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?