The Greatest Games I’ve Played: #22

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest

The original Donkey Kong Country was the first game that I actually anticipated.  I was 9 at the time.  Yes, I had played many games before, but I didn’t really know of their existence until they were in my hand after opening a Christmas or birthday present.  But by 9, I had found sources of advance information– magazines at bookstores, the Toys-R-Us Thanksgiving Toy Book, etc.  And when I saw Donkey Kong Country, my little world was rocked.  

A new Donkey Kong game, after all these years?  And Donkey Kong is the good guy?  And 3D graphics? This can’t be real!

So I saved up my allowance money, and bought my first game.  And it was worth it.

But for everything that DKC did well– the beautiful, colorful jungle worlds, the incredible soundtrack, the spot-on platforming mechanics– its legacy is the introduction of a little baseball-cap-wearing monkey by the name of Diddy Kong.

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Hey, Braves– meet me at Camera 3.

(Image: Mark Serota/Getty Images)

Baseball’s a tough game.  We can all agree on that right now.  Playing consistently good baseball over the course of 162 games is a task that no team without a $65 million dollar starting rotation* (ahem) is up for.  It’s a long grind, and there are going to be ups and downs.  

But this is really, really down.  A month ago, we all rested easy.  I told many people that it would take a collapse of epic proportions for you guys to miss the playoffs.  Well, that epic collapse has come and gone.  The deed is done, and now, face it– you’ve entered into a best of 7 playoffs series with the St. Louis Cardinals.  

You’re 1 game up, so we can say that you won Game 1.  That’s a positive way to spin “you’ve crapped away a 9.5 game lead down to 1” (technically it’s a 1.5 game lead, but is anyone really expecting St. Louis to lose to the Mets this afternoon?).  Let’s take a look at Games 2-7.

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The Greatest Games I’ve Played: #24

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007, Nintendo Wii)

“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to catch that.”  

We always have a growing stack of classics or cult hits that we intend to see/read/play simply because we feel we must for our own cultural education.  You’ve either seen The Godfather, or you intend to.  You’ve either read the Harry Potter books, or you’re planning on getting around to it (or you think they’re an abomination).  

Similarly, I went 20-something years intending to play a Metroid game.  The Metroid series has always stood as a hallmark of game design, thanks to its unique and mysterious narrative, its seamless welding of platforming, adventure, and action, and its protagonist– Samus Aran– who is arguably the first strong female gaming lead.

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The Greatest Games I’ve Played: #25

For no reason in particular, I’m going to run down the best games I’ve played over the course of my 23+ years of gaming.  I understand that this adds a substantial number of punches to my nerd card.  I’m okay with that.  Games, just like films, books, and other creative arts, helped foster my imagination growing up, and even helped steer me down the path toward digital arts.  And games hold, for better or worse, a legitimate place in American and international culture and therefore deserve recognition and analysis.

I’ll keep a running list here.

RBI Baseball (1988, Nintendo Entertainment System)

There’s a little bit of nostalgia at play here.  Actually, there’s a lot of nostalgia at play.  And while I normally try to ignore nostalgia when evaluating a work’s time-tested quality, the original RBI Baseball has this undeniable old-school charm that enhances its enjoyability.

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