The only thing that could've made this game better, (for me at least), is if you could play as Donkey Kong also. I know you're supposed to save him but I wanted to play as him in it. Over all it is still a great game.

I couldn't agree more with this post.  I hated not being able to play as Donkey Kong...and no matter how fun the "kids" were.  I felt they should have added an ability to play as Donkey Kong after beating the game.[

This game was killed for me by the banana coin economy. I hated having to spend coins to switch worlds and even save. More than once I picked up some difficult secret or beat a hard level, only to die on the next level trying to grind banana coins so I could save.

I like watching glitch videos on YouTube, and there is a game killing one for this game. If you do the glitch, you get odd things like turning into a golden rhino, or even see what looks like Diddy Kong hanging upside down with red around his head. What kills the game though is the glitch causes the game to crash on the menus screen (thus preventing you from ever even playing the game again).

I first played this back in 2010 and it quickly became one of my fave SNES games. It has a few niggling issues, but I think it holds up fairly well, except maybe the graphics. Any platformer enthusiast should check it out.

And yeah, I agree Donkey Kong should have been unlockable from beating the game, then you could use him when you replay stages to get all the collectables.

It is one of the funny peculiarities of the DKC series how you play as Donkey Kong in the first one but not in the sequels of DKC2 and DKC3. Not until the spiritual successor of DK64 does he again become the main playing character. DKC2 is also interesting in that it has two lightweight characters. In DKC, Diddy Kong is lighter than Donkey Kong and in DKC3 Kiddie Kong takes the place of Donkey Kong to provide more muscle and is heavier than Dixie Kong. However, you have both Diddy and Dixie Kong in DKC2 and no heavier character. Thus, there are a couple Kremlings that you cannot defeat unless you have a barrel to knock them out. It helps to give DKC2 more of it's standout feel from the other games.

I never cared about not playing as Donkey Kong because once I played as Dixie, she was the only Kong character I wanted to keep playing as. I love her guitar solos if you finish the level with her. Much better than Diddy Kong's beatbox.

Even though I absolutely adored the original DKC, this one undoubtedly improves upon it. This game is damn near a masterpiece, and I wholeheartedly agree that "they got this one right." There really is a lot to love here. Some levels moved away from the traditional DK Isle settings, offering cool locales like an amusement park or castle. The animal buddies provided some fun alternative ways to travels through the stages. However, as mentioned, the real star here is Wise's soundtrack. The songs just seem to be perfectly paired with the levels. All of these, and the simplicity of the platforming gameplay, kept me returning to this game again and again when I was young.


Fast forward to today, and our most recent DKC game was Tropical Freeze -- a game that I believe was sadly overlooked by many, but which is very much the "Diddy's Kong Quest" of its day. It does many of the same things that DKC2 did for the original series -- fantastic, creative levels featuring awesome levels of detail; alternative means of progressing through stages by using various Kongs; and an unbelievably good soundtrack by David Wise. Seriously, the soundtrack for Tropical Freeze is very possibly the second best in the entire series. It features some of the most enjoyable levels I have ever played in a platformer, and much like DKC2, I find myself returning to it again and again, just for fun. It breaks my heart that Zach doesn't want to give the latest Wii U game a chance. I'm almost tempted to redeem the game as my Platinum Club Nintendo reward and send him the code, because I just don't think Tropical Freeze should be missed.

DKC2 was an ambitious cutting edge game for 1995.

Tropical Freeze is an ambitious cutting edge game... for 1995.

See the difference?  Tropical Freeze got less attention because it's a retro-themed game released during a time when Nintendo had released a fair bit of other retro-themed sidescrollers.  DKC 2 was contemporary.  Tropical Freeze plays to nostalgia.  It's like comparing Elvis to someone playing 50's style Rock 'n' Roll today.  Maybe the current guy is technically playing better and the production and sound quality is superior but he's still playing what is seen as old music while Elvis was playing the same style when it was current.  That's why Elvis is the legend while the other guy is not, even if he technically does it better.

Spoken like someone who hasn't played the game (and doesn't know what "retro-themed" means).

Having played both games, I'm not sure that I do see the difference. To begin with, exactly how "cutting edge" DKC2 was when it was first released? It was not a huge leap over the original DKC in regards to technology or gameplay. As for being contemporary and ambitious, I find the design of many Tropical Freeze levels to be unparalleled today.


I think you're trying to argue that the game is retro-themed because it's a side-scroller (as in "all side-scrollers are retro if they weren't made in the '80s or '90s") and therefore panders to the player's nostalgia, which I absolutely believe to not be true. The game stands on its own merits, and only minimally references past games in the series (such as the inclusion of mine cart levels, with which they do many crazy new things). Besides, Donkey Kong Country Returns seems to have garnered much more attention that this game, and in my opinion that game was far more leveraged on nostalgia. Tropical Freeze is a game that anyone can enjoy, even if you are unfamiliar with previous titles in the series. It's not the familiar that made me fall in love with this game, but the exciting and imaginative new ideas, music, and experiences.

I didn't say Tropical Freeze was a bad game but, yes, as a sidescroller it's game design doesn't come across as current.  Meanwhile in 1995 sidescrollers were the norm so DKC 2 was very much a game of its time and the pre-rendered graphics was a pretty new trick that had only debuted the year before and was very hip at the time.  People were hyped for a DKC sequel when DKC 2 came out.  When Tropical Freeze was announced the reaction was "another 2D platformer on the Wii U?"  The Wii U was struggling and the joke was that all the system had was 2D platformers and then Nintendo announced yet another one.  The timing was such that Tropical Freeze became the poster boy for the Wii U's struggles.  There is no reason to buy a brand new HD console in 2013 to play 2D games and yet Nintendo kept pushing them like... well like it was the SNES era when a glut of such games actually would be a selling point.

DKC 2 is a good example of how in-touch Nintendo was at the time while Tropical Freeze is unfortunately a good example of how out-of-touch they are today.  Out of that context, Tropical Freeze will probably gain a more positive reputation in the future.

It's unfortunate that such a stigma seems to be attached to the game when, quite honestly, there's not a whole lot these days that is genuinely new. I suppose when compared to 3D open world games or first person shooters, sidescrollers do appear more quaint, even if they might provide a tighter, more controlled gaming experience. Perhaps you're right, and Tropical Freeze will one day be looked back on as a great game. It's just a shame that some people may not realize how good it is until it has had to stand the test of time rather than simply enjoying it right now.

By the end of 2014, Tropical Freeze was around 500k in North America alone, with another 100k in Japan, and while no official numbers have been released from Europe, it was at the top of the sales charts in France and Germany for a month after it's first release and considering those are Nintendo's strongest markets in Europe by far.  In other words Tropical Freeze is realistically sold at least somewhere between 700-800k by the end of 2014, and this is a series that does have legs.  Meaning sometime this year it will cross the million mark worldwide.

So Tropical Freeze wasn't exactly an ignored game.  Yeah it's not going to get anywhere close to what Returns sold but over 1 million is still pretty good considering the size of the Wii U's userbase.  Hell, 1 million sold at full price like Tropical Freeze is more then most of those so called modern games Ian is talking about sell so it's not like a 2D Donkey Kong is irrelevant in todays market.

Most of the overlooking is from the usual suspects who are just butthurt Retro didn't make whatever dream game they imagined in their head.  From actual Donkey Kong and 2D Platforming fans, Tropical Freeze is regarded as a great game right and I see many topics on larger gaming message boards that praise Tropical Freeze as one of the best 2D platformers of all time. 

The issue with Tropical Freeze is that the Wii U has plenty of 2d platformers, many of which I already own. There's also yoshi's wooly world which interests me far more. It's just a hard sell.

Yoshi is for babies who dont want to be challenged. Get N the donkey kong train or get out.

I'm still on the second island of Tropical Freeze because I'm still salty over Returns 3DS. It was so long ago, but it still haunts my dreams. The extra levels weren't worth the trouble.

I don't understand the "not current" game design argument. What does that even mean? I find Retro's DK games infinitely more playable (despite the groin-grabbing difficulty) than Rare's. It's apparent to me that Retro learned much from over 20 years of side-scroller history, as it should. Rare, obviously, only had so much history to look back to and it shows in their games' design. I loved DKC back in the day and I just can't play it anymore.

It kind of reminds me of playing A Link to the Past last year. You had to position Link just right to pick up a pot. That was fine in 1991 when I didn't know better, but I was like, "Ugh, what the hell is this?" 24 years later. That is my second favorite game of all time. Some things don't feel right years later, and that's what newer, modern games (hopefully) fix. To me, Retro's DK games do just that. If they felt like Rare's games, I probably wouldn't even bother.

People always say Nintendo has other teams who can make 2D platformers, so Retro should be doing other things, and while that's true to an extent, I'd definitely argue that no one else, Nintendo or otherwise, has made a 2D platformer better than Retro has with its Donkey Kong games in a long, long time.