How was this game received back when it came out? Was it beloved like the snes ones?
It was really good
Most people were disappointed with it and for good reason - donkey kong just doesn't translate well into a 3D environment in the same vein as mario. I think most people felt that it tried to emulate mario 64's success but felt short. Not a bad game by any means, but not a great one either.
Not as beloved as the SNES ones (at least 1 and 2), but had good reception.
>>3178801
People were pretty blown away by the huge scale of it, and seeing dynamic lighting in a console game was an impressive feat.
However, I think a lot of people quickly knew it wasn't a classic to the same extent as the SNES games.
>>3178816
If I played it decades later I might have been more forgiving, but no, I distinctly remember feeling disappointed with the game when it came out and after playing it to a certain point, not really touching it again. Most of my friends with a n64 agreed with me too. Mario 64 is just an infinitely better alternative and if you really want donkey kong, the SNES games blow it out of the water.
>>3178801
I loved it as a kid. I loved big open things, and I loved DK, and it was DK in a big, vast world.
However in retrospect the game wasn't really that good. It was basically just Banjo-Kazooie but bigger and not as good. It was also hilariously glitchy.
>>3178816
You shouldn't base claims around how badly your feelings are hurt. Your game was shit and many people dislike it for valid reasons.
It was the shit in my neighborhood. You didn't have this game, no one would hang out with you.
It kinda broke Rare's win streak of near-universal praise and may have popularized the term "collectathon", but it's not like it was considered a bad game
>>3178847
This never happened
it was huge, it looked good, it played well, b ut after a while it just became just too much of a hassle.
even back then we never considered it as good as the snes predecessors or as the other recent rare platformer, banjo kazooie.
It's about a year after it came out that I first played it and it got my attention, does that count since it's so long ago now? It's basically what people are saying in this thread - it was really loved by many, while others don't like it much. It's a real love/hate type of game and you'll never change people's opinions. I personally think it's one of the best games ever and always have. I do get other people's criticisms (especially after beating it a couple of times), but for me it just works.
>>3178854
True in my area too.
The multiplayer death matches were the shit.
>that secret cave covered by false-rock
>>3178808
Liar.
I am not a huge fan of DK64, but it was generally well-received. compared to many games like it at the time it had a huge amount of content.
Not to mention that was most people's first time playing Rare's Jetpac game and people started talking about Jetpac again JUST because it was in DK64. Some were disappointed with the game, but not "most".
>>3178930
This dude x1000
I never did finish DK64 because it felt like it was impossible, but I loved the crap out of the multiplayer.
it's a 10/10 just for the DK rap
How true is it that it had too many collectables? I think someone working for Yooka-Laylee said they were avoiding getting to DK64 levels of collecting.
>>3179219
>949 Banana coins
>3500 Bananas
>201 Golden bananas
>2 Special coins
>20 Banana fairies
>10 Battle arenas
>40 Banana medals
>40 Blueprints
>8 Keys
Which gives you a total of 4770 collectibles, even though, not everything is required to beat the game, and im not counting stuff like upgrades, weapons or musical instruments.
>>3179219
I remember quite literally never beating the game as a kid. I got bored and stopped playing before I finished collecting all the medals.Admittedly not being able to beat that Donkey Kong atari minigame might've also had something to do with it.
You don't have to collect the 3500 regular bananas or the banana coins to get 101%, and it's not really recommended that you go for it except to perfectionists who really like that type of thing. The banana medals is mostly counting things twice since you get one when you collect 75/100 regular bananas in the level. What's more, you'll bump into the vast majority of stuff along the way. I like having easy stuff as well as difficult stuff.
>>3179282
>Donkey Kong atari minigame
>atari
!!!inb4 "Donkey Kong was ported to the 2600"
>>3178823
>People were pretty blown away by the huge scale of it
This is what I remember most. And that you had to buy the expansion pack just to play the fucking game.
>>3179716
>And that you had to buy the expansion pack just to play the fucking game.
The game included the expansion pakI bought the expansion pak separately for Majora though
>>3179284
you have to collect 1125 to beat the game, though
Cue some guy coming in to tell us all that actually it didn't need the expansion pak, it was some simple bug they couldn't find. The truth is that they intended to have a low-rez option without an expasion pak and a high-rez option without one. However at some late point in the development they found they could not make the low-rez one work anymore, and it wasn't worth trying to fix (probably it didn't look very good either). So they said fuck that game mode, let's just release it like this. Expensive, but probably a good decision at the end of the day. It did Nintendo a big favour by having the expansion pak useful and not basically another add-on failure.
Most of my group of friends thought it was okay.
Like, it wasn't amazing, but we thought it was alright. Oddly enough, looking back a lot of us owned this game despite it not really being anyone's favorite.
There were maybe one or two people who I THINK I remember liking it a lot, enough to get sort of close to 100% completion anyway, which is saying kind of a lot for this game.
But yeah, even though it seemed to sell well I don't remember it being a huge deal. Most of us just sort of accepted it as a game and played it, even if we didn't love it.
He has no grace, he has no style
Reviewers loved it due to
a) The sheer size of a game like this for the time
b) Collectathons still being popular
c) Variety in gameplay
Personally I had really mixed feelings as a kid, it felt like an overly complicated Banjo-Kazooie for 9 year old me but I got through it. The strangest thing is that while I KNOW I finished this game as a child (I still have the savefile), I have very few memories outside of the first level and the boss battles...
...mostly just memories of screaming out of frustration at the jack-in-the-box boss....
I had a huge blast with it back when it was released precisely because I didn't give a shit about collecting literally everything. I just wanted to have fun and explore the different worlds the game presented me. Obsessive collection was never my main purpose.
Then I played it a few years ago and disliked it.
>>3178816
>>3178939
Not that guy, but I played it literally the day it came out and was bitterly disappointed.
I remember the reception being pretty good, but you have to remember those were the days where a metric fuckton of review rags only catered to one console, it was in their best interest to make the exclusives with poster boy characters look good.
I didn't like it and neither did most of my friends at the time.
>>3178801
Roommate totally took over playing it so when he got Paper Mario for Christmas I played the shit out of it in his faaaaace.
>>3178801
The critics loved it.
The players were less convinced. I considered it a disappointment within a week of getting it.
>>3178808
>donkey kong just doesn't translate well into a 3D environment in the same vein as mario.
Nah, DKC could've been translated just fine. To wit, Rayman 2, which basically plays like a 3D DKC.
But instead of looking for tight gameplay, Rare simply kept all ideas it had and implemented them in the game, without checking whether they actually made sense in the game's context. Instead of, for example, copying Goemon's insta-player-switch, they chose backtracking and barrels. Instead of speed and platforming, they chose exploration. And they tried way too hard to be 'Cool'.
They did manage to make the bossfights great, though.
I loved this game when it came out. I remember playing it a ton, especially that original Donkey Kong arcade machine. It wasn't until I went back later and saw that it was a mess. I like collectathons as much as the next guy, but this really got tedious to me with the multiple characters. It also doesn't help that it just feels slow when compared to SNES DK.
I don't remember what the "magazine" consensus was, but I fucking loved it and my friends thought it was okay (played multiplayer a bit).
The "collectathon" mechanics were fine and I even them welcomed back then - a game you could really sink your teeth into was great when I could only afford a new game every ~3 months (and half of those turned out to be shit).
Nowadays yeah, with ~10,000 free games at my fingertips I do find it a bit tedious. Still listen to the soundtrack about once a month though.
It's absolute garbage
>>3183315
Nice memeopinion
DK64 is a classic. It's one of the very few games I ever owned a physical guide for, and it's the only game that I've still got a physical guide for.
The atmosphere Rare drilled into it is ridiculously gripping and strong. I can recall the feeling of every area after not having played it in over a decade.
One thing that I remember being troublesome was that you needed a certain number of blueprints to make the final boss manageable, since every blueprint added to the boss timer.
>>3178801
there was huge hype about the game before it came out, commercials in movie theatres shilling the inclusion of the expansion pack
To me it never was as good as the SNES games. DK64 made a very slight splash around here compared to the massive hit the SNES games were. It was still a good game, but I think a game more like the new DK Countries for the 3DS and such would have been better, if the N64 could have pulled it off. It's just too much like the other Rare 3D platformers on the N64 in it's current form.
I remember the kids in my town not liking it as much as Banjo Kazooie. I never got to enjoy it because I never had the expansion pack to play it.
I was simply blown away by the graphics and the size of the world.
I didn't like the first levels thoughbecause I thought they were pretty bland compared to BK. I kinda fell in love with the game after Gloomy Galleon and Fungi Forest, but it didn't last much because I quickly became bothered by the number of collectibles and those annoying minigames.
>>3185037
My copy of the game included the expansion pack.
My 11 year old self loved it
My current 29 year old self can't sit through collectathons anymore
It was a great game for its time and holds a special place in my heart
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Donkey-kong-64-collectors-edition-VGA-graded-85-NM-brand-new-and-sealed-n64-/162037016636?hash=item25ba28a83c:g:VNEAAOSw5L9XDgTV
Wow, bargain...
>>3185704
>binge played it a while back
>stopped at K. Rools hideout
>came back to it a couple months later
>collected everything
>EVERYTHING
> Can't be bothered to do the final boss
This game is so draining, as are the Banjo-Kazooie games, but at least BK was on a much smaller scale compared to Tooie and DK64.
