September 2018 Game of the Month: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest

lilbud

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy´s Kong Quest

Developer(s): Rareware
Genre(s): Platformer
Platform(s): SNES, GBA
No. of Players: 1

Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy´s Kong Quest was released in 1995 in all regions. This game is a sequel to the wildly successful original game (Donkey Kong Country) The first game was seen as a technical masterpiece, so Rareware (R.I.P) was tasked with making a sequel.

The focus of this game is not on Donkey Kong, but his nephew Diddy Kong and his girlfriend Dixie Kong (I know it sounds strange) DK is kidnapped by the evil King K. Rool. So it is up to them to save him.

This game is much like it's predecessor when it comes to the base gameplay. Just your normal side-scrolling affair. You go through each of the 52 levels collecting bananas, coins, and floating letters.

There are eight worlds to traverse through, fighting a boss in each, to make your way to K. Rool and to save your uncle. Each world features the gamut of enemies and tricky platforming.

This game was ultimately seen as better than the original, the best DKC game, and possibly one of the best 2D platformers ever made. This game was also one of the best selling games on the SNES.

Enough formalities, hop in a minecart, and lets get going!

Links

Gregg Mayles Twitter Page (He posts behind the scenes stuff from this game and other Rareware games)
What a Remake could look like (A fan made a re-imagining of this game if it were to be remade today)

Game of the Month Challenge

The challenge for this month is Something's Fishy Your challenge this month is just to beat the game. I picked an easy challenge this month mainly to draw more people to the GoTM feature. (Getting kinda boring just @meleu and me :) )

Have fun, and don't take any crap from anybody.

Link to past GOTM's

lilbud

Also, I just realized that next month (October) is the 1 year anniversary of the game of the month feature.

A Former User

I am updating my RetroPie to the Stretch version today. I'll be participating this month!

SgtJimmyRustles

I'd probably do a retroachievements leaderboard for people who use retroachievements and are members of the forum.

lilbud

Figured I'd make a post about this.

The original game that I was going to use for september was an old DS game, a favorite of mine. But changed my mind when I couldn't find the cartridge. That did get me thinking though.

How many of you would still do the challenge if it was not a retroachievements game? Like if I were to do PS1 games or DS Games, would anyone be interested?

Tagging those that might have thoughts on the matter: @LiveFastCyYoung @SgtJimmyRustles @meleu @obsidianspider @Brigane

obsidianspider

@lilbud I have never used RetroAchievements, so that doesn't affect my desire to participate. DKC2 is a great game. I've never beaten it, so this is a great reason to play again

A Former User

I personally enjoy having it tied to RA. Gives me an excuse to pick up cheevos for games I might not play on my own.

meleu

For me to participate having it tied to RA is a prerequisite.

I try to use the GotM to "scrutinize" an achievement set. Even when I don't find time to join the GotM, I'm glad that lilbud pings me when the set deserves to be revisioned (btw, that's what happened with QuackShot and Shinobi 3).

As lilbud may know, we have a bunch of buggy and poorly designed sets over there, made in the early days of RetroAchievements. When there was no documentation and the achievements were uploaded without much criterion.

We (RA staff) already have a list of those poor sets, but fixing/improving them is a time consuming task. You need to spend some time researching the memory, create a bunch of save states, perform a bunch of tests, add logic to avoid achievements being earned via password/savestates...

That's why I use RetroPie's GotM as a motivation to go deeper on the game's memory, fix buggy cheevos and maybe create new spicy ones.

It's not that hard to realize that, although being an awesome idea/concept, RetroAchievements is a young project and urges to mature. By the way that's why I'm spending most of my free time there and am away from the RetroPie scene. But I still love all of you <3

P.S.: Wut?! After rereading what I wrote above I have no idea how the answer to a simple question became this emotional speech... 😅

lilbud

@meleu Nice speech Marc Antony :)

Personally, while the game of the month is tied to cheevos. I'd like to feature games that don't have cheevos. But instead we have a challenge. There are games I absolutely adore and loved growing up that couldn't be featured due to lack of cheevos.

The games would still have to be playable on retropie. So nothing like GameCube or PS2.

SgtJimmyRustles

@lilbud said in September Game of the Month: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest:

Personally, while the game of the month is tied to cheevos. I'd like to feature games that don't have cheevos. But instead we have a challenge. There are games I absolutely adore and loved growing up that couldn't be featured due to lack of cheevos.
The games would still have to be playable on retropie. So nothing like GameCube or PS2.

The big issue is that we'd have to take pictures of individual scores or what not. Cheevos allows us to have our scores in a neat little setup where we can post our username/profile page and show off what we did. Plus it takes into account if we cheat or not with gameshark/game-genie and the like. I get it's not perfect, but it's nice to have some sort of protection against people who are cheating.

Kleenax

This will be the first month I participate so my opinion may be moot but having it tied to the cheevos is a really cool deal. Might I suggest maybe having the main GoTM and a side game which doesn't have the cheevos? for those who get the achievement quickly or early in the month they then have another thing to try? I know it'd be more work to choose so maybe make that like a every other month .

mediamogul

@sgtjimmyrustles said in September Game of the Month: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest:

Plus it takes into account if we cheat or not with gameshark/game-genie and the like. I get it's not perfect, but it's nice to have some sort of protection against people who are cheating.

I believe that's only the case in hardcore mode. My first month participating was 'Super Mario Bros. 3' and I thought hardcore was required, but besides meleu I don't think I've ever seen anybody else enable it. Then again, I really don't pay that close attention. I've always seen these forum challenges as being pretty casual. If people want to use save states instead of lengthy passwords, or as a placeholder to go watch a movie, it really doesn't bother me personally.

AndersHP

Cool to see a more casual quest this month. Haven't participated yet, since I got the impression that the cheevos of previous months were pretty hardcore.

I will give it a go this time! :)

lilbud

@andershp I planned to do a more difficult game and challenge. But I decided against that.

Mainly because I didn't write the post until the day before my first day of school.

Also, I usually play games on my 3ds during the school year. So I will usually pick achievements that are somewhat easy and can be done without using cheevos.

A Former User

I hadn't played this game since around the time it came out. Started it last night.

I am having a HELL of a time even seeing the enemies on the screen at times. :(

A Former User

How's everyone doing out there? I've been making some progress, slowly but surely. Going to try and put in some serious time this weekend. Really starting to get back into this series!

lilbud

@livefastcyyoung said in September Game of the Month: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Diddy's Kong Quest:

How's everyone doing out there?

I got to the second world Sunday. Haven't been able to make much progress with school going on, draining my motivation for anything other than sleeping and eating.

I also got my braces off after 3.5 years and am binging on all the candy I wasn't allowed to eat for that time.

thelostsoul

@livefastcyyoung I was busy with some other RetroPie related stuff. I also enabled cheevos back yesterday and want to start playing too. I always was a fan of this version, it is superior to the first part in my opinion. This would be a good opportunity to relive it again.

thelostsoul

I started playing it yesterday and got to world 4 now and I am loving it. I remember all these levels when I played it as a teenager. Do you guys play it for all the special levels and coins? As for me, I only try to beat it, as 102% (yeah you can get more than 100%) would take too long, we only have 9 days left. ;-) I also did not remember that some parts of the music would be muted, if sound effects are played.

What bugs me is that saving costs 2 coins and you have to beat some levels on each world to "unlock" it and the coins are not saved? I don't use Save States. But you can Pause the level you are and then press Select to quit the level you beat once. Note: Not Start and Select button on the same time pressing, as this could quit the emulator. It is enough to press Start and release once and then press Select button on its own. This only works for levels you beat at least once, but it allows you to search and grind for coins. Also, every time I start the game, I need to set it from Mono to Stereo, why does this setting not save? I don't remember if this would on real cartridge.

lilbud

@thelostsoul I'm playing to the end, I never had the patience to 100 percent a game.

Also, I softlocked my game and lost my save file. Don't do that.