Bad Game Design - Donkey Kong 64 

When you use a dead person for clickbait smh

How dare you put chunky in the thumbnail, he’s dead

Choose your power Style Grace >A funny face

I didn't realize how mixed of a reception this game had until many years later. Say what you want, but this is in my top 20 games of all time. Very fond memories

"What? DK64 was a masterpiece!" *Watches Video* "Fair point."

I love how Chunky whispers "Tiny" when you go to select him

What I really appreciate about this kind of video essay compared to some others I've seen is that what you're showing in the video actually matches what you're talking about at basically all points. It's very appealing and something under-appreciated.

What I did as a kid to make it easier on the collectables was just sticking to one Kong only until I got all of most of the collectables and THEN I'd switch them, it makes the game more enjoyable to me

I would LOVE a remake of this game that allows you to press a button on the D pad to switch Kong’s. That literally fixes almost everything about this game

he has a point with the camera angle believe me its hard

The actual worst part of the game was when you bought it used. Then putting it into the 64 and finding out that you needed an expansion pack.

The worst part of DK 64 is Beaver Bother, change my mind.

Still, I've often said Rare was the best developer on the N64. When I make a top ten, I always notice a huge chunk all came from Rare. Star Fox, Conker, Banjo, Golden Eye and Perfect Dark are just classics.

Having to use specific kongs for each collectible is actually precisely why I love the game so much. :P

Bad Game Design - Beaver Bother

One thing I do love about this game is the humor, though. I love how Chunky is such a wimpy baby and immediately starts worshipping the dragon boss out of fear.

This is a fantastic video. Not just because you found what didn't work, and why, but you thought of things that COULD work in their place!

CG Coconut gun

Still waiting for the Donkey Kong 64 remaster

DK64 is my GAME! I love it to bits. I had to watch this video. I can agree that the mini-games weren't the best, but I personally think everything else was so fun and unique. The collecting wasn't an issue for me. I liked playing as all of them. Even if they weren't all working together per se, I enjoyed the uniqueness of each Kong. Good video regardless.

"It let's you decide that Dixie is obviously the better choice and you should never choose Kiddie" Haha! yep!

No, the stakes were lowered. Mess with DK's bananas, IT'S GONNA HURT

The sly cooper series is a good example of having different characters to work together.

bruh the dk rap makes this game pure gold

You hit the nail RIGHT on the head and said it better than I ever could. Just replayed this game because my nostalgia and memories told me that this was the best game ever, but I could not have been more wrong. I found that the entire game dragged and felt like a job, doing tedious grunt work for hours - after I put the game down it felt exhausting, like I just did a load of homework. The core mechanic of the game is running around a giant map to collect colored bananas and going back and forth to the tag barrel to go to the SAME EXACT spot 4 more times. That being said, not only was King K. Rool was one of the funnest bosses in my experience in playing platformers, but the laboratory leading up to getting the last key to fight him was also extremely rewarding, because it felt exactly as you said - cohesive instead of exclusive. I felt a sense of team pride working together with the Kong family to complete the game, and my god if they only made every level like that - this thing could have been something huger. One final thought - I thought the strongest point of the game was the variety of characters to choose from, but it could have been done in a much smoother and more different way. Each Kong had a different feel and personality to them so it kept it interesting until you had to use them each 40 times every world.

i agree with the collectibles it was a little much but didnt bother me. but u wanted the kongs to work with eachother through the whole game and have ur own choice and beat it a different way. That would be a game waaaaay before its time

The problem with your argument is it's actually quite hard to balance the characters while making them unique, and players would stick with their favorite except when forced to switch. This would truncate the length of the game and reduce the difficulty.

I thought you were going to say like really bad reasons but you didn’t well done dude

I'm gonna be honest: When I first clicked on the video I thought it was gonna be some unappreciative guy bashing what is one of my all time favorite games, but as the video wore on I found myself agreeing more and more with the issues and evidence presented. Well done on the video man. You earned this sub.

It could've been fixed with just letting you swap Kongs on the fly.

I wish this had gotten a sequel

God the music is amazing in this game

do a good game design Superman 64. It was my fav game as a kid

I have to admit, the whole "Every Kong can only collect special Bananas" thing was also the deal breaker for me. I loved this Game, but eventually got tired of the endless Kong switching just to collect some measily Bananas to get those freaking Boss Gates opend and screamed at the Pig to fucking Jump a little so I dont have to go scouring for 20 more Bananas that I missed somewhere. Geez!

HE HAS NO FACE HE HAS NO SOUL IF IF IF YOU CROSS HIM HE’LL TAKE YA *TO HELL*

And then there’s Chunky. He’s dead

If this video doesn't give ideas for a rom hack, I don't know....

This game should have a remaster so that they can have a chance to not only get better graphics on this game, but to fix these problems. It would be perfect. I would get a N Switch If this came out for it.

how do you beat beaver bother?

Almost every problem you mentioned would be solved by adding the ability to switch Kongs anywhere, instead of having to find a tag barrel. You know, like you could do in all three previous games.

I simply got baffled by the levels in general, I had no idea what to do and where to go.

Only thing I disagree with is the segregated boss fights. I think those were a bold move but were a great choice. It helps make the player involved with all characters of the game.

I just picked this game up again after ten years, and I definitely hate having to run back and forth in between the Kong barrel and 15 different bananas of different colors over and over again, but I really do love it. It's dope af.

"Dam what this hater about" "Oh wait yeah, I hated all that shit to no ends"

Do another one of these i loved it!!!

you didn't mention how.... FRUSTRATING The Diddy Kong jetpack is to control. The jetpack's obnoxious controls are the reason I never beat the game. I'd waste a HALF HOUR of the Hideout Helm time trying to do the rings.

What is it with Rare and making lairs be the Protagonist / Antagonist’s head?

Ok, I saw the gameplay you put when you said the game had a bad camera, but what I always did was press the R button on the N64 controller to swing it to the Kong’s back.

DK64 is among my all-time favorite games. I just can't stand to dislike anything about it, because of how much I played it years ago - the nostalgic memories of endless fun with friends, playing this masterpiece. But your arguments come from a reasonable and thought-out standpoint. I liked this video because it's well-made and objective. I love everything about DK64, personally, but your criticisms are mind-opening and constructive. In my opinion, some things could easily be overlooked. Quite minor, actually. Nevertheless, great work.

This is the second "obscure yet high quality" game related series I've found in the past *day*. I think RU-vid's recommendation algorithms are actually improving...who knew?

You do not have to collect all the collectibles, but for people who want to collect everything they just added a little extra replay ability for completionist by having to do each level on each character.

You brought up some very good points here, but I still love DK 64 even to this day. Thanks for the video!

Please do more -Good- BAD game design

whats funny is that these issues could all be fixed if you could just swap kongs on the fly

Finally, he's here for you It's the last member of the DK crew He has no pulse And no heart rate THIS KONG is in a better place

I feel like the segmentation and backtracking is what I love about the game, but that may be because my playstyle is stick to a kong in a level until running out of things to do with them then switching, so I never felt franticly needing to constantly tag barrel. I do wish It used the animal buddies more though.

It sounds like all the game really needed was the ability to switch Kong through the pause menu instead of at specific check points.

You want to know what the worst bit of design in this game is? the Nintendo and Rareware coins being required to beat the game 100%. Fuck that DK arcade machine and fuck the other arcade game.

Or just let the player swap Kongs whenever they want, wherever they want.

Donkey Kong said trans rights

1. DK64 is a good game. 2. DK64 is blighted by collection tasks to the nth degree. 3. DK64 is bug heaven. Oh well, I love the game for what it is, even with all it's imperfections. EDIT: If they remastered DK64 for the Switch/NX with new graphics and with all their knowledge they have now it would be a nice throwback game.

I'd like to see a remastered DK64 (that does it justice btw)

I always heard that the backtracking was awful in DK64 so I never played it until I got bored one day and decided to give it a shot and to be honest it's not that bad I agree it can be annoying but there's a certain rhythm to it that I find really enjoyable and the DK arcade cabinet really wasn't that bad it wasn't mandatory to beat and was a pretty fun challenge in my opinion after having to play it over and over again I can now say that I'm really good at the original Donkey Kong

"And then there's Chunky, *he's dead."*

Sir, I must defend this game on the basis of Lanky Kong. I understand he lacks both style and grace. Some even say he has a funny face. But he can handstand when he needs to, and stretches his arms out just for you. Additionally, he inflates himself similarly to the Hindenburg. Most importantly, however, this kong just digs this tune.

You beat this game 101%? Mad respect man, i never could make it past those damn minigames and the Fungi Forest boss!

Lately I've been playing old games from when I was a kid with my son and I couldn't believe how bad everything felt like the controls and the camera as well as the frame rate.

"TRANS RIGHTS, OK" - Donkey Kong, 2019

The best design about this game is the DK rap.

The backtracking was even worse when you consider that not every Kong is available at the beginning of the game. You never get Chunky until Frantic Factory, and suddenly, you have to go back by about 3 worlds to get all his stuff. Anyway, one thing I hated about collectathons in general was how they task you collect all the tiny shit throughout a level, be it coins or bananas or rings or whatever. In previous 2D platforms, this was no big deal. Just collect a hundred of them, and you get an extra life (as well as add to your high score, though that's kinda lost its purpose ever since games went to home consoles). Convenient, but not something you need to do, and in fact, could usually be accomplished in a completely passive manner. But starting from, at the latest, Super Mario 64, this is suddenly mandatory to 100% a game (and in worse cases, mandatory just to complete the game, seeing as you need a certain number of collectibles just to progress). Thankfully, in the case of Mario 64, you just needed 100 coins, which (usually) doesn't equate to practically every coin in a level, but it's still obnoxious as fuck to track them all down (what especially makes these tiny collectibles a pain is that most are right there in plain sight, but then you have to search every nook and cranny in hopes of getting those last few). Banjo-Kazooie was probably the worst offender; track down 100 notes in a level in a single go, without losing a life. Ugh. I'll gladly take DK64's segmented collectibles over that crap. At least those colored bananas get saved the moment you grab them (well, the game doesn't save automatically, but you get what I mean). Thankfully, Rare seemed to have learned their lesson by the time Banjo-Tooie came out, because that was probably the most well-handled of the N64 collectathons. The tiny collectibles are saved individually AND they give them to you in clusters. Though, I can't say I commend the backtracking that game involved (mainly due to worlds being directly connected to one another), but otherwise, it was pretty good. Truth be told, platformers were my favorite genre as a kid. But as of the N64 era, while I still enjoyed them, they dropped considerably in how I favored them, and I'm not sure if it was due to this collecting shit they suddenly forced upon them, the really bad camera controls, or a combination of both along with possibly other minor grievances. I guess I could understand WHY they did this; when going from 2D to 3D, worlds become about free exploration, and the goal's no longer as simple as going from point A to point B (though this was still possible; Sonic did it, but Sonic games have had a horrible time in the 3D realm, and they mainly accomplished keeping "reach the goal" the main objective by severely limiting your range of movement anyway). However, in doing this, it feels like they just turned platformers into a poor man's RPGs (RPGs having always allowed free exploration in a.... kinda sorta three-dimensional plane). Ironically, RPGs have since become my genre of choice.

very good video, I love this game, it was the first game I played (and the one that took me the longest), many people hate this game because it is very "difficult" (it took me 12 years to pass it) and I loved how you spoke with great respect for the game, hopefully and nintendo consider making a remake of this jewel and solve the things you said in the video (or at least make a 3d game for dk)

Playing this as a kid, none of the things you mentioned seemed like a problem, because I wasn't playing it to 100% it, I was playing it for fun. You unlock different kongs as you go and so the way I played through it was doing as many complete levels with DK as I could, then doing as much as I would with Diddy, then later switching up to the others. I wouldn't switch a bunch of times in one level, I would go through and complete the level as much as possible, and then come back to it later. It was a constantly evolving experience. I can see how switching constantly would make the game extremely tedious.

I was so worried this would be a rant against a game I loved as a kid. I'm glad it's such an incredibly thoughtful, perspective video. Awesome job! I love it.

3 words: MOVING ICE PATH

I was agreeing with you the whole video until the end when I heard the Banana Fairy Isle song. All is forgiven! I forgive Donkey Kong 64 for everything!

Big Sobek hours who up?

DK64 is the Dark Souls of Collectibles items

I'm currently replaying DK 64 and I too used to get frustrated and overwhelmed by how much each character had to do. I used to switch characters every few minutes when I saw something another character had to pick up or do. This go around, I take it one character at a time. Do everything Donkey has to do in a level, then switch to Diddy, etc. Sometime characters do have to hit switches, open doors, etc. for each other, but even then, I'm careful not to get side-tracked. Once I got this "system" down, it's not so bad.

This game scared me as a kid, I don’t know why but something about the ambience on king k tools boxing match scared me...

You say this is bad game design but I lived for all this backtracking playing this game as a child.

Fantastic, very reasonably constructive criticism!

Why do people complain about the amount of collectibles? That's my favorite thing about the game.

Personally I think having stuff for certain kongs is a good thing in terms of having their own custom designed section or even boss fights. They just went too far with bananas and coins.

Why I hate Lanky: *He has no style *He has no grace *Thi-thi-thi-this kong is an ape disgrace

plz do more like these, i highly enjoyed the video and editing, you focused on the facts and argument, gave a counter-argument, and didn;t use cringey humor, subscribed off this video, good job.

Not a bad game, but it has a lot of frustrating and terrible flaws that could have been improved

Speedrunners: "Are you sure you have to collect everything? Tought it was just shoot some oranges and you could bypass everything"

Someone should make a mod for this game where you can switch Kongs whenever and wherever by clicking a button.

It's been almost two years since this came out, and you still haven't made another "Bad Game Design".

i really enjoy this game as it was designed, only problem for me was the camera which in some parts was ackward and the arcade games which were really hard, too much in my opinion.

As a rom hacker, I LOVE thinking about ways that games can be improved... because with enough research and time, they really can 😙 Thanks for the insight!

I don't remember feeling this way at all. Maybe my love of Metroid made me not mind the backtracking. I'm with you on the lack of animal buddies, but I love this game overall. I even replayed it about ten years ago and got all the collectibles again.

Really well written and put together video!

I've been 101% completing this for past 2 months. Playing randomly when I get the time. I've been playing this game since it came out, and this is the first time I've attempted to complete the game on my own without any help and I gotta tell you, it's frustrating at certain parts. I completely agree with you on the banana barrels. Beaver Bother is the worst. The tedious trying over and over again to get certain collectibles is frustrating. I don't mind the smaller collectibles as it makes it fun to explore the level with each Kong's abilities. But the Coins and Barrels... just too draining...

your review speaks the truth! as much as i have fond memories of this game with love, i gotta be real; its too time consuming playing different characters for a simple task that can be done in unison. i hear ya about them cameras! The struggle as a 90's kid! lol great vid! keep up the good work! ^.^

Maybe they assumed no one would be obsessive enough to try to collect every single banana

Only reason I never beat this game was because of Donkey Kong Arcade...

I'm kind of surprised all this multiple collectables bullshit didn't annoy me as a kid.

DK64 was definitely a childhood favorite for me, great video and really awesome ideas for the game play in retrospect.

I'll always appreciate this game for the great Hbomberguy stream for Mermaids. Having Donkey Kong saying "TRANS RIGHT, OK" was just yes all around