Richardland Blog

I just beat Donkey Kong Land 2 on my colorless, non-lit-screen Gameboy circa 1996. I had reached the last boss earlier today in my backyard while sunning myself (FYI: it’s been sweatyballs weather here in Southern California lately this November) when the game shut off due to dead batteries right when I was heading back inside anyway.

Just now I got the urge to play again but my house is absent of double A’s so I had to play on the remaining life of the known-to-be-dead ones. I played. I fought. I won. Totally killed Captain K. Rool and saved Donkey Kong (in DK2 you play as Diddy and his hot blonde girlfriend Dixie who can move her ponytail like it were the actual tail of a pony, and also has a super equilibrium that insures she never gets dizzy). I got to watch the entire ending on that tiny shitty screen and right when it was over? -blip- Gameboy shuts off.

God let those batteries last long enough to allow my victory and the enjoyment of its spoils. Thanks God. I owe you a solid (not applicable to going to church, giving to charity or doing kind deeds).

Course, naturally, I couldn’t see shit on that screen, so I youtubed the ending and learned a lot: like that its a gun K Rool is shooting at you and the same gun that he’s using to glide to each side of the screen (i thought he was either a robot or had skates on the Gameboy).

Here’s the ending in its SNES glory:

In anti-Obama change-resistant mode, my body began craving oldschool video games after the election on the 5th. Mostly Nintendo games that I missed out on growing up or SNES games that were unavailable to me because I picked the wrong system in the 16-bit wars.

My first choice was the Megaman series for NES, but an NES was unavailable to me since apparently my aunt got rid of hers years ago. Choice 2 was Donkey Kong Country for SNES. also unavailable to me, so I asked Santa for the system and the 3 games in the series, to which Santa/my mom was extremely surprised. Until then I have all 3 on Gameboy. not Gameboy DS. not Gameboy Advance. not even Gameboy Color… just… regular shitty Gameboy Pocket.

I pried out the crusty oxidized double A batteries from it, chose DK2 and picked up a saved game that hadn’t been played since 1998 when my family moved from NY to Missouri and I played the games to pass the time. I played Kirbys Dreamland and Wario 2 more though, so this DK2 game wasn’t very far along. Still, it was fun, but the graphics were terrible. Seriously Gameboy? No color or backlit screen even? Wtf? I also had a GameGear, which I loved dearly despite it containing hardly any enjoyable games. Here Gameboy was with the better games and no way to enjoy them without extreme hunching and squinting.

Whatever. Donkey Kong Country RULES. Man did I really miss out having a shitty Sega Genesis instead of an awesome SNES. This has been bothering me for over a decade, but even more now that I experience what exactly I was missing.

Dear Sega:

Die. Oh wait. you did. cuz you suck. Eff you.

-Richard

PS Afterthought: I was about to save this post when I saw Obama’s name there at the top in a dangerously close proximity to an image of an ape and thought “oh no’s! that means I’m racist now!”. Dammit. screw it. I’m not changing a thing. the dude’s president. racism is dead. send your hatemail to the 2nd ventricle of my colon (where the jokes on you, suckers, cuz colons dont have ventricles! lolz!!!1)