Just played through Donkey Kong Country for the first time in decades

I honestly don't remember if I ever replayed it all of the way through since I first got it back in '94, but man, that game was a big part of my childhood; we got that Nintendo Power promo VHS for it in the mail and I probably watched that thing 50 times - keep in mind I was only six at the time - and it was one of the very few games I ever got brand new and near release back then (almost everything I had growing up, at least until the Gamecube era, were secondhand games or old ones that were in the bargain bin). I want to say it took me many, many months, if not years, to finish it... and now I just blew through it in an hour and thirty-two minutes. So many levels that I remember dying over and over to as a child... and I just finished most of them on my first try. Except Poison Pond. Oh god. I don't even remember having trouble with that level back then, and I'm almost certain I died more there on this run than I did in the rest of the game combined. I could've probably shaved a good 10-15 minutes off of my time if I'd managed to get through it first try. Could've shaved even more if I hadn't bothered grabbing most of the animal tokens and doing the bonus rooms I came across, but I wasn't intentionally going for a speed run here.

So yeah, I've definitely gotten a lot better at games since being a six year old who'd never beaten a platformer yet, and I knew that DKC was shorter than the sequels, but I still didn't expect to breeze through it quite that easily. The snow area was my kryptonite back in the day, and I think I died maybe once this time. Once through all of the levels in that area combined, that is. The barrel levels weren't nearly as rough as I'd remembered. No shortcuts, either; hell, other than the entrance warp in Stop & Go Station, I don't even remember where any of them are, if I even knew of them in the first place (no internet or people to give me hints back then). My worst enemy in the game turned out to actually be the camera, especially in the water levels, where I felt like I couldn't see far enough in front of me to see what's coming (which is what made Poison Pond a nightmare), though there were at least a few levels where it struggled to keep up with me and I ended up falling into a pit or hitting something because I needed to jump and couldn't wait for it to adjust itself.

I finished with only 60%, by the way, since I never figured out where most of the secrets were, and from what I understand, some of them are really obtuse and there's no reward for finding them all, anyway. Now that's something games like DKC2 and Kirby's Dream Land 2 did well. Loved finding everything in those. I think I might try to actually play through DKC3 next, since that's the only one I didn't eventually own back then. I did try to play it six or seven years ago,but I lost interest after a while and never went back. I'd say it's definitely the most different of the three, at least.

Anyway, I had fun revisiting my past for a (very short) while, and it was fun to see how much I've improved (well, at least at video games).

DKC2 > DKC3 >>>> DKC1

1 is still a good game, but the other two are much better.

Finding obtuse secrets was itself a reward back in the day. Because you could share the knowledge with friends like some sort of guru sage.

2 > Tropical Freeze > 1 > 3 > Returns

Donkey Kong Country is my favorite in the SNES trilogy, frankly. It is "barebones", but I enjoyed the game better for it and I thought the challenge here was closer to my strengths.

The later two entries, though not bad, had some emphasized level gimmicks that I disliked and I wasn't keen on having to pay Banana Coins to save my game or warp to a different world in the second entry, not to mention that I personally wasn't fan of Donkey Kong not being playable in these entries.

Guess I should bump this once, before it disappears. Voting's gone about as expected - DKC 2 was definitely my favorite, and it was one of the first games I fully completed. Funny story there, I once rented it years before I could buy it and got stuck on the lava level with the hot air balloons because child me didn't understand that you had to stand on the ballons and use the d-pad to move them (I kept trying to jump from them instead and, well, fell in lava).

As for DKC's esoteric secrets, here's the most egregious example:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sqgqj6ZQRJw

It was evidently not only a bonus stage hidden inside another bonus stage, you had to intentionally get the worst item as the reward, which then gave you a barrel instead of said item, then you had to hold said barrel and jump into the exit. If you walked to it, you instead left the bonus stage and went back to the regular level. How anyone ever figured this out, I don't know.

Also, if anyone's curious and hasn't seen it, this is the promo VHS I was referring to:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgw-TEWuCQc

DKC 2. Absolute masterclass in a game, everything was perfect.

2 is easily the best.