The Secrets of Donkey Kong Country 2

Nintendo has a long history of so-called platform games--games where you jump from platform to platform. Over the last 25 years, these games have evolved, though I would argue that even to this day, Rare’s 1995 game Donkey Kong Country 2 nailed the winning formula like nothing else before or since. (Make sure to click the SNES version if you follow that link.)

Before we go on, here’s a list of platform games relevant to the discussion:

• Super Mario Brothers 1 though 3 (NES)
• Super Mario World (SNES)
• Donkey Kong Country 1 through 3 (SNES)
• Yoshi’s Island 1 and 2 (SNES)
• Mario64 (N64)
• Banjo-Kazooie (N64)
• Donkey Kong Country 64 (N64)
• Mario Sunshine (Gamecube)
• New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
• Mario Galaxy (Wii)
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii, of course)
  

It’s interesting that Shigeru Miyamoto basically invented the genre with Super Mario Brothers and re-invented it Mario64. These two titles were far and away the most innovative given what existed when they were released, but Donkey Kong Country 2’s handling of secret items deserves special mention. Before I explain why, let's consider the progression of these games over time.

In the early days, platform games were about trying not to die. Dying occurred frequently and the main goal of the game was to get through all the levels. As time went on, we see less and less emphasis on the dexterity of passing levels and more and more emphasis on finding secrets. There certainly are dexterity challenges in all these games (see the no-jetpack sections of Mario Sunshine or that damned Luigi’s coins level of Mario Galaxy), but collecting stars and secrets are definitely the focus of the modern ones.

The most extreme examples of moving away from the old model of “just avoid dying, try to pass the levels,” were WarioLand 2 and 3 for GameBoy where Wario cannot die. If he touches fire, for example, he runs quickly for a moment until he cools off, allowing him to travel more quickly or cross tiles of floor he wouldn’t normally be able to cross. The entire emphasis on those games is puzzle-solving and secret-finding, not death-avoiding.

WarioLand aside, the notion of finding secrets in platform games led to the "dual goal" platform games of today. A casual or younger player's goal might be to simply get to the end of a game. This doesn’t even require completing every level, because of warp zones and non-linear map screens that allow you to skip levels. A more demanding gamer's goal, though, is to uncover every secret the game has to offer. In Mario64, this means finding all 120 stars (only about 60 are needed to "win" the game.) In Donkey Kong Country 2, this means finding all 40 DK coins as well as finding all 102% of the bonus rooms. These dual goals allow a single game to appeal to a wide range of players.

If platform games are becoming more and more about finding secrets, we should define what a "secret" actually is. To a really old-school player, a secret might be a near-impossible-to-find item that's virtually randomly placed. That's not the type of secrets I'm talking about. In fact, a "secret" in the sense of modern platform games is a hidden something-or-other that is actually meant to be

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