Donkey Kong Country 2 and Open Bus

I know it's OT, but I have to say, for a 30-year-old video game, it's remarkable how well DK Country 2 holds up today. I've been playing it with an emulator and the graphics, sound, level design, and controls are all masterful. The kids can keep Fortnite, I'll take DKC and Chrono Trigger any day!

I played the original DKC trilogy for the first time three years ago, and I have to say that I really disliked parts 1 and 2. The controls felt very "floaty" and the difficulty was not well adjusted. The bird stage in DKC 2 was specially rage-inducing, you know which one.

I really enjoyed DKC 3 though, which apparently is not that popular among hardcore DKC fans, so there is that.

Played a tiny bit of the first one in the 90s, but like you I only played through the trilogy just recently (in my case, last year) and on original hardware. I would not go so far as to say disliked, but you are absolutely correct that the controls are floaty (although not as bad as Sonic, but Sonic is truly awful) and it is often a challenge to tell where objects and platforms end. The third game has the weakest music, but I would consider a lot of the level and boss design substantially better. Overall, I think there is a heavy amount of nostalgia going on when it comes to the fans, but that is okay as long as we speak openly about it.

As for difficulty, we will have to agree to disagree. Only point that had me somewhat frustrated was the waterfall boss in the last game and that one had me stumped for some time (should have read the manual I guess?). Overall, I would still recommend the games as good for their time and among the better action platformers for their console, but they really are nowhere close to a masterpiece like Super Mario World that has pretty much perfected controls and you can tell exactly where platforms and objects start and end.

Which Sonic game? The first one is quite bad, but S3&K is probably my favourite platformer ever.

Regarding my comment about the difficulty, for me it is mostly a result of the bad controls, which to be honest is a problem that plagues many games of that era. You have enemies popping out from the edge of the screen and you need to react in a fraction of a second, but the controls don't let you do so, so you need to memorize the whole game and react in advance. It is not fun for me.

> Which Sonic game? The first one is quite bad, but S3&K is probably my favourite platformer ever.

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2, plus Sonic Mania as those are the ones I have touched somewhat recently. I can not remember if I played Sonic 3 & Knuckles as a kid or not, so maybe I am overly biased. In general, I have a fairly positive view of the Sonic platformers in every regard apart from the controls. The music for example is good, although it is not the best that the Mega Drive has to offer as that would probably be Thunder Force IV. Same for having very nice sprite work and the Sonic 2 bonus level blew my mind as a kid.

> Regarding my comment about the difficulty, for me it is mostly a result of the bad controls, which to be honest is a problem that plagues many games of that era. You have enemies popping out from the edge of the screen and you need to react in a fraction of a second, but the controls don't let you do so, so you need to memorize the whole game and react in advance. It is not fun for me.

Can relate, but I wonder if what you are describing here is the excessively zoomed in trend that we had from the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

> The music for example is good, although it is not the best that the Mega Drive has to offer as that would probably be Thunder Force IV.

I don't know if it is the best, but the music of S3&K absolutely slaps. I have yet to play Thunder Force 4 though.

> Can relate, but I wonder if what you are describing here is the excessively zoomed in trend that we had from the late 80s and throughout the 90s.

Ah, I had never considered that but now I realize that you are right. Many games of that era pushed huge sprites to show their graphical prowess, but that had the nasty side effect of reducing the FOV.