HISTORY
I don’t think i need to explain who Donkey Kong is, heck, you wouldn’t need to do so even back in 1999, as the reboot of the series by british developer Rareware proved to be incredibly successful, reinvigorating DK for a new generation by updating it, and other phrases i’m probably gonna repeat when i eventually tackle the Country games, so i’m just stopping myself here.
Plus its not like DK became this niche Nintendo franchise fans spend years begging for a sequel that they most likely ain’t gonna get.
But for today, let’s pretend we don’t know what Bananza is, or even what Conker’s N64 game would turn out to be, for that matter.
After wrapping up the SNES trilogy of DK games with Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie’s Double Trouble in late 1996, a team of Rare employees were put to work on a Donkey Kong game for the N64….allegedly it was intended to launch for the then new N64DD add-on but most likely it was an idea by producers that quickly died when the add-on sales were shown to be exactly as low as they were expecting, after years of delays to debut into a market where the Compact Disc was indeed becoming the new norm and making cartridges obsolete.
Curiously it wasn’t even intended as a full 3D platformer, but instead as 2.5D platformer more in line with the Country series , though this version spend 18 months in developments, was ultimately scrapped (if anything of that version survives to this day, it’s being held secret by either old Rare and-or Nintendo staff, there’s no images of it circulating at the time of posting,), a lot of people that worked on Banjo Kazooie were brought in, and the game was reworked into being a typical 3D collectathon platformer in the vein of BK and it’s sequel, Banjo Tooie.
There’s a bit more to the production history of Donkey Kong 64, but it was mostly Rare doing their thing as usual by then, there’s no major scandal, but i would be a fool not talk about about how Nintendo staff checked-in to see the game early on, leading to a terrified Shigeru Miyamoto seeing DK given a realistic double barreled shotgun (producing realistic gun sounds) as a weapon to shoot cartoon beavers with, only for him to quickly sketch up a less alarming, more child friendly and less problematic weaponry, adding leaf branches, a more wooden design, the now iconic “coconut gun”, which was immediatly implemented in the game.
All of this just because the realistic gun was a placeholder Rare absent mindedly left in.
For reference, this review is based on both my old playthrough of DK 64 on original N64 hardware and a fresh run of the version released via the N64 Classics app/service on Switch 2 (as all N64 games, it can run on the old Switch 1 consoles as well).
PLOT & GRAPHICS
The plot is fairly straighforward, with K.Rool and his army invade via a mechanical island to invade DK Isle and destroy it using a doomsday weapon (basically a 60s spy flick style super death ray) called the Blast-O-Matic, but they crash into DK, the weapon gets damages, so K. Rool does the usual, stealing all of the Golden Banana from the banana horde, and kidnapping all of DK friends/extended clan members to buy time while the weapon is being repaired.
With the help of a caged pacifist giant Kremlin called K.Lumsy and a weasel technician, Snide, that changed sides and is willing to help you sabotage the weapon, Donkey Kong sets up to collect back the Golden Bananas, save his friends, and stop K. Rool plans once again.
The game has surprisingly more cutscenes than you’d expect, and while i do like the “old spy flick” style of the introductory one, they way they decided to do the cutscenes indicating major progress and activing while reaching various milestone in the game…it’s weird, because it cuts back to K.Rool watching the Kongs in a screen or room with Kremlins, making it feel disconnected expecially because sometimes it’s not even shown the latest Kong you freed.
Yes, it’s arguably very “Saturday morning cartoon”, like K. Rool is moonlighting as Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget and is watching…. i guess his lackeys basically informing him of what have DK and the gang have been up to so far, but done in a sort of improv theathrical performance?
Regardless, it’s weird and i’d argue a bit clunky, as far as i undestand the real reason for this choice was because it could hide loading times and because doing these was to get around the N64 hardware limitations, i mean, sure as hell they weren’t gonna be able to put FMV into the cart.
I do like they also did a Game Over “bad ending” cutscene for when you exit the game, again, same as Banjo Kazooie, but it’s a bit of a lost art, they really don’t do these anymore, and the finale is a ridiculous extravanganza where cartoon logic (and ape mammaries) saves the day, as expected.
While DK Isle itself looks different and the new Kongs just exist, there is some sort of continuity with the DKC trilogy, as we still have Cranky Kong around, and heck, even Wrinkly Kong, despite passing away somewhere after DKC 3, is back a ghost to still help the Kong clan out.
Kiddy and Dixie aren’t present, but i guess given Kiddy being not a popular Kong, i get it.
As you would expect from this one being one of the few N64 games that required (so much the new accessory was bundled with the game back in the day) the N64 Expansion Pak to run at all, it looks good….ok maybe not that good to justify the need for more memory via the Expansion Pak module, that is, as the add-on mostly helped in doing dynamic lighting, but the widescreen option is nice.
I don’t have many qualms about the graphics, besides it could have been less rough looking for a 1999 release on the console (K.Rool bloodshot eye must have frightened some children back then, though), and that it would have helped to have less draw distance, as in turn it would have helped locating the many collectibles, but it was a common issue at the time, and could be worse.
In terms of music, instead of the enlisting David Wise or Eveline Fischer (as they were the composers for the DKC games) again, Rare chose to call back the other famous composer they associated themselves with closely, Grant Kirkhope, to score DK first outing in 3D… so it’s really no surprise the various tunes make this feel more like a Banjo game than a DKC one.
And – in a criticism that will be repeated a lot in the rest of the review – it’s good, but not as memorable as Banjo Kazooie or the Country trilogy, though i must stress it is very good and Kirkhope style fits the collecthaton gameplay better, the remixes of old DKC tunes are quite solid too, it still feels like a DK games, even though i gotta admit, my favourites here, the Frantic Factory and Gloomy Galleon themes, are indeed the ones that are more “Kirkhope”-y than others.
Still, i wanna stress, very good stuff indeed.
Obviously there is the DK Rap song that the game opens on, as in, it’s the intro song with lyrics, its one of the reason DK 64 is remembered nowadays, i don’t have much to add, as i know it, you know it, since eventually became a popular and enduring internet meme, was featured in Smash Bros, and immortalized, so much it reached “meme heaven”, so to speak.
To the point that – like it or not – the DK Rap is essential to DK 64’s identity.
But it’s worth remembering at release no one, fans or critics alike, got the joke, and somehow took as serious a rap song about monkeys and grapes and coconuts shells, as if “Cranky taking it to the fridge” was poised to start a feud with Tupac or Death Row Records, so for years “gamers” hated viscerally what – in the words of Kirkhope himself – was just “ a silly song about monkeys, bananas and peanuts”, a cute little joke musical intro made for fun.
GAMEPLAY & LEVEL DESIGN
In a way, there’s little to say because while being a follow up to DKC SNES trilogy in terms of story, this is more the actual “Banjo Threeie”, as we would eventually learn.
If you’ve played Banjo Kazooie or most other 3D platformers of the era, you know the drill, with the emphasis on exploration and collecting a fuckton of shit along way, as the Old Mario 64 Testament laid the Commandments for how the genre worked in this new fangled 3D thingie, an how the Book of Kazooie elaborated on them.
Like the “collectathon” label implies, you’re thrown into sandbox-esque enviroments and told to get everything that doesn’t attack you back or is bolted down to the very ground or rock, explore every nook and cranny to get more stuff, access new area, get new abilites and get even more things from previously locked areas, face the occasional bosses, rinse and repeat.
The issue here is that DK 64 is more akin to Banjo Tooie than Banjo Kazooie, and for the worse part i mean, trading in the elegant simplicity found in Kazooie for an emphasis on “complexity” of Tooie, of introducing so many variables, abilities, kinds of collectables, it becomes clear soon enough the diktat for the project was “MORE”, just more, and this isn’t a guess, we know because the original Rare staff told us that in interviews how the main direction was to basically outdo in scope and number anything they’ve done on the console, that the staffer were encouraged to add more into the pot, even if the cauldron itself was creaking under the sheer girth of the brew.
And that is not necessarily an issue in itself, but the main issues it’s not even the scope, it’s the choices made in how to approach the issue, as they quintuple down on backtracking, even more than Tooie., because there’s so much more to collect, to find, to get and the levels are very segmented, with lots of switches or item pads that can only activated by a character, sometimes entire subsections you can’t enter without using a specific Kong and a specific ability that it won’t able to learn until next level, as Cranky Kong outright tells the player.
It exacerbates Tooie’s issue with the levels being too segmented and relying too much on power ups/abilities you would unlock only later down the line, or tease you with collectables just out of reach or needing a sequence of character swap and trasformations,; it’s the washing machine jiggys from Banjo Tooie, blown up to absurd proportion.
You see, not only you have now instead 5 playable characters instead of 2, each has its own set of abilites that require their own color coded banana coins to get, because pretty much all of the collectibles are color coded, plus every Kong can get a musical instrument that works as a “smart bomb” kind of move as well as a tool to activate some specific pads, a specific gun too.
These you can get from 4 kinds of shops, and i almost forgot the blueprint collectables too are color coded, so you can defeated one of the punk-ish kremlins that drop them… only to realize you can’t get it because it’s of a different color from the Kong you’re playing as in that istance.
Then there is what really drives the game into pure, delirious excess territory, the colored bananas, the secondary collectible, here acting as currency needed to access the world’s boss.
There are 100 bananas per world/level…. for each of the 5 characters, because even those are color coded too, meaning basically everything besides ammo crates, coconut crystals (used for most special abilities), health pickups left by defeated enemies, grenade crates can’t be picked up by everyone: Donkey Kong ones are coded yellow, so Chunky Kong (which is coded green) can’t pick those bananas up, they become transparent, eluding his heavy handed touch forever more.
To say nothing how the color coded bananas don’t even appear until you have the respective Kong… which does make sense, it does, but it still too much. Just too much.
You might argue that you can easily make even the original Banjo Kazooie (or most 3D platformers of the era) seems excessive if you simply throw high numbers without context, but the color coding of even the fuckin regular bananas is what puts DK 64 collection based gameplay from excessive to frankly insane, as they might sound innocuous but are the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, as if done by Absolute Bane himself.
Speaking of which, even just the process of reaching the boss requires paying a collectible quota, and it has to be super extra, it can’t be just showing up to the boss door, NO, you have to feed an obese hippo with enough bananas from that level to fatten him up so a scale will let his companion, a disgusting bipedal pig, turn the key in the lock and let you access the boss fight…. which of course it’s character specific too, kinda surprised it doesn’t need just red or green bananas, here at least it doesn’t matter, you just need to fill the quota.
This is not to say that gameplay itself it’s bad, quite the opposite, it’s still old Rare, so it does live up to their high standards of quality, it controls fairly well, collecting stuff is fun as in all Rare collecthatons, the new Kongs are also pretty fun to use and have unique abilities, some basically akin/functionally the same as ones in Kazooie or Tooie, but many are new entirely, plus it’s commendable how much they brought over the DKC games into the 3D format, with barrel blast stages, even a couple of times where you can transform into DKC iconic animal buddies Rambi The Rhino and Enguarde The Swordfish, and there are mine cart scrolling levels that still channel that sadistic hard nature of their 2D precedessors, in a slightly different flavor of frustrating.
Speaking of frustrating, i almost forgot, the camera. Even with the ability to reset it behind the player, the camera in DK 64 is arguably far worse than in Banjo Kazooie, it’s pretty bad, and this you’ll notice how this can be a shitty combo when you have to navigate thin ledges, because controls are mostly good, but at times (i dunno if its performance issues or something with the framerate) they can be less precise and even grabbing ledges can be janky because of the camera.
It’s undeniable the game really does try to keep thing varied, as there are many small challenges, like a slide race against a beetle, puzzles, battle arenas and lot of mini-games that go from a Mario Paint style fly swatting minigame, a stealth maze sneak section, heck, there’s even the arcade versions of the original Donkey Kong game to play in a cabinet, as well as an emulated version of a historic game of Rare’s past, Jetpac.
And while it’s easier to list what you can simply grab without referring to the color coding chart, even though some of the mini-games are recycled a bit too much, i do quite like Donkey Kong 64, i really do, even if it at times i feel like i’m doing extra labor for relatively little, yet i am back still, because there is some fun stuff to do, even if it requires a level of dedication that might turn off a lot of people, as the line between fun and tedium depends on how much you like the old 3D platformer collecthaton formula by Rare.
There’s no denying tha DK 64 it’s bloated, in how it smothers the player in its ample banana bosoms, even if an accidental needle stratch would reveal how the already big bahonkas have been given a silicone injection, like it’s a bird puffing his chest like a baloon as part of a mating ritual, even if said bird was built like a Boichi female character.
And yet, still has you go through the Burocratic Gauntlet in the 12 Trails Of Asterix before you can reach first base, because it’s not so much the “girth”, but the overly segmentation of it all.
I’ll say that at least the game is upfront in explaining its own comparimentalization, as in, it tells you what the collectables are for, so it’s not that confusing, the tutorial section is kinda weird for a DK game as its frontloaded with obligatory tutorial meant to test if you’re able to do very basic actions, if you’re to be trusted in doing some very basic movements and traversal techniques like moving through space… and picking up barrells, which is kinda odd as this mechanic is oddly never used outside of bosses.
the first proper level/area continues in tutorializing you as you go how the collectables are 90 % color-coded and how many shops there are to spend the various currencies, it evenb tells you how many collectables you can get in the area at the moment with a certain Kong, so it does easy you into the collecthathon loop, and it isn’t stingy as i remember in how fast you unlock the various Kongs…. almost a bit faster than necessary, in way, since by the end of the second level and halfway through the third one, you already have liberated every playable character, minus Chunky Kong.
Dk 64 isn’t deliberately obtuse, it doesn’t want to confuse the player and have it asking constantly what the fuck it’s supposed to do, it sticks to the systems it teaches/shows you, so if you can’t progress, it means you most likely forgot to bring the newly acquired boss key to K.Lumsy.
And while there is a lot of backtracking, the game gives you tools to ease you into it and reduce the time spent just moving about the huge levels, as you can teleport between pads sporting the same number that you’ve unlocked, so even without a map you’ll eventually learn the levels instinctively enough, and if you need help, in the vestibules leading to a world/level portal, you can have Wrinkly give out hints on what to do next or how to resolve a main quest in the level that follows.
Still, even a positive feature like the teleportation pads can inadvertly make even more obvious how much segmented the world/levels can be, for example even the Llama temple found in Aztec Antics, even that sub-area itself has 2 warp points to unlock specific just to the temple.
While it is true the game doesn’t wanna confuse you so you spend even more in the levels… you’re not gonna spend a lot of time in them anyways, because they are designed to be sprawling and huge, to be revisited often, and there are some issues that contribute to the already Sisyphean amount of backtracking, mostly because you’ll need to spend time searching and using the nearest tag barrell in order to switch between the unlocked/freed Kongs, as sometimes even getting just one Golden Banana requires multiple swaps while also having to do so under a strict time limit, that and the already discussed issue of color coding even the regular banana collectibles.
The swapping especially if not kills, severely wounds pacing, and helps to make the action at times feel like a chore, so overcomplicated or laborious is the task for a relatively small reward too,
DIFFICULTY & LENGHT
In a way, DK 64 levels are kind of morbidly funny, because they are even bigger than the ones in Banjo Tooie, this isn’t even a case of the developer making levels bigger in order to make less unique ones, i think, DK 64 technically has 8 world compared to the 9 of BK, but these are bigger, and i even if that was the idea, it doesn’t matter because – again – these levels would be huge even if they were somehow a bit less stuffed with collectables.
The biggest change from the DKC trilogy is the difficulty, as in, given it’s a collectathon, the challenge is less in overcoming enemies or reaching the end of the level, but navigating the worlds and overcome the various challenges in them to obtain more collectables, since the emphasis is more on exploration and collecting all kind of stuff, so at face value, DK 64 is more on the easy side, even though especially early on you can still die if you fuck around too much with enemies, as you have relatively little health and sometimes enemies can pull off surprise attacks, like how the Klap Traps dentures can still move around and bite you before crumpling to dust.
You’ll most take damage from obstacles, terrain like quick sands, hot lava, etc, the occasional fall damage if you slip up from something REAL high up, but there is no lives system, if you die in a world you’re simply respawned/sent back to the level entry portal, which i feel is punishing enough, given how much ground you’ll have to cover/go through to reach new sub-areas and so forth.
Mind you, some of the challenges will be difficult and some can be really fuck frustrating, like the damn beetle slide race using Tiny Kong and the rabbit race, as these require a lot of memorization and a near perfect execution (and as i said before, the mine cart racing section), or some versions of the mini-game Beaver Bother, which also require you to be basically perfect at the challenge.
There are difficulty spikes to “enjoy”, like for example the old DK arcade game and Jetpac, as you need to play these perfectly, DK you even have to beat twice, so the pacing kinda dies, even more because you also need the two unique collectibles obtained via these literal retro challenges.
boss fights are ok, even if half are copy and pasted (in some cases you have to fight a boss twice during the game, other times different bosses are fough the way same, so it almost doesn’t matter), they are challenging but ironically nowhere as hard as some of the supposedly minor challenges like the slide races, though make no mistake, the bosses can be tough too, with the final match against King Krusha Rool in the boxing ring because – again, in the vein of Kazooie/Tooie- a huge multi phases endurance boss fight and delivers a good challenge.
One thing that’s worth noting is that DK 64 is huge, filled excessive amounts of collectables, but it’s also one of those games, THOSE, the ones that basically force you to basically kinda complete it if you wanna see the ending, that will ensure you sample a lot of the “optional content”.
I mentioned blueprints, and those aren’t collectibles needed to obtain a secret ending, nope, they are needed to reach the final area and access the final boss fight, “needed” because the more you get, the more time you’re given to finish the gauntlet of challenges that precede the final boss, as once that limit expires, you get the bad ending and you’ll have to retry from the entire gauntlet.
At least each blueprint helps in reaching the quota of Golden Bananas needed to even access the final area, thank christ they do because you need basically half of them, 100 of 200.
This on top of needing to beat the DK arcade game twice for a Nintendo coin and Jetpac for a Rare coin, and beat at least 4 battle arenas (as you need 4 Battle Crown, obtained from winning a battle arena), PLUS you need 15 banana medals, which are awarded when you get 75 out of the 100 color coded coins for each character in a level, though these you will end up getting anyway due to the banana quotas needed to access the boss area (and the banana baloons net you 5 each, it’s worth remembering), and at least having to get all 8 keys by betting all the bosses does make sense as a thing needed to finish the game, its more of a formality.
I will have to admit the actual process is less insane than it sounds, since a lot of the collectables needed are found or obtained on the critical path anyway, and even the Golden Bananas aren’t that many once you remember a decent chunk are tied to the blueprints… but damn if the game doesn’t feel like it’s being extra dickish, especially in terms of backtracking, or more precisely the many, many times the game requires you to do “micro backtracking” because a trail of bananas you could collect as a character turns into another trail of a color you needed another character for, so back to find a tag barrell to switch, which admittely are often well distributed enough in the levels to make this nowhere as frustrating as it could be.
But it still makes you wish you could swap Kongs on the fly to save time.
To finish the game it takes about 20 hours, at minimum, depending on how much you wanna fuck around before you feel ready to take on the extravaganza of the final boss fight against “K. Rool Abdul”… but i’m gonna have to quote Dunkey on this one, most likely you remember finishing Dk 64 when you were a child, but it was just a gas leak that made you hallucinate doing so.
It’s still satisfying and i never played Dk 64 in my childhood, i did play and beat it like 6 years ago and replayed it last year a bit, before starting a fresh playthrough 2/3 months ago, and let me just say, this is not a game you play to get some progress done fast, i was remembered that when on my fresh save file on the NSO app i saw i spent almost 6 hours… for about 10 % completition.
Completing Dk 64 is another thing entirely, though it could be worse, as at least this isn’t Jet Force Gemini where you need to get all 240+ tribals ( a collectables that can be killed, even accidentally,) to simply access the final boss fight…..heck, Yooka Layle is even worse than it has collectibles yet requires 70 % completition, to go beyond simply doing some of the “sidecorn” into downright forcing almost all “optional” activities on the player just to see the ending.
One of the few things thare aren’t required to simply finish the game are banana fairies, another holdover from the DKC games, here appearing in various locations and having to be captured via a special photocamera (like they’re Fatal Frame/Project Zero ghosts), which unlock extras.
Still, i understand trying to complete it will take you 30 + hours (even on my original N64 copy i never completed), so even today is a lot, especially if you have adult responsabilities and can’t simply play videogames all day. Yet, while it’s still a monument to the excesses of the “collectathon platformers”…. DK 64 holding a Guinness World Record for it in 1999 and the following years feels kidna cute, compared to how massive modern games are, as even 2007 open world games like the first Protoype (remember that?) have more, even just the now “old” super Mario Odyssey has more collectables, even if those can come in bundles of 3.
One thing that i feel has became overlooked is how this already massive (for better and worse) game also had a separate multiplayer mode for up to 4 players, obviously local and splitscreen.
It’s a surplus but i can imagine having some fun with friends if i did play DK 64 when it came out (which i fuckin didn’t), i haven’t had the occasion to try it out in depth, but i was surprised to see it has two main modes, basically a deathmatch free-for-all and a “king of the hill”, and each has 4 or more submodes based on different scoring criteria.
Rare really went the extra mile, as in, the main game was already big enough, but they did, and plus you can also unlock one of the Kremlin enemies, Krusha, as a secret character by photographing/collecting Banana Fairies in the main single player game.
Definitely a “full package”, because this also costed extra as they bundled it with the Expansion Pak required by the game, apparently it was 70 bucks back in the day, damn son.
OVERALL EVALUATION
Let’s dispel the factually incorrect notion that Donkey Kong 64 killed a genre.
It fuckin didn’t, i don’t care how many Youtube thumbnails with that phrase have been made.
Yet there is some nugget of truth in how the overall reputation flipped over time from good to middlin, because while i can see people praise Rare for having made their biggest and complex 3D platformer yet, for having translated fairly well DK into his first 3D foray ever, even if they did so by basically having Rare do Banjo Kazooie once again.
Donkey Kong 64 indeed was pure collectathon platformer excess, stretching out the figurative belly of how a 3D platformer was conceived in those formative years of navigating the transition from decades of 2D design into a literal new dimension, with even positive reviews of the day criticizing the game for being so big on collecting and backtracking to the point of becoming a chore.
It’s Rare having ironically overly mastered their platforming design to the point they never even considered the idea that you can have too much even of a good thing, that you can iterate only so much on an idea before it morphs into something else, or becomes a victim of its own excess, most likely sparked by good intentions of giving the experience as more variety as possible and give the players a big, nourishing buffet of platforming fun.
In other words, Donkey Kong 64 is the Mr. Creosote of 3D platformers, it has the decadent excesses of late Imperial Rome, of the opulent last days of an glorious dynasty that thinks its too big to fail, so indulges its every petty whim in an arrogant handwaving of any potential crisis, victims of their own hubris, stuffing themselves and eventually exploding its guts all over John Cleese.
It triples down on the more lamented aspects of Banjo Tooie, it revels in its own obscene decadent gluttony, it’s not as good or innovative as Banjo Kazooie, at times it controls slightly worse… yet i can see both sides of the fences in this occasion.
I’m personally conflicted, being very nostalgic and liking the old style of Rare collectahon platformers (2D or 3D), willing to gloss over some of the frustrating backtracking… yet even i get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in the game, so much that at time it does feel like a chore, expecially later on when you’re backtracking or going for completition, yet it’s a “chore” i always like to come back, eventually.
There’s no getting around that while there’s a good game in there, there’s some good fun stuff… Donkey Kong 64 it’s too fuckin much for its own sake, yet what still gives it a lasting quality is its excessive nature, there’s no getting around is that will either attract or repel players because of it, that it will be loved by some and loathed by others for the same reason.
Personally i still like it, a lot, though it’s also obvious a perfect textbook example of a design philosophy that’s rightfully dated, that “bigger isn’t necessarily better”, a still relevant lesson ignored by the open world riddled modern big budget videogames market, as it usual is.
I do think it’s worth playing if nothing else to appreciate modern platformers like the newer 3D Donkey Kong game, Bananza – or even its forefather Banjo Kazooie – more, especially now that is widely available on modern Nintendo consoles,
LEGACY
The copyright kerfuffle had many confused, me included, as the understanding wasn’t quite correct…well, not entirely, because while Rare owned the DK64’s code, Nintendo owned DK as a franchise and its associated (and-or derivative) characters, so yes, they also owned the new Kongs introduced here and the Kremlings, and even before Bananza we had actual proof of that, like them appearing in DK Barrel Blast…. which did actually exist, unfortunate as it is.
Actually, what appears to have been the biggest legal issue for a DK 64 rerelease was the game containing a ZX Spectrum emulator made to run Jetpac, which Rare developed and fully owned…. which isn’t a problem in itself, since in 1999 Rare was a Nintendo second party developer, but things changed as in 2004 happened what i’m gonna call the “Great Rare Schism”.
Being brief, in 2002 Nintendo didn’t renewed their stakes-ownership of Rareware/Rare, Microsoft was shopping around for developers that could allure people to their first ever home videogame console, the original X-Box, so Microsoft bought Rare, and because of that many projects that started development on the Gamecube – or earlier Nintendo consoles – were reworked, moved to X-Box or cancelled altogether (like Donkey Kong Racing).
In a curios twist, while the game retrospective reviews became less and less positive about the game itself, the opposite happened with the DK Rap, which became a classic internet meme, alongside the classic “OH BANANA” soundbyte, that originated from here, and as a whole DK 64 became a treasure trove of nostalgia and a lustrous mine of meme materials, especially if about its original Kong characters that never appeared in other DK games after, like Lanky or the Chunky Kong…. whom did prove to be alive and well in the first Super Mario Bros film by Illumination.
Took more than 2 decades, but that will show the haters wrong.
OTHER VERSIONS
After its original release on Nintendo 64, despite the many request for a release during the Wii era, DK 64 would see a rerelease on the Wii U’s Virtual Console catalogue…. in its like last years, but it did, i can’t say i bought it there because i already secured my physical N64 cartridge of DK 64 in its yellow shelled glory.
Apparently the WII U emulated version did ran better and faster, but had some audio bugs, though it also fixed some old glitches, and the remaining ones – to my understanding – simply will never be encountered by anyone that’s just playing the game regularly instead of trying to exploit bugs and glitches for speedrunning purpose,
I spent around 7 hours with the emulated version on the Nintendo 64 Classics App on Switch 2, and i didn’t encounter any glitch or bug, apparently it has less emulation issues than previous versions, plus the multiplayer battle arenas (like pretty much all available games that had multiplayer on N64) now can be played online, and on Switch 2 you can use the rewind feature, which might sound sacrilegious to recommend, but damn if it won’t save you some time either way.
Curiously at least loose PAL copies of the original N64 version aren’t AS expensive as they could be, complete copies instead ask 100 bucks upward, but admittely the cheaper option (the cheaper legal option) to play DK 64 nowadays is indeed the N64 Classics version on Switch and Switch 2 (which does require the NSO subscription and the Expansion Pak tier to access).
Wise Cafe (International) 