16-Bit Boy: High Treason

High Treason

16-Bit Boy

16-Bit Boy is a monthly column of retro musings. This month, Michael Sterrett’s still reeling about DONKEY KONG COUNTRY 2.

DONKEY KONG Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest is a heartbreaking example of the quintessential half-arsed sequel, ranking alongside Exorcist II: The Heretic for sheer brain-scorching awfulness. Such is the egregious disparity between it and the original Donkey Kong Country that it genuinely pains me to even speak its name.

One can only compare it to bumping into a long lost love over whom you have pined for years, only to find that the raven-haired, rosy-cheeked beauty upon whom you dreamt is now a chain-smoking ASBO chav with no teeth and a several illegitimate mongrel kids named Morgan, Keeley and Chayse. Look closely and she’s the same person, but the wretched transformation that has occurred not only renders her unattractive but somehow soils the memory of who she once was.

The glaringly obvious problem at the rotten core of the game is that Diddy Kong is not up to title billing. It would be akin to Scrappy Doo or Bebop from Teenage Ninja Turtles getting their own show. They are annoying background characters at best, and much as you can’t base a nutritious meal around a few condiments and some potato peelings, you certainly can’t centre a game around an annoying sidekick. I mean, could a character like Joey from Friends really carry their own show? Of course n… – Um, wait a minute.

Doing it wrong

Donkey Kong Country is a lovingly crafted, engrossing platformer that welcomed the player into a lushly realised world of leafy forests, underground caverns and snowy mountaintops. It even managed to make my personal bête noire, namely underwater swimming levels, bearable by virtue of the blessed-out background music. And the gorgeous setting sun of the Orang-utan Gang sequence is enough to reduce me to a misty eyed fool.

Yet the chaps over at Rare not only failed to conjure up any of this magic for DKC2, but also took the mellifluous transcendental beauty of the source material and defecated on it from a great height. For that unholy sin I hope that, in the Hell that awaits them, they will have their eyes pecked out every day by Necky the big bird thing at the end of the Monkey Mines levels.

The lesson is simple. When you produce a shoddy and ill-conceived sequel to a work of simple perfection, you are not merely cheating the public; you’re cheating yourself, young man. I’m looking at you, Christopher Leitch, director of Teenwolf Too. Don’t think I can’t see you, Unkle’s disappointing second album Never, Never Land. And if the brutes responsible for hotel-based Golden Girls spin off The Golden Palace think they’re not going straight to bed without any supper, they’ve got another thing coming.

Let’s be honest: Rare have gone on to make some enjoyable games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. But some indiscretions are unforgivable. So, to the wretches responsible for the abomination that is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest: hang your heads in shame, and may God have mercy on your souls.