Rare Appreciation Thread

[E-Man]

Unfortunately, they turned the same mechanic into a gimmick - where Dixie could use Kiddy to break platforms/act like a barrel. Unfortunately, that mechanic wasn't really used outside of the first world in the game and it just felt gimmicky as the game practically forced you to use Kiddy Kong to utilize Dixie just as you would have in the previous title. This literally is what killed Kiddy as a good character for me - in the previous two titles, you could use both Kongs more or less interchangably (a little less so in the second game due to Dixie's hair-locopter, but generally the only difference are how they hold barrels - overhead or in-front) but the gimmicky partner mechanics forced you to use one over the other and have both Kongs on top of that - and the game really shoved the usage of Kiddy Kong in your face (which could arguably be "good level design" but maybe if he wasn't so godawfully frustrating to control, I wouldn't be complaining)

Basically, Kiddy and Chunky are bad Kongs because they are attempting to do what an already established Kong (AKA Donkey Kong) should have done.

From what I've heard, Rare was going to make DK playable in the third game. Sure, DK wasn't much fun to play as compared to Diddy in the first game, but why they dropped that idea and replace him with some baby monkey is beyond me… Heck, he's not even that cute of a baby! True, he looks better than Baby Kong of the CGI animated series, but he was a long way to go before he even gets half the appeal of Baby DK.



Also, why even use Chunky to begin with in DK64? I understand that they want to avoid using any of the characters from the other two DKC games (even though they did use Wrinkly), but there was no excuse to have Chunky in there when DK was just fine on his own. All they could have done to get that heavy lifting part sorted out was to make it an ability DK gets a little later in the game from Cranky and merge it with the ability to pull levers. Thus, you have no need for Chunky and you still get the backtracking Rare was trying to active.