only issue I had was actually knowing to get the 64 coin you had to play the DK arcade. I was playing Jetpac after I got the rare coming wondering where it was. But I didn’t find difficulty in it like others seem too. But fair point!
One of the goats of the console. I'll always remember getting the game and the guide. Having to slam that expansion pack in to power this beast of a game. Seeing the green jungle console that just fit the game so well. The fact that the collectible chasing never ends is part of what I like about it. I always loved seeing something in one level and then realizing later that you have to go back with a new character or ability
Yes me too!!! Legendary game right here
The one thing that every defender misses on the topic of collectibles is that a huge chunk of the color bananas are condensed into balloons and bunches. You aren't collecting 4000 individual bananas. Like 60% of them are in the form of 5s and 10s. And they're on the ground. They're not Korok seeds where you have to do things just to get them. And again, let me remind you, THEY AREN'T 4000 INIDIVIDUAL PICK UPS!
@@RainbowDashShadesOfApproval true!
"you don't need to collect that much!"
Proceeds to explain the hundreds of items you need to collect to even get the basic ending
@@ampeater777 🤣🤣🤣 the count for actual completion is not that difficult. That’s the point, but ok.
The minimum required bananas to collect is actually 2,650 if you want to complete the game at 101%. In Creepy Castle you actually need to get a bare minimum average of 80 bananas for each Kong to face the boss. Remember, Hideout Helm doesn’t actually have any Bananas or Golden Bananas, just the Banana Medals and 1 Battle Arena for a Crown.
Right. I had forgotten that about hideout helm and it through my math off. My bad.