PAON and the Unknown

This article was also written back in the day before October, and those days would be September. This was a little before DK: Jungle Climbers and DK: Barrel Blast were released to some of the best reviewed and critically acclaimed games of there time. DKBB went on to win the prestigious "Best Game Forever" award from one of those really bad TV stations that try to appeal to men aged 16 to 35 and DKJC has since been called "Halo Killer" to the known land. Or so I wish in my ever expanding mind. But now ladies and gentlemints turn your head viewers down to the next couple paragraphs and learn about video game history, cause it's your history!



PAON and the Unknown

I still remember the moment; I just came home from school and grabbed my new Game Informer from the mail box. I immediately went to my library, a.k.a. the bathroom, and flipped through the first ten pages. It was at that moment, on porcelain, when I knew my future would be changed forever, for there will be no Donkey Kong Racing, no Banjo-Kazooie 3, and no Perfect Dark 2 on a Nintendo system. Rare was sold to Microsoft and a child's dreams were shattered. Not that I was a child at the time, but when I was a child I dreamt of five million Donkey Kong Country games… all made by Rare with soundtracks by the great David Wise. DKC2: Diddy's Kong Quest will go down as my favorite game of all time. When Rare was bought out all I kept thinking about were the negatives, but in truth it all happened to work out fairly well. Rare was bought out by Microsoft for $377 million. At the time of the sale, Rare was not up to the developing standards of the rest of the industry, and they actually never were. But at this time they just seemed… out of it. The money must have looked pretty good to Nintendo who was just starting to conjure up a magical wand that would allow your body movements to be registered in the form of waggle. We know this now because of certain patents from 2001 which have recently surfaced. Basically I would assume the money cool 377 million Nintendo also conjured was thrown into the Wii. Rare then pushed out two games for the Xbox, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, arguably Rare's worst game in the past 15 years and a remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day which looked and played beautifully but was ultimately nothing more than a four year old port.
This new era of Rare left a lot to be had with the Donkey Kong franchise over in Nintendo's camp. Through the general resurgence of a more interactive arcade game like Dance Dance Revolution and the Time Crisis series, life was brought back into the arcades and soon the clanking of quarters was heard once more. Nintendo felt that the console market was failing and followed suit with the arcade companies by making games more interactive. Nintendo commissioned Namco, the creator of the PS2 bongo drum series Taiko: Drum Master, to create Donkey Konga and two sequels (the third was never released in America). The game was fun but playing "All the Small Things" with Cranky Kong and banana birds dancing around is not
really my idea of "saving the industry" or even a spiritual sequel to DKC3. The next game Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat was astoundingly fun and was created by Nintendo EAD Tokyo but still it failed to capture the magic of the original DKC games. The backgrounds, characters, and music were very… not DK. It would kind of be like playing a Mario game without Bowser, warp pipes, and shy guys. But during this time a truly underrated game was released with all new game play mechanics. Holding the shoulder buttons would move Donkey and Diddy up the screen in DK: King of Swing and the developer PAON would become the next underground Rare.
PAON has only released one game so far but it stands right now as the only true spiritual successor to DKC3. King of Swing combined the elements of Rare with their own special spin. Their next two games, DK: Jungle Climbers and DK: Barrel Blast should help get DK back on
the map for doing something other than hit bongos to Good Charlotte songs or punch Pikachu in the face. And PAON has promise, for they actually acknowledge that the DK64 characters exist by bringing back Lanky and Tiny. The character art is a special mix between Rare's and DK: King of Swing's drawings. What PAON brings to the table is the delivery of Rare's promises from seven years ago. On October 8th, the day after my birthday, I will be playing "Donkey Kong Racing" and on September 10th I'll play yet another DKC game. The future is surely bright and once again the real winners are us gamers!



So now six months later I look back and realize that this article is... alright. It was amazing to see Diddy Kong show up in Super Smash Bros. Brawl lately and even Funky Kong is getting his own cameo in Mario Kart Wii. In retrospect the future does in fact look bright for Donkey Kong, even after the flops that were DKBB and DKJC. Does anyone actually agree with the reviews for these games?

The Great Video Game Sport

This article was written back in September of 2007 before the Wii and PS3 came out. This was also a dark time before I got to wrap my brain around one of the most innovative and creative games of 2005, Psychonauts. The article says I never played it which is now a downright lie. I also complain about other people complaining about how people were disappointed when the Smash Bros. site announced they would be updating every day. Any way, I hope you enjoy this little rant entitled The Great Video Game Sport!

I always used to say a true gamer is one who reads more about videogames than actually plays them. Throughout the past ten years of my life I have savored every morsel of industry knowledge like Mario obsessively collecting 120 stars. From Doki Doki Panic and the Konami code to Rare being bought by Microsoft and of course Jack Thompson, I have followed every step and probably clicked the previous page button on GoNintendo approximately 400 mega-million times. So is there truth in this concept; should someone who spends four hours a day online acquire more gamer achievements than someone who spends that same four hours killing 237 enemies to acquire Xbox Live achievements (which are equally as worthless) consider themselves to be the greater, much more “hardcore” gamer? But in a way both the industry follower or “Industry Gamer” and the person who buys a bunch of games without knowing how good they really are or “Game Gamer” are both hardcore gamers.

Being an “industry gamer” has its faults. Through the internet we now have the ability to be part of the “cool click” in school and downgrade things we never even tried. Is Donkey Kong Country really that bad of a game? For some reason it gets a bad rap online by people who probably don’t know their “King K. Rools” from their “Kaptain K. Rools”. Just because Miyamoto spoke out about his dislike for the game does not mean everyone else has to jump on his bandwagon. The same is true for the reverse, I can talk about the wonders of Psychonauts like any other “industry spokesman” on the internet but as I have yet to sacrifice my finger joints to a moment of arthritic gaming pleasure with Raz and The Milkman I truly would be speaking out of my arse, much like Dr. Phil. And this is the problem with our industry; many people think they know what they are talking about when they simply have not played the game. And complain all you want about the lack of GCN games, but I still have plenty of games on that system I have yet to beat!

Both “industry gamer” and “game gamer” should be considered in the status of the hardcore gamer crowd. But then again our videogame industry is not treated like any other industry in the world; it is treated more like a type of sport. Imagine the hardware developers as the teams, IE. Microsoft = Wizards, Sony = Lakers, Nintendo = NY Giants. These three leaders try every year through mega-millions of dollars to get their newest revelation of gaming underneath or next to your TV screen. Try as they may they would fail if it were not for the players, the publishers and developers. EA is the Barry Bonds, *insert obligatory steroid joke here*, while Rare would be the… some dude in a sport that used to be good, sold out, and now is kind of horrible. E3 would be the Super Bowl and the individual games/matches would of course obviously be the games. And this is where game gamer really wins as opposed to not only the “industry gamer” but any sports fan alike.

Playing a videogame will always be ten to 40 percent more enjoyable than watching a tennis match or Nascars going around in a circle for 400 laps! Playing gives us the feeling and the enjoyment of a brand new world. And that is what all great art is supposed to do, create a new way of thinking. But then again there are so many games out there we will never have a chance to play all of them in one life cycle, especially with new stuff coming out every month. The internet gives gamers the ability to acknowledge games like Ninja Five-O and Dewey’s Adventure, games that are incredibly good but that we have no time to play. In a world where the industry gamer is obsessed with how many pixelations of blood can fit in a frame or gets angry at the Smash Bros. website because they promised something big and all they delivered were daily updates (and how is that a bad thing by the way?) there needs to be less complaining and more celebration. Nintendo is right, playing is believing. The industry gamer and game gamer both have their benefits, it is finding the right balance between the two that people need to accomplish. Gamers need to quit whining about droughts and anytime SmashBros.com updates about an item and do something with that time, like play Psychonauts… I heard it’s incredible!

The Organic Nature of Pretentious Authenticity

So it must happen, my first post. Gaming blogs are all around the internet but there is one singular problem with all of them; they do not have me posting on them. This sounds highly conceited and it is, but truth be told I have been playing video games all my life and truly feel I can bring something new to the industry. I hope everything is a little quirky, a little fun, but above all I need to prove I'm not a jackass!

This website was designed for you in mind, the Fourth Person Gamer. This type of gamer stays up till the wee (Wii?) hours of the morning rolling over and collecting as much video game information that little katamari brain can handle instead of actually playing them. But this is where the hardcore meet the casual, which is a huge debate in the industry right now. A casual gamer does not know who Reggie is, how many Zelda CD-i games there were or how the Hot Coffee Mod changed the industry forever. Hell they believe Reggie to be a Jackson, Hot Coffee to be something you drink and the CD-i as something you can invest money in! (oh and they think Zelda is a smooshed faced dog). So now Mr. Fourth Person Gamer I invite you to relish in the hot dog that is the internet, so be that relish... and please do not be afraid of a little sauerkraut with your video game reading!

Happy 4th Person Gaming,
- Bucca Taylor