I was curious about NiGHTS from the Easter Eggs in Sonic Adventure I played last year
If it works on Steam Deck, it might be an option for later
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Makes sense. So we’ll say those are the two games for January and I’ll get some info up on them today to kick things off. The end of the holidays and other things going on ensured time slipped away from me so I’ll poll people for February urging the last week of this month as suggested.
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Well folks, let’s get this month officially going with our two titles:
NHL’94 (Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
NHL '94 is an ice hockey game by EA Sports for the Genesis, Super NES, and Sega CD, as well as the first release for the PC (DOS), simply titled “NHL Hockey”, without the “94” in the title. The game is officially licensed from the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association, and was the first game in the series to have both combined licenses.[1] Being the third game in the NHL series media franchise, it was released in October 1993.[2] NHL '94 launched to critical acclaim, and it has since been referred to as both the greatest sports game of all time as well as one of the best games ever made. (Source: Wikipedia)
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Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! (Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console for Wii and Wii U, and Nintendo Online for Nintendo Switch)
Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble! is a 1996 platform video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in November 1996 in North America and Japan, and on 13 December in Europe and Australia. It is the third installment of the Donkey Kong Country series and serves as a direct sequel to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. (Source: Wikipedia)
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The Sega Genesis NHL titles were a big part of my gaming childhood. I know '94 is the entry the internet seems to remember most, but you can’t go wrong with the ones just before or just after. (I recall the best ones were from '93 to '96. The differences are minor of course, but you get a bit of a different “feel” to each one.) Simple, fast, arcadey sports action that you could jump right into and more or less get the hang of right away. It was most fun when playing against a friend of course, but picking a team and working your way through a full season was great too.
I believe the “secret ingredient” of '94 would be the ability to perform a one-timer, which was a new addition for the series. For ice hockey newcomers, a one-timer is basically where player A passes the puck to player B, and player B is already winding back to shoot the puck at the goal the instant it hits his stick (so think like a ricochet off a pinball flipper). So it’s usually a very fast shot that doesn’t give the defending team much time to react, if pulled off properly. This ability makes an already exciting arcadey sports game even more exciting. In practice, you’re going to be trying to keep an eye both on your player, and on any other player on your team who might be open for the half-second you need to do a quick pass-and-shoot. For example, skate to the left or right of the opposing team’s goal, and if you’re free of the defenders see if you can slip the puck back to a teammate with a clear shot at the net. Press the shoot button before the puck gets to him, and he should immediately launch it right at the goal. Hopefully that player is someone cool like Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky, who have high stats!
I will try to revisit NHL '94, and perhaps give Donkey Kong Country 3 a go too. It’s the only one of the trilogy I haven’t tried, but since I couldn’t get into the first two I doubt this will be much different. But who knows? Perhaps there’s a level of polish or something different about it that will make me click with it a bit better.
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A big general thought I have about DKC3 is that the music is just not as tight as the other games in the series. I don’t think it is bad by any means, but the ambient slow build that so many songs in DKC1 and 2 have is just missing. In its place, there is a deeper more puzzle-like structure to some of the levels. You can tell that Rare is aware that they have bred platforming freakazoids like myself who just roll through their challenges. Those twitchy reactions don’t help you with puzzles. There are more stop and think moments in this game… Nothing like terribly complex. You aren’t playing The Witness. But IMO it is a nice change of pace, and an escalation from DKC2 may have been exhausting.
Do non-DKC heads think this style holds up as well as I do? Especially the visuals. I just think so many SNES games look like gutter trash now, but the “DKC look” just sings IMO. Especially those backgrounds!
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Is that my unofficial permission to be harsher on this game that the two previous? 
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Be as harsh as you want! DKC3 does get treated like “the other one” by some of the fanbase, but I think there is a lot to love about it. I was playing DKC1 before this was announced for our Jan game, and the music is just so good both for the time and also just period. I could listen to David Wise’s score for those first two DKC games (and his score for Tropical Freeze) basically forever. Eveline Fischer does fine work as the composer on 3, but it IMO does not live up to the impossibly high standard set by David Wise on 1 and 2.
Fun fact- David Wise actually did compose for DKC3 but for the GBA port! Apparently he redid the entire score. I have never listened to it, but maybe I will this month as a part of my playthrough
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Nope
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I did it and the David Wise score of DKC3 is excellent! Everything I wanted it to be. I wrote my thoughts on it on a little website called Grouvee…
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I’m honestly, with no shade intended, never going to get DKC games. I don’t know how people playing them don’t think “hmm, this is clunky”. Everything feels slow and cumbersome when I play these games. I feel heavy, like I’m weighed down and like my character is just ever so slightly hampered in every possible way. Like I’m playing in a thick mud and I move at half speed. After playing for a bit I started SMW just to see if I’m imagining things, but it’s like someone took off the training wheels, or doubled the speed. I can move, quick and light as air and everything I do is deliberate and precise. I feel like I’m flying through the gameplay compared to DKC3 (and no, not literally because yes, I know you can). I don’t even mean this as a criticism of DKC games anymore, I literally just don’t get it. It feels so fundamentally bad to play I don’t know how to enjoy myself.
I’ve also noticed this game borrows a bit from Sonic in some minor ways (switch, pulley and launch mechanisms) but boy howdy does that make it feel even slower.
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Are you holding down Y to run?
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Oh my god, no! At least I don’t think so. It’s my instinct to in Mario, but I don’t think I am. Hang on, l’ll be back!
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That made a big difference. I can’t imagine I couldn’t run in the original and I’ve beaten that game many times on SNES and GBA, so I think I just had a mental block about holding Y to run in this game.
I still find hit boxes and clipping through platform edges annoying but I’m getting sucked into this now that I can run
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I never got too into the old Donkey Kong Countrys [though I was considering trying them again at some point]; I like Returns and Tropical Freeze better. They can be pretty tough, but I got through them
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As a kid, I didn’t have the language to describe “hit boxes”. My parents were video game apathetic (although they did not like that Pokemon featured evolution until I explained that is just them growing up). My video game hobby was pretty self driven (although my dad did play Brett Favre’s quarterback Club and later Madden so I would play those with him). All that to say, I didn’t have the knowledge as a kid of what a hit box is. I felt that DKC was dangerous but intuitive.
Playing it as an adult, I agree. I still have the muscle memory to know how Kiddie and Dixie move and which enemies can get wrecked by a barrel and which can’t. All that knowledge makes the platforming challenges way easier for me. And still, I agree the hit boxes feel haphazard.
Somethings make sense. Like yea, go ahead and clip the bee enemy’s head. It’s their spiky butts you have to watch out for. But that feels less intentional when Kiddie Kong starts weeping because a single pixel from a clownfish’s fin touched Kiddie’s dragging footy.
I just played a specifically frustrating level in that regard. But I do feel the same sense of victory that I have with Souls games of accomplishment after beating it. I’m still having a great time.
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Tropical Freeze is the best platformer on this gosh dang planet hoo boy
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Even GMTK sings the design praises of Tropical Freeze and I really want to play it.
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I often wonder if it has to do with the pre-rendered nature of the character models versus the pixels of something like 2D Mario games.
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Played some NHL 94 today. Gotta say, the game still holds up just fine. There are a lot of little details that make this one work, but what I think stands out most is just the “feel” of it all. You’re definitely zipping up and down the ice quicker than players do in a real hockey game, but that’s largely thanks to the game keeping the rink size small, letting you get from one end of the rink to the other in just a few seconds to keep the action exciting.
The feel of a hard slapshot, or the wobble of a cleared puck (flung in the air), or the slam of a massive body check, or even just the second it takes to fully stop after skating fast for a while – everything just feels right, but simultaneously doesn’t sacrifice fun for full realism (something you probably weren’t truly aiming for in the 16-bit era anyways).
I’m also a big fan of the sound effects. The organ music is nice and crunchy on the Genesis, and I find the “yay!” and “boo!” of the crowd very amusing.
For those who want to get into the nitty-gritty of the gameplay, I recommend checking out the game manual, which I happened to find online.
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I’ve just played like 10 minutes of the GBA version and OMFG this game feels so bad to play. Those apes feel like two rocks dipped in honey.
And the level design is either boring or terrible. What’s with having to activate timed doors that I cannot see?
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