After a short break to make way for The 12 Games Of Christmas, Throwback Thursday is back to see you into the new year! This week we travel back to 1999 for Donkey Kong's first and last foray into the world of 3D gaming!

Monkeys, bananas and DIDDY KONG OF COURSE! That was the awful tag-line for my ill-fated freewebs site Monkey Mad that I obsessed over as a late child/young teen. Trying to lure members of this site, then Cube-Europe, and a site I hold dear to my heart, Hayes-Mates, it was the after-birth of my obsession for the Donkey Kong universe that reached its peak with Donkey Kong 64.

When I wasn't playing DK's 64 adventure, I was feverishly writing about it, whether it be biographies of the characters, insights into the worlds or just a weird kind of fan-fiction, it was a sordid and depressing affair that, whilst vastly enjoyable for me at the time, is definitely best left out at sea in the endless cesspool of blogs on the internet. To create that kind of rabid obsession in a kid takes a lot though, and Rare was more than capable of it with their witty humour, fantastic 3D worlds and their ability to push the N64 to its limits. So let's travel back...

It's the Winter of 1999 and after what feels like an eternity, Christmas finally arrives and with it, the birth of Baby Jesus, or in my case, Baby Kong.

From the off-set, Donkey Kong 64 was a dream, a christmas miracle, like a Coca-Cola advert mixed with a tin of Roses and Frank Sinatra. I already loved the world of DK, but the 64 iteration seemed to throw that world into overdrive. Right from the opening DK rap featuring all the Kong members to the intro with K.Rool and his menacing voice acting (a rare thing in that day, especially for an N64 game), the world of DK had never felt so complete, so cinematic and so exciting.

Banjo-Kazooie was, up until this point, the pinnacle of 3D platforming and seemed massive in scale but Donkey Kong 64 was set to blow that out of the water, at least in terms of size, whether by land mass or the incredible amount of collectables, modes, characters and extras.

The 3D hub-world is massive and first has you travel from DK’s Hut that’s located deep in Jungle Japes out into the vast open beaches of DK Isle, as well as Fairy Fountain, K.Rools Ship and an assortment of mini-islands around the main area, so the land you traverse is already huge before you even enter any levels and makes it feel like a real world as oppose to just moving from one level to another on a map screen.

Whilst the main game is massive, it also has a bunch of different modes like multiplayer that has you and your pals shooting each other up, mini-games featuring our favourite animal buddies Rambi and Enguarde, and even some Nintendo and Rare classics – The original Donkey Kong Arcade and Rare’s 80’s hit JETPAC.

Despite the promise of new features and expansive landscapes it still felt like a Donkey Kong game thanks to its constant throwbacks to the past in the form of returning animal buddies (even if their appearances are only fleeting, such as Clapper) and forgotten favourites such as Candy Kong (who was absent for the second and third DKC titles) and Wrinkly Kong who’s now shockingly in ghost form.

The worlds and the game itself play much like Rare’s other 3D works, in that you explore each world to collect Golden Bananas which in turn open up new areas. Each of the 5 Kong members have 5 Golden Bananas in each world, as well as a load of items for each to collect, such as their own coloured bananas, fairy photos, coins, blue-prints and, well, there’s a lot.

Our Kong clan has the two main stars DK and Diddy make a triumphant return, along with newcomers Tiny, Lanky and Chunky, all of which have their own unqiue move-set and personalities. Chunky is like an adult version of Kiddie Kong, Tiny a cheap Dixie Kong knock-off and Lanky a surprisingly versatile, ghastly and lovable ginger marvel.

Stand-Out Moments:

Army Dillo
The first boss Army Dillo is one of my favourite Donkey Kong moments and from the second he rolls out of his cave and starts cackling away, I was instantly in awe as the crazy lighting effects and beautiful animation make this boss fight look more like a PS2/GameCube era title than an N64 one.

Returning from his roots as a small enemy in 1994’s Donkey Kong Country, Army Dillo bursts in as a hulking metal plated beast who can only be beaten by throwing TNT barrels at his big nose. Shooting fire-balls out of his side cannons that are so extreme the earth moves, whilst rolling into a ball and trying to squash your simian behind, it’s the kind of thing that the series simply couldn’t do before it was handed the technical prowess of the N64. After a good few explosions our snouted menace is finally bested, his outfit malfunctions and explodes off his body, leaving him naked to run off into the distance with his tail between his legs before the beautifully boisterous sound clip of ‘DONKEY KONG’ blasts out and a big DK key (yet another collectable) lands on the stage ready for the taking.

Multiplayer
It’s crazy to think there were only 3 multiplayer maps as so many hours were poured into the multiplayer mode, but just like Mario Kart 64’s Block Fort, a well designed level can be enough to entertain for a life-time. In this case, there was a huge stage with a tall towering log in the centre and 5 entrances to it on the surrounding mountain walls.

After months of playing me and my friends stumbled across ‘the secret lair’. You’re able to walk through one of the mountain walls and find a secret room on the other side - whilst on the other side you can see out, but from the other persons perspective it still just looks like a solid wall. There was nothing more fun than to find the secret room in 4-player matches and take out your foes from the privacy of your secret lair. Bullets and bombs would come flying out of this unassuming, completely normal looking wall and friends would be losing their minds before they finally figured out how they were being killed. The scramble to be the first person to find and kill from within the secret lair was awesome but also cost a great many friendships.

Scoff N Troff
An obese hippo and pig sit on two plinths either side of a giant door waiting for you to feed them bananas, dancing majestically whilst sporting pierced nipples. Something about these two really speaks to me. Whilst a love of inflicting pain in piercing oneself and hoping to be fed vast amounts of food is right up my alley, what gets me most about these two is the area they’re in. Due to a mixture of beautiful lighting, ancient monument style architecture, neon signs of Kong members and the most relaxing music I’ve possibly ever heard, this is the kind of place I’d like to construct and live in if I won the lottery.

Diddy’s Jet Pack
DK64 introduced a bunch of new and interesting ways to play; DK could whip out a pair of bongo’s and start playing to destroy surrounding foes, Tiny could shrink in size and enter tiny caves, Lanky could wield a gun and shoot grapes – Things had come a long way from the simple days of jumping on crocodile heads and rolling into enemies.

Diddy’s Jet Pack was the most awesome and exciting new feature out of all the moves. There’s just something about flying in videogames, especially in that era, that’s so exciting. Mario 64’s Wing Cap was a lot of fun, but instead of just gliding with the wind like in that title, here with Diddy’s Jet Pack you could ascend and descend at will, travelling to literally anywhere in the world, providing you have enough crystals. Perhaps one of the most exhilarating moments in the game was unlocking the Jet Pack in DK Isle and finally flying my way to the top of the mountain to look across the vast ocean.

With some of the most enchanting music to grace the N64, masses of different features, more collectables than any sane person can handle and the last truly consistent Donkey Kong universe title (after Nintendo and Retro took over from Rare, a lot of the characters, themes and worlds were wiped clean and started over), the first and only foray into the world of 3D Donkey Kong is an interesting one.

At the time I regarded this as one of the best titles I’d ever played but unlike Mario 64 and Banjo, this hasn’t stood the test of time quite so well. As a child, having endless amounts of things to collect was great as I’d only get a few games a year and a hell of a lot of time to play them, but as an adult with endless games to play and not enough time, it seems like more of a chore than anything.

Like a first love that got away, the memory of them and that time of your life is amazing and will fill you with melancholy but when you bump into them in the biscuit aisle at Asda, you realise a lot of that magic and wonder was pure teenage dreams with an indie rock backing track, and that some things are best kept as a good memory as oppose to a recent regret.

It may not play as well as it seemingly once did, but it still has a hold on me as 16 years later, much like back in my early teens on Monkey Mad, I’m still here on the internet feverishly writing about it. So, stick around for some filthy fan-fiction, Chunky Kong has something he’d like to share.