More Bootlegs, I guess (Part 2)

 Do people still write blogs?

A lot has changed, for me and in the world in general. Bejungle'd had always been a place to vent my thoughts but things like Twitter forced me to reel it in. As I am now taking a Twitter hiatus I find myself thinking of my first love again - Donkey Kong Country.

Between this and my last post we literally had the announcement of the Mario movie, the release of the Mario movie, and the end of the Mario movie's cinematic run. Hell, I think K. Rool and Banjo-Kazooie in Smash were after my last post. All are very important parts in the greater Rare universe I want to cover at some point, when writing isn't as hard anymore.

I've been between colleges and struggling with home life. And also hyperfixations went all over the place. Currently, it's The Simpsons. If you think about it, there's not a lot of visual difference between General Klump and Barney Gumble... and that explains a lot about my taste in men.

Yeah ok it sounded better in my head. Sad fat guys who are surprisingly good at music and have wonky teeth?

Anyway. Vinny of Vinesauce fame was going over the DKC TV show's music, and I felt compelled to barf my DK-adjecent thoughts out on my designated DK-thought-spot.

I came to think of bootlegs. Swing on a vine with me and I'll see you after the break!

Tropical Freeze; where DK is relevant again

WARNING; this WILL contain spoilers! Tread carefully!

So last Monday I went out to buy a Wii U. Earlier, on Saturday, I had purchased Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, my most anticipated game of this year.

A reason I love Tropical Freeze is because it fits in perfectly with other DKC games. Returns did too, but it fell flat on some points. And even then, Returns was amazing. We all thought it couldn't get better than Returns. Except, guess what? It did get better than Returns. Who would'a thought that?

Why I love Conker's Bad Fur Day

(I was gonna do this as a video, narrating it, as a subtle jab to another video I don't even deem worthy of watching -- but my dumb deep Dutch vocal chords don't allow me to do anything without sounding like a complete moron. Boo hiss.)

Conker's Bad Fur Day was my most favourite thing three years ago. The game was so dear to me because it was made by Rare - I'm betting that if Rare had no involvement, I never would've picked up the game in the first place.

Truth to be told, violent and/or questionable things couldn't interest me less at the time. I got into some anime about dogs killing each other... because it was about dogs. Similarly, I got into Conker because he wasn't some buff, muscular, middle-aged guy, but instead, a cute little squirrel.

Well, really, that's the catch; he looks cute and fuzzy, but in reality, he's got a severe drinking problem and ends up depressed.

Assorted over-analyzations of the piñata kind (AKA headcanons)

Whoa, it's been ages since I've been here. This blog is my personal ranting space, as long as it's relevant to Donkey Kong or the surrounding games somehow. Where have I been? To the distant and the dangerous, thinking that I am a pathetic fool. Also, watching a lot of Viva Piñata, whining about the fact that I'm broke and there's so many cool things I want to buy, and chatting with my friends.
Oh, and wallowing in self-pity for some reason. Also drawing things and working on stuff I'm actually supposed to be working on, like homework. And my original story, which I'm certain I'm gonna publish someday. I hope, at least. As well as--... nah, that's a story for another time!

Well then, I have obviously neglected this blog for too long and will now attempt to make up for it by sharing some more of my far-fetched headcanons and theories that border on the weird and the whimsical and happen to concern Viva Piñata some way or another. When this is published, though, I have found out that my frantic obsessing over piñatas has quieted down a little. So this is probably the last post in a loooong while. Bear with me.

1. The Big Boss and LOG are one and the same.

Also pictured; Langston Lickatoad, who is awesome. He also basically makes both the Viva Piñata show and the games canon.

This might need some clarification, since both characters are rather recent.

Don't beat 'em, join 'em - about Viva Piñata

Why, yes, I am back. And I say; let's talk about Viva Piñata.

The games are just about the most beautiful thing to ever grace the Xbox 360. And maybe PC and DS too. Quirky, colourful, and creative, it's a sort of simulation game where you basically build a garden which attracts live animal piñatas. If they like your garden enough, they take residence and you can build them houses, name them, even dress them up in cool costumes, romance them so you can get more of the same species, to eventually send them to a party. (These functions were a lot more elaborate in the sequel.) Meanwhile, Professor Pester and his ruffians and sour Piñatas attempt to wreak havoc.

Some of its best points, to me at least, are its colourfulness, and its heavy stylization. It's not meant to be realistic. Instead, everything is vibrant and charmingly cartoony, and adorned with nifty patterns. From the smallest flower to the biggest tree - even the grass. But somehow, it is still believable, something Rare is very good at. They dare to be different, and that's exactly where its charms come from. Aside all this, it has a lot of shout-outs to past Rare games, which is awesome.

And of course, the music. The amazing soundtrack as composed by Grant Kirkhope, who also composed Banjo-Kazooie's and Donkey Kong 64's soundtrack, is both whimsical and atmospheric. I'm not exaggerating when I say it made me cry sometimes simply because it is so beautiful.

I have been mesmerized by this lovely game for years now, ever since I got the original on the PC, and later bought an Xbox 360 and played Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, its sequel. Lately, I've begun picking it up again and I'm having the most fun I've had in quite a while. Trouble in Paradise can be considered as some kind of 'expansion pack', as it has everything from the original game, but more, such as over 20 new Piñata species, more things to do, new regions like the Piñarctic and the Dessert Desert, and a lot of new items. Even if it's a standalone game.

So anyway, beautiful games. But the real reason I picked it up again was because a group of friends of mine I know from role playing on Tumblr were all excited about it, and chatting about it on our Skype group. I remembered I had the game as well and I played it again. But what they were also quite enthusiastic about was the animated series. Yep. I originally dismissed it because I had the dreadful 'hurr hurr, it's not the same as the games so it sucks!' attitude. You know, the same thing people think about the Donkey Kong Country cartoon, which I'm presumably one of the biggest fans of. Now I've lost that attitude, which is for the better.

Anyway, I heard good things about it and decided to check it out - with the open mind to end all open minds.

After having seen only one episode, I was hooked. It was no Donkey Kong Country.

In fact, I daresay I liked it better than Donkey Kong Country.

3 characters crueler than K. Rool

We all know the Donkey Kong Country cartoon. If you have been following this blog for a while, I'm sure you do. And most people don't like it as much, but I am convinced it is as good as the games, just in a totally different way. To accentuate my point, I feel the need to point out I went out of my way to download the entire series to my PC for the sole reason of making shallow parodies of it.

Well then, all silliness aside, let's start this thing off.

In DK lore, there have been three true villains - namely King K. Rool (under different aliases), Ghastly King, and Tiki Tong.

K. Rool was just some asshole who decided to troll DK by stealing the banana hoard, Ghastly King was an evil monkey from SPACE that wanted to rule over the Fruit Kingdoms for no real reason and Tiki Tong stole the banana hoard to keep his race alive and possibly take over the world. Fair share of hindrances, right? It is nothing compared to the vast amount of baddies Mario fought in the past, but this is mostly to blame on the fact that Nintendo obviously favours Mario over Donkey Kong. Which is saddening, because they debuted in the same game.

Anyway, K. Rool and co. were typical antagonists, setting up the games' plot. But what about those other characters who had done unspeakable things people presumably forgot all about because they weren't the main villains?

(note that this article is meant to not be taken entirely seriously and is here for humorous purposes only.)

3. Bluster Kong

Bluster Kong is one of the show-only characters, and nearly everybody who doesn't appreciate the show blames their dislike of it on Bluster. I honestly don't blame them - while this specific Kong provides a lot of humorous scenes and dialogue and I don't mind him, he takes up a lot of space, having three episodes with him in the limelight.

"Don't blame me! That miserable Donkey Kong was already hogging the spotlight in the games!"

He's a pathetic mommy's boy, constantly whining about his mother and whenever he has to do manual labor, all hell breaks loose. Figuratively, of course. Bluster can't really... do anything. He's not strong, he can't jump high, and he certainly isn't a hell of a guy. He also has a grudge towards Donkey Kong, for the sole reason that DK is constantly hitting on Candy, the only adult female ape in the cartoon who isn't Bluster's mom or Great Aunt Grouchy. Bluster is not happy with this because he too has an eye on Candy, to the point where he gets a bit desperate in some episodes, like in A Thin Line Between Love and Ape, where he makes a love potion to make her love him.

Evil?

The episode Bad Hair Day, AKA the only episode most people know of, had him being introduced as another all-around jerk. Fair enough. But eventually, Donkey Kong loses his hair (and his muscles) and Cranky makes a potion to make it grow back. Candy and Bluster set out to find DK. Eventually, in the jungle, Bluster complains that "I can't walk anymore! My feet are sore, I've got sand in my shoes, and I'm thirsty!" leading to him snatching the potion from Candy. He empties the bottle on the ground.

The truth behind my logo

You know that logo of this little site, don't you? It says BeJungle'd! in bright, silly letters. I'm not going to post it here 'cuz it's right there. *points up*

But what is a funny thing to know, the odd-coloured letters are actually symbolizing something... each of them, no less.

B is for Brambles. A very well-remembered part of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. Well.. maybe not so much. But they're pretty characteristic.

E and L are for Game Over. You know that game over screen in the first DKC game, with DK and Diddy all beaten up and the font all messy? Yeah.

J is for Palm Trees. C'mon, they're everywhere.

U is for Crystal Coconut. A very important plot point in the animated show is the Crystal Coconut and since I like the show as much as the games I thought of this.

N and G are for vines. Also an useful part of the games. I mean, they had an whole area named after 'em; Vine Valley.

E is for Dirt. It's a jungle, and a jungle is dirty. Duh.

D is nothing at all. I just had no good ideas left.

...Yeah, filler article. Sorry about that.

Kremlings - the definitive classification

One of my headcanons dictate that Kremlings are actually mammals that happen to look like reptiles.

Well... mostly.

Obviously, they're meant to be reptiles. But I'm a nerd and I think these things through too much. I mean, c'mon. I have a lot of theories to make sense of it. SO here goes nothing.

There will be talk of mammaries in this article.

1. They're actually warm-blooded.

A lot of kritters and maybe a single krusha hop/strut around in the icy peaks of Gorilla Glacier, in the first game. The second game had krunchas walking about merrily in K. Rool's own personal ice storage. And let's not forget the skiddas around the K3! A reptile wouldn't last in those icy areas for more than an hour.

Not to mention they run around for little reason nearly all the time. Real crocodiles lay about in the sun all day, only moving to eat or mate, being dependent on warmth to survive. Kremlings usually also spend time playing video games and running after crystal coconuts, among other frivolous pastimes.

That, and King K. Rool clearly blushes in shame, in the episode Just Kidding.

Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!. The third installment and last entry in the Donkey Kong Country games (until Returns, of course), was a marvellous way to end a series but still I see it getting so much flak. For shame, because it still holds a special place in my heart. Mostly because it was, in fact, the first Donkey Kong game I played.

While by no means as good as the first game, and it doesn't even do so much as hold a candle to the second, it still is a beautiful game with great gameplay, mind-blowingly beautiful environments in a time when something like that was hard to find in games, and an awesome soundtrack.

No butts about it

Warning. This post might be a bit disturbing. It involves K. Rool's behind. I promise to not post any pictures of it, though. If you're still frankly not interested in these things, I ask you kindly to skip this article.

"NO, you lunkhead! I'm not fat, you're just paying attention to all the wrong things!"

When Vangelis met DK (part 1)

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest's musical piece In a Snow-Bound Land has been one of my most favourite tracks in the game for a long time. But I searched it up on YouTube, and what did some people say?
"Rip-off of Vangelis's Antarctica!"

I, being naturally curious, went to search for this Vangelis dude and his music. Finding the piece they were referring to, I discovered something.
It almost sounded exactly like the DKC track. Listening to more musical pieces by this man, I became a fan of the atmospheric tunes he had created. Some of it just sounds so unmistakably Donkey Kong-esque! And mr. Vangelis, and David Wise, too if you happen to be reading this... that's a good thing.

But really, it just can't be a coincidence!

Take a look at Death

...And no, not at Gregg. Only if you feel like getting cussed at.

Have we ever realized how many characters die in Rare's games? Not just "game over", but just plain die, never to return, with sometimes irreversible results? Few games have the guts to actually show it, but like usual, there's always exceptions.

Conker's Bad Fur Day
Characters die by the dozen here, but we never really care, do we? Well, I know I didn't. When Conker died, he got confronted with a pint-sized Grim Reaper called Gregg who possessed a colourful vocabulary, who claimed Conker's got as many lives as he thought he'd get away with, to which the squirrel usually ended up unharmed.

Death wasn't really taken seriously in this game. I just laughed at those poor Uga Buga cavemen who were to be devoured by some deranged Yoshi-clone with sharp teeth. But near the end, I couldn't help but weep. Why? Berri, of course. Conker's girlfriend, ruthlessly killed by a mob boss's gun. As she lay on the ground, Conker tried to wake her up, but it was too late.

Later on, the airlock opened (they were in space or something) and she got sucked out into the endless abyss of space. So to this day her lifeless body is floating around in space. I wonder how Mario will react if he sees her on his space adventures like in Super Mario Galaxy.

On the Origin of Kremlings

As a Donkey Kong Country fan, I've always been intrigued by the Kremlings. As a little kid who just got a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, I found myself loving the villainous crocodiles more than the monkeys I played as, my fondness for dinosaurs and reptiles probably to blame. And then Donkey Kong 64 and the TV show came along and the fondness only grew. I vaguely remember that as a little kid, during various games at school with my classmates, I used to pretend I was a Kremling. I bet none of them would know what I was talking about... well, they didn't, even if I had someone be that poor Kritter who was dangling off one of the Blast-O-Matic's constructions, yelling "Help! Help!" repeatedly. Heh.... moving on, in the last decade, it had been a rather bleak time for a DK fan such as me, for there were very little games released, apart from a few ports and games that would've suited better as platformers. However, where Nintendo threw out the whole original cast sans DK himself, the Japanese company Paon paid much more respect for the franchise and its characters. In one of their outings, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast/Jet Race, they brought back the whole DK crew, save for Chunky, Kiddy, and Swanky. (And Bluster as well, but he's a jerk and not canon to the games.) Even the not-usually remembered Lanky. In the Kremling roster, some new characters appeared, but even then, they brought back some old characters.

While I do applaud the fact they included a Kopter (a rather unfamiliar Kritter grunt from Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!) and even Klump as a single character as opposed to a mere mook to the roster, I still weep for the fact that Krusha was nowhere to be found... and yet again, another big, bulky Kremling took his place.

As of now I'll be calling Krunchas Little Red Ragin' Hood.

However, I don't really mind now, as in Returns, there's no Kremlings in sight at ALL. However, in Jet Race/Barrel Blast, the new characters look pretty awesome and it's the first time ever that female Kremlings actually appeared in the game.

However, I'm going terribly off-topic. Allow me to ramble and pretend I'm a biologist or something. This doesn't concern Klaptraps, though. More about them later.

King K. Rool and bananas, oh my!

As all of you fellow DKC-addicts may know, the first game was basically about Donkey Kong trying to retrieve his famed banana hoard from a thieving King K. Rool. Why did he steal the bananas, is what has been bothering me lately, and why does he suddenly hate them by the time I played DK: Jungle Climber? Well, about the stealing, Rare themselves claim that it was either because he likes bananas, or that he wanted to starve DK so he could occupy his treehouse.

That's one sorry reason if I ever saw one. It would work for the DKCTV's version of the King, given his bumbling behavior in that, but in the games, I don't know. There just has to be some reason behind it.

So, having played Donkey Kong Country Returns (spoilers will follow)...

Yeah, I know you're not in the game. Shut up.

Like I said, having played Donkey Kong Country Returns, the ape's hoard of prized bananas doesn't get stolen by King K. Rool this time, but by a bunch of thieving, sentient instruments known as the Tiki Tak Tribe. These dudes hypnotize DK Isle's wildlife, to which the critters take off with the bananas. Diddy flips and gives chase, and DK fails to get hypnotized because he's either too smart or too dumb. I'll take either explanation, to be honest.

Female roles and how they affect the games

As it should be mentioned, I rather like it if anything in the media, be it games or books or movies, has a female character who isn't just useless. Yet, most female roles get downgraded as fetish fuel or damsels-in-distress, or maybe both. I find that rather useless, to be honest. Because I am a girl myself, I strongly appreciate female characters that actually do something, and aren't just there as a piece of enjoyment for the strong male hero to feast his eyes on. Or as something that needs rescuing, for that matter.

It seems to me that Rare is one of the few game developers who actually uses female characters in a place that could easily be filled up by a male. There are some exceptions, but most of their video game girls have strong personalities. They could have easily been male, but they weren't.

First and foremost, I'll be discussing Banjo-Kazooie.

what all female birds should look and act like.

A rather cheerful faerie-tale-gone-wrong game about a bear and a bird who save the bear's little sister from a rhyming witch. Well, Kazooie, the red-crested Breegull, is a rude, sharp-tongued bird who gives everyone nicknames yet also somehow cares about her bear buddy. Yes, her. Kazooie's a she? Why, she sure is. But she isn't very feminine, isn't she? Not at all. Back then, this led most kids who couldn't read to believe that she was a he.