Oh my! Sound effects!

Alright, I had to share this. My dad is watching this movie The Spiderwick Chronicles on the television, and I'm sitting here on my living room-PC listening to Vangelis and drawing stuff that will probably never see the light of day. But what do I hear coming from the television? I hear the first part of the roar of Dogadon, the fearsome dragon-fly boss from Donkey Kong 64's Angry Aztec! You know, that "Eeeeehhr-ROOOARGHGH!"... without the latter part. Apparently, his roar was either a stock sound effect, or it was merely stolen.

...just had to share this. And here's a nice drawing of a stylized African sunset I doodled up a while ago.

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 animated movies + bonus short fan fic!

Alright, I am sorry for posting an off-topic post. This is just the only place I could post it without bounds... And if I offended anyone, my sincerest apologies.

I have watched animated films all my life, as some of you have probably heard before. Same for that, I have watched all of Pixar's films and enjoyed them all, some more than others. However, Pixar has been disappointing me lately... much like a certain game studio. Rare decides to make sports' games, and Pixar makes a sequel to one of their least imaginative films, Cars. However, Pixar will release a new movie with new characters after that (that includes amazing scenery, which I like being a forest fetishist) whereas Rare proclaims to not disappoint their old fans but having said nothing about Banjo nor Conker.

But what is it now? I think I may end up liking Dreamworks better.

Dreamworks animation studios has long been known for negating Disney's clichés and themes and happily avert fairy tail-like tales. (Did I say fairy tail? I meant fairy tale, of course.) All of this with a good helping of pop-culture references and gross-out jokes. And let's not forget their massive case of sequelitis, with the worst offender being Shrek who currently has four movies on his name with a spin-off in the works! Their first computer-animated film, Antz, did not really know which audience it wanted to appeal to, having been marketed as family enjoyment, but containing mature themes such as decapitated ants and the word damn. It's 'this Kong's one hell of a guy!' all over again! Well... and the decapitated head part I guess Conker and the zombies? Oh well. Apart from that, they appeared to be more in it for the money, pumping out sequels just for the funsies.

Species and stuff

Have you ever wondered what species the animals in Donkey Kong Country were? Wonder no more!

1) Squawks.

Squawks looks like a parrot, acts like a parrot, and moves like a parrot. Yet, his species is more closely related to the common breegull than the parrot. Because the species began to move and act like a parrot, it became a parrot. Looks-like, at least. It's comparable to the way how marsupials look a lot like other mammals because they share the same lifestyle. Tasmanian Devil=Wolverine, Thylacine=Wolf, you get the point. But why is Squawks's species closely related to the Breegulls? The answer lies in its odd way of protecting itself - spitting eggs. Females have insanely quick-working ovaries and screwed-up innards, which means that they can use their unfertilized eggs as projectiles. Quite glaringly similar to a Breegull.

It's more than that, though. Detailed studies revealed oddly similar wing-shapes.

The two species share a similar skeletal structures as well, but this is not able to be seen with the naked eye. That's where the similarity ends, though.

Little things that'll blow your mind

There's just so much behind the DKC games, some more obvious than others. I'll share the less obvious ones here in a fresh, new blog post. Easter eggs and such at no extra cost included.

1. The Theme Song

Honestly, when I heard this myself, my jaw dropped. It's still on the floor as we speak. Sure, Cranky standing on some girders was enough to see that he was actually the original Donkey Kong, but I never quite realized that the original arcade game had exactly that theme he was playing on his old record.

Unbelievable. It's odd when you realize Rare borrowed more from the source material (which is arcade DK) than Retro did (which happens to be DKC)

Power source? What power source?

As most of you may know, and if you don't, shame on you, the Donkey Kong games mostly take place in deep, dense jungles. Jungles on an island, just near a few other islands. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong regularly watch television and/or play video games and/or listen to the radio, while King K. Rool and his henchmen may occasionally sit down in front of a computer to annoy people on Facebook.

Well, except not really. (this image is purely fictional, I made it myself.)

Not really internet, though. K. Rool does own a snazzy PC thingy that he uses to play games with, among some more stuff. However, what has been bothering me - where did they get the power from, to use electrical appliances?

I have been paying a little bit more attention to Physics at my school, and we're at the chapter electricity and power now. Power is what one needs to have working electrical appliances. Power usually comes from power stations. Power stations most often are ginormous, take up a lot of space, and produce electricity for others to use, to, say, watch TV. However, there are no power stations in sight anywhere on DK Isle, nor Crocodile Isle. Well, used to be for the latter, at least, as it sunk... But alas. No power stations at all! There might be some at Showdown Town, but that's quite a swim from DK Isle.

So how in the world is DK able to watch television?

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.