I played a bit of DK64 last night before going to bed.

A lot of it was the same old, same old. Get-new-ability, then re-explore every stage to see what you've left behind that that new ability can get you. I now have all the kongs, a lot of their basic abilities, and can enter four stages. I'm still not close to where I was when I left off on FO's version of the game.

There was one part that was a stand-out, though. It's a slide race as Tiny Kong against a bug. It's easily the best part I've seen on this current file. It might even be better than the best part I've seen on the other file, which would have been the Jack-in-the-Box boss. I haven't beaten yet -- it was the last thing I tried last night, and it was really late -- but it seems to require a mix of strategy and skill. It's not enough to simply stay on the track and out race the bug: You also need to collect 50 coins on the track to win. After completely falling off the track several times, I decided I need to approach the situation a little differently, and made staying on the track my one and only priority. After that, I easily survived the race; of course, I lost. But! I didn't lose by much, and I had 41 of the necessary coins. After you make it through the whole race, you have an idea of when you can pick up speed and get a huge lead, and when you need to break to avoid flying off. The trick for me now seems to be to slow down in a couple more places to get more coins. I've won a couple of times by huge margins, but only had 46 coins.

It seems to me that a lot of times races like this are the best part of a lot of 3D platform games. This is obviously directly based on the slides in Super Mario 64, which I thought were some of the best parts of that game. The inner tube race in Conker is one of the best parts of that game, though it's a little different. The speeder bike stage was one of the best parts of Rebel Strike; that's even more different, but it has some of the same principles. And Super Monkey Ball is sort of like what you'd get if you took stages like that and expanded them into an entire game.


I don't like games that are fun.