I never knew people hated this game. I always loved it as a kid

As an adult, I can definitely recognize all the problems with this game. But playing it as a kid, it was magical to have a game that never ended :D

The big thing I loved about the game was that it truly felt like a huge world. All the levels felt so big and held so many secrets. The much-decried "backtracking" was actually experienced as exploration by most children, who would unlock a new power or kong, or flip some kind of switch on the other end of the level, and then go to see what has changed. Since play time was broken up by school, chores, homework, dinner, parental crankiness, etc, there was ample time for palette cleansing as well. DK64 is like a bottle of expensive whiskey: you could drink half the bottle in one night, but that is so much less enjoyable than spacing it out over a month or more.

theres a romhack that lets you swap kongs on the fly and it really cuts down the tedium

I still argue DK64 did not kill the genre. I think it was a combination of the AAA studios drifting away from them and AA studios flooding them with umarketable characters and unpolished gameplay. It created market data during the Gamecube/PS2 era that publishers read into too closely.

No matter how good or bad DK64 as a game may be, it graced us with the ultimate form of fire known as the DK Rap

To this day I still have the original savefile, I used to play on with my 2 older brothers. There is over 200hours and 101% completion

I wouldn’t say people “hate” DK64 as much as they are “incredibly frustrated by it because its waaaaaay too bloated for something that did not need to be.”

Me and my entire family beat Donkey Kong 64 together. Collecting, mini games, bosses, we traded based off our strengths and ultimately beat it as children. A crowing achievement considering how young we were.

I've literally never heard anyone saying they hated DK64. My friend and I would spend countless hours playing that incredible game!

The 900 notes in banjo tooie are a misnomer. The notes in Tooie come in bunches of 5 or 20 So its actually only 171 note bunches to collect not 900.

DK64 only has 1482 collectibles. As others have pointed out, the colored bananas come in singles, bunches of 5 and balloons of 10. I went through the players guide and found out there are only 1241 actual colored banana collectibles. Jungle Japes, Frantic Factory, Gloomy Galleon and Crystal Caves all have 20 singles, 10 bunches and 3 balloons per Kong, equaling 165 total per level and 660 together. Angry Aztec has 25 singles, 9 bunches and 3 ballons per Kong, equaling 185 for the level and 845 together. Fungi Forest has 30 singles, 10 bunches and 2 balloons per Kong, equaling 210 for the level ans 1055 together. Creepy Castle is weird in that there isn't an even number between all Kongs. Donkey has 50 singles, 6 bunches and 2 balloons, Diddy has no singles, 10 bunches and 5 balloons, Lanky has 5 singles, 11 bunches and 4 balloons, Tiny has 45 singles, 7 bunches and 2 balloons and Chunky has 30 singles, 4 bunches and 5 balloons. This equal 186 for the level and 1241 together. Add in the rest of the collectibles and you get 1482, though it could be argued that it should actually be 1402 as the 40 blueprints and medals are redundant - 40 of the golden bananas require the blueprints to collect and the medals are awarded automatically after collecting 75 colored bananas but since both are necessary to separate points of progression, then we can settle on 1482 actual separate items to collect which puts it comfortably between Banjo and Mario 64.

Considering Mario literally says “It’s A-Me Mario” as his most famous phrase… I’m baffled people still say Mare-io.

Honestly, the backtracking never bothered me, because a tag barrel was almost always only a short trip away, and they were easy to find due to the shine effect you see when the barrel is far away. I understand why switching characters could be bothersome, but it just never really got on my nerves.

The thing about the collectible count, however, is that it doesn't account for the banana bunches. There are several instances where you can collect MANY bananas in a single spot.

Multiplayer unlocked with peanut guns is absolutley amazing. Good times

I wasn't even aware that this game was even hated. I loved it as a kid, love it as an adult.. honestly figured it was widely considered a classic.

every time you say “mayrio” I die a little inside

My problem with this game is that in the emulator it have a bug that didn't allow me to complete it

Not only do mini games repeat, but mini games are relied on far too much IMO.

I have never in my whole 20 plus years of life ever once heard anyone trash this game from the kids my age (at the time) to the older kids in high school to the dads playing with there children no one had anything negative to say not even once, this is a masterpiece

replaying DK64 as an adult, i was surprised by how physically small the levels were. but after an initial hit of disappointment, i remembered how much backtracking there was and became relieved by the smallness.

Best selling game of the holiday season killed a genre is certainly an informed take.

A quality of life feature that would have greatly cut down on backtracking would have been the ability to switch Kongs at will.

As a child, I had no issues with collecting everything, but as an adult the Tag Anywhere romhack breathed new life into the game for me.

As a kid, DK 64 captivated such a sense of longevity that I didn't understand until after I watched this video. It truly is a timeless piece on so many different levels (no pun intended).

Part of the problem with this game is people having shorter attention spans now than when it came out.

Nightmare... Spaghettios.... Mareios.... Mars.... Marios.... It's MARio. Not MAREio. ❤

Absolutely loved it. Never met someone who openly hated it. -Amazing music -Long ass game -Nostalgia

I only had 6 64 videogames,the fact that DK were endless made my childhood amazing.

the point of this game was not to collect everything, it was about way more than that and it was meant for kids that could play hours a day for years, I honestly remember having so much fun literally for years and years playing this game, discovering all the secrets and re playing maps with the new characters...

I think the 3821 collectables is a bit of an overstatement. The numbers are correct but a lot of them automatically activate such as the banana medals when you collect 75 bananas. The blueprints lead to golden bananas etc. Basically if you get one you get the other. The bananas also are grouped up in batches of 5 or 10 sometimes too. On top of that the bananas stay gone. In Banjo-Tooie for example if you don't get all the notes in one level and leave you have to start over. I just don't think listing the totals is a fair comparison.

People have to understand more collectibles, mini games, and areas to explore with different characters back then was a good thing.

This game didn't kill a genre by far. I never played it as a kid but as an adult. While I did enjoy the game overall, I got frustrated with it and gave up on it multiple times before finally making myself finish it. The 2 main problems were: 1. There was literally no direction as to what you were supposed to be doing. I found myself mindlessly wandering around trying to figure out what I needed to collect and where I needed to go, especially during the early stages of the game. 2. There was way too many collectable requirements to progress through the game. I had to spend hours just collecting items needed to unlock doors/access new areas. The collection part of the game was not fun at all.

6:02 "At least more than once" So it could even be more than more than once?

This game is an absolute masterpiece. Too many collectibles is a silly reason to hate it.

The note count for Banjo Tooie is inflated a little bit - all notes in Tooie are in clumps of 5, with an additional treble clef worth 20 notes in each level. So in practice clumping all 900 notes into 144 note nests and 9 treble clefs means the de facto collectible count for Tooie goes from 1104 down to 366.

I played the game as a teen. It was baffling to walk by transparent animated uncollectible bananas, because different colored bananas can only be picked up by their respective characters. So irritating.

To be fair when you have 3500 regular bananas that doesn't account for the number of regular bananas making up bout 91.6% of the total collectibles in the game. While not all regular bananas are found in bunches, they can be found in bunches of 5 throughout each level for every character or in balloons which award 10. If we figure 8 worlds and a minimum of 2 balloons per kong and a minimum of 4 bunches per kong on average throughout each and every level of the game: (5 Kongs * 8 worlds * 2 balloons *10 bananas) = 800 bananas 5 Kongs * 8 worlds * 2 balloons = 80 balloons 800 bananas - 80 balloons = 720 differential from 3500 (5 Kongs * 8 worlds * 4 bunches * 5 bananas) = 800 bananas 5 Kongs * 8 worlds * 4 bunches = 160 bunches 800 bananas - 160 bananas = 640 differential from 3500 720 + 640 = 1360 3500 bananas in original collectible count - 1360 bunched bananas = 2140 unique bananas 2140/3500= 61.14% of the original 3500 3821 original total - 1360 overcounted = 2461 total collectibles This (potentially conservative) 20461 is drastically closer to Super Mario Odyssey at 2082. Additionally, since what we care about is impact to the player and their gameplay, the amount of time spent looking for or working for a regular banana is significantly reduced compared to the collectibles that you would need to find in the other games. Additionally, these collectibles do not impact the ability to complete the game story or even receive the alternate ending of the game in DK64; we're talking about only impacting the game play for the completionist who again is going to require far less time and effort with DK64 with the regular bananas than someone looking for the collectibles mentioned in the likes of Banjo Tooie or Mario Odyssey. Arguably Super Mario 64 does a better job of blending collectibles with expansiveness but the argument against Donkey Kong 64 becomes drastically different when we compare a true completion of story and unlockables across all of the games mentioned and accurately account for the time spent and the true count of items searched for within the gameplay, especially when the topic of concern is gameplay experience.

I think some people forget that their opinions about something can change solely due to their current circumstances. When DK64 came out it was pretty much what people wanted it to be at that time. I'm very proud to have this among the games I 100% as a child. Exploring every nook and cranny the old fashioned way, discovering each secret and tackling each challenge. The pacing is great because while there is so so much to do and find, it's not like this is all in such a massive space as today's games. It's rarely overwhelming and you constantly have something catching your attention that is just as important as anything else.

The collectables wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have the color coding. If I walk over a banana just give me the banana. The only time it should be Kong gated is if abilities naturally gate it such as needing to helicopter twirl across a gap to get the collectable(s)

It feels like the sheer number of collectibles and the need to switch characters tie into each other. Like, they wanted to give players reason to use each character, so they ended up stuffing in a lot of character-specific collectibles.

My only complaint about DK64 as an adult is that the last Krazy Kong Klamour you play is impossible with the slight lag you get playing with an AV to HDMI adapter

Donkey Kong 64 desperately needed a sequel. It had lots of great ideas that just didn't fit together right. A new game where those ideas can be tweeked to work better would make a great experience.

As a kid i loved the longevity of this game I couldn't afford mario 64 and all my friends were done with their mario 64 games and would come over to play dk 64 with me, because there was so much to play in mine.

This game broke me. I did a 100% playthrough a good few years back, and ever since then, I've never touched it again. The worst part is that I had to play the PAL version, and one Golden Banana in that level is so broken that you have to literally do everything perfectly within the time limit and it's in Diddy's Cabin where you have to kill all the enemies in the time limit, but in the PAL version the timer is broken and it counts down faster, so if you don't everything perfect and get the Golden Banana you are screw. That one Golden Banana took me hours to get. I was so broken by the time I got to the final boss that I just wanted it to be over. I had never fought the final boss before either because, as a kid, I couldn't even Frantic Factory. I felt nothing after doing everything in this game. I was just so mentally exhausted from it all. The terrible mini games and the countless hours I spent playing beaver bother just remembering my time with this game brings back some of that exhaustion I felt.

Say Bar. Now say Car. Then say Tar. Now say Mario. Pronouncing it as M-air-io makes me think you fart into wine glasses so you can sniff them.

The number of collectibles you listed for DK64 was inflated. For one you can't actually physically collect the banana medals, you get them automatically for collecting 75 color bannanas per Kong per level. Also you rarely find individual color bananas, most of them come in a single five banana collectable or a single 10 banana balloon. If you just count each collectable instead of bananas in the inventory the numbers are much more in line with contemporary collectathons.

We shouldn't forget that this game released at a time were 3d games were still new so the priorities for developers were very different compared to now. The start of the 3d era was basically an exploration of new possibilities and as a result of this the public was really excited to see games get bigger and bigger with every release. This early 3d era hype was basically the reason why this game wanted to be as big as possible with as much content as possible. Nowadays this is different since we already know that developers can make big detailed open world games, but back in the day people were excited to see how big games could get. This also explains why the public perception of this game changed so drastically over the years. It is simply a shift in consumer expectations of what a game should strive to be.

You gotta keep in mind that when this game came out, there was not as much widespread usage of the internet, and people on average had fewer games at their disposal. As a kid I was glad to play the hell out of this game and get everything because I didn't have that many games to play, so I wanted to get everything I could out of the games I had.

As kids we were lucky to get a game like this gifted providing contents for weeks, and this was at a time with totally different quality of life standards (rare checkpoints, almost no tutorials etc.) so literally no one complained about the backtracking, the amount of minigames or collectibles at all

The fact that this game had so many collectibles is why I loved it so much. I felt like I always had something to do. Never heard of anyone hating on this game

I think all the “critics” forgot the part where the majority of normal functioning human beings don’t give a shit about “completing the game” to 100%

"!ill just say for the video that it is a hated game because i really want to make that video"

it’s not mAIRio, it’s mAREio. So many sources of media pronounce it verbally why do people do this.

I think an important thing to remember about this era of gaming is that kids were still the primary demographic, and kids generally don't have a lot of disposable income. N64 games were expensive, and most may have only gotten two games a year at the most - one on their birthday and one for Christmas. Because of that, it was important for games to have a lot of longevity. Technical limitations were a consideration, too. These days you can make a game pretty much as long as you want and cram in as much content as you want, but back then file sizes were very limited. In many cases the only way to increase the playtime of a game was to either crank up the difficulty or give the player lots of extra busywork to do.

I've never been the type of person to worry about 100% completion.

What’s wild is if you just trim down the number of mini games and collectibles and add a feature where you can swap kongs on the fly, this is a contender for the best 3D collectathon period.

As a poorer kid who got one game a year I loved this game because there was so much to do and discover and it lasted for ever. Loved it.

This game is phenomenal and extremely nostalgic. I don’t care what people say. This video game made my entire childhood. This game will always have a special place in my heart.

as a kid we did not give a shit. It was such a beautiful experience playing dk64. so Many memories, so Many good times.

currently playing this as an adult. its still an amazing game to me. when i got the green n64 console with the dk64 game as a child i was so excited. it was magical and its still magical to me to this day.

Its also worth noting that you need about 1200 things collected to even fight the final boss, including those two coins mentioned.

My girlfriend, now my wife, bought this for me in High School. I loved and am fairly sure I 100% it. I had no idea people hated it.

Nah, I still love this game to death. I agree with all the three points of criticism, especially the minigame one, but that doesn't stop me from putting this in one of my top 5 games of all time. I love the atmosphere, level design, and music so much that it makes most of the problems obsolete in my opinion. Plus, I really like some of the unique minigames, like each mine cart ride being distinctly different and the layouts and gimmicks of some bonus barrel games changing slightly in different iterations to throw you for a loop. The banana collectibles aren't too bad either when you consider how much of them are in bunches of 5 or balloons of 10, making that 3500 number significantly bigger than it actually is. But I won't defend Beaver Bother or the Sliding Beetle races for even a second. Those are just pure torture.

As a 95 baby, this game was amazing to me. I loved the open world-esque hub and the multiple usable characters. The guns are dope, too.

I remember having a love/hate relationship with this game. I thought it was super rad. But I wanted to know 2 things as a kid. "where the hell do I go" and "how the hell am I supposed to get there"

I feel one thing that wasn't mentioned was how the different colored collectibles can be helpful in some ways. They are usually used as a trail to show you which character is needed up ahead. It helps encourage the player to switch to the proper character. That aside, I never realized just how big DK64 was when compared to other games in the genre. Really informative video. Personally I always loved the amount of exploring you could do and the variety in the worlds you could do it. Never really bothered me that there was a lot of backtracking because the game has great world designs paired with an amazing OST.

As an adult, I don't like when games waste my time, but as a kid it just felt like an endless source of fun 😊

I'm shocked no ones made a mod to allow you to switch Kongs where ever you want with the D pad or something, I really believe that'd instantly solve a ton of hate for it.

I’d argue using Banjo Kazooie instead of Tooie would have been a much better comparison personally. As it has a fraction of the collectibles as Tooie and still maintains it’s popularity because of the game being confident in that simplicity. I’ve seen lots of people say similar complaints about Tooie as they did for DK64. I personally think that part of the reason platformers fell off so hard is because players started getting a little too overwhelmed at how much stuff the developers started throwing at us. The reason Mario64 and Banjo Kazooie are fondly remembered more often than the other games here is because they were both confident in their simplicity.

I feel like we should not always focus on "Must 100% this game" because in the end just because a game offers an insane amount of content doesn't mean you are forced to play it all. I can see how it becomes a chore and some parts of games simple aren't fun but overall the will to 100% a game should come from motivation and fun. Not because you have to. On the other hand you spent much more time with the games you have if you don't have so many games or spent as much money on them (which is much more emphasised today)

I don't know what toxic echo chambers you've been hanging out in, but I and a lot of people I know love Donkey Kong 64 and wish it would be made available on Switch Online. The fact it's big, a little repetitive and backtrack heavy doesn't make it a bad game. I know a lot of other games that are far more repetitive that don't get any flak. Don't let the words of a loud and obnoxious minority dictate the overall reception of a game.

The bananas in this game should've been universal and it would've been immediately remembered more fondly.

as a kid whos family couldn't afford to rent or buy a ton of games, having a game like this that lasted so long was great.

How can anyone hate this game? This game was and still is awesome.

"Perfection is not when you have nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away." Sometimes less is more. It's better to have a short game than a boring game. I do wonder if I played DK64 today how much I'd enjoy it. As a kid, sometimes you don't have an option but to spend hundreds of hours playing the same game, because that's all you have. As an adult, I find I have too many games and not enough time, so I'm considerably less forgiving to games that waste it.

Working 50 hours a week as an adult. Yeah it feels like it drags on. Summer break at 10 years old? I'm in heaven.

I played it once, or rather binged it endlessly for one week at my aunt's house with siblings. Most fun I've ever had.

As a kid with only 1 or 2 games at a time, DK64 was awesome. If I wanted to play a game, I generally had to replay an area I'd already been to, so always having something new to do when I went through the old areas again was a great plus for DK64. Unfortunately, as an adult I now have more games and less time, so that same feature ends up being a major issue. I'm glad I played DK64 as a kid and not an adult.

As a poor kid having a game like this let me play it for a long time. I didn’t have a memory card so the fact that it saves the game within itself was awesome

I loved the heck out of this game, but I HATED having to beat the retro mini games just to get the last Gold Bananas.

So basically the modern critique boils down to "we asked for the biggest DK game ever and got it"

In your list of collectables, you forgot to include banana coins, which you need to pay for Cranky's potions, Funky's guns and Candy's instruments among other things. I don't know how many banana coins there are in total - I think it's at least 500. That raises the grand total to >4300.

I think one of the reasons it was received so well but not now is simply due to how people think about playing a video game for long periods of time. Back then, 300 hours of length for a video game was 300 hours of time-filling fun for which you didn't need to get another video game. Now, 300 hours of length for a video game means 300 hours that you could spend with other video games or forms of media that get thrown at you nigh-omnidirectionally. Edit: I think a fair way to compare the total number of collectables (accounting for positioning and the fact they appear in groups), total amount of backtracking for collectables would be to compare the lengths of the 100% speedruns; while this is not going to be exclusively due to padding, it is still likely a useful measure of it. Mario 64 is far shorter than the other games, Banjo-Tooie is not too much shorter than DK64 and Mario Odyssey sits as the longest by quite a lot.

I don't think the bananas in DK64 are really comparable to the moons in Odyssey. In DK64 the bananas are everywhere and easy to find, where in Odyssey most of the moons require much more effort to find. Overall, Id say the completion process in Odyssey is much more work even though "on paper" there are "more" collectables in DK64.

Tbh this game had me invested so much as a kid. This was when creativity was appreciated over " ohhh look how realistic the trees look" i play video games to escape reality not come home to a simulation of real life. This new gen console era just jerks off to visuals just like new era movies

This was one of my favorite games as a kid, I definitely remember this being more long, difficult and confusing than Banjo Kazooie/Tooie.

God I love this game, always will be my favorite game of all time. I never had a problem with the character switching, as I saw it as a different way to play the game. Whether I’d switch characters to do objectives as I see them, or (after fully unlocking the level) I’d run through the game as each kong, finishing everything they have one at a time, think chunky in angry aztec, imo one of the best moments of the game, as it’s a quick victory lap through a fun world

Mario. Mah-ree-oh. Come on man. Its said that way in every voiced iteration.

Thank you for making this, it feels very vindicating. I remember everyone loving this game as a kid yet I couldn't stand it 'cause I found the collecting mechanics to be so unbearably tedious, but I felt like the odd one out/the one who was wrong because I was the only one who didn't enjoy it. It got to the point where I dreaded unlocking another Kong because my immediate reaction was, "For fuck's sake, now I have to go collecting another hundred bananas, five Golden Bananas, blueprints, etc. on all the previous levels". If a player is having a negative reaction to making progress, you know you've made a colossal fuck-up with your game design.

Eugh! This generation man. Their micro-analysis of games in the 90s. They done this with Pokémon Red & Blue as well, picked out all the flaws that we didn't notice as kids back then

I think what us fans love about the game is the music, level design, character design and boss fights. All these criticisms are very well known to fans, but they don't bother us because they don't outweigh the rest of the game. The game has a lot of minigames, probably too many collectibles, and definitely has a lot of backtracking, but 2 of those 3 things are seen as strengths of the game in general. A collectathon with more collectibles is generally a good thing. Backtracking is also a good thing because: 1) you get run through different areas more than once and experience them differently each time and 2) it makes the game significantly less linear. So those 2 criticisms are really just people that like very basic, linear games that are short enough to play in one sitting. DK64 isn't for everyone.

I didn’t even realize this game was hated the way it was wth

This was one of the best game of all time. Of course some technical problems, annoying camera etc but its a master piece, funny and great adventure

I feel the game was made with passion. It had so many collectsbles and backtracking to do that it almost feel the devs wanted you to play the game for thousands of hours.

While it didn't kill the genre, it definitely pushed collect-a-thons as far as they can possibly go. I had fun glitching to an absurd 127% completion, but I never want to go back to it.

I beat this game 101% as a kid. It's not great, but it's not bad at all. The thing about the collectibles is that they are all isolated to one logical area, so if you go in with one Kong you can collect them all on a certain path without having to comb the entire stage. It's also not very hard at all to find all of them.

I appreciate that you recognized that not all of Mario 64's collectible coins needed to be collected to complete the game. The abundance of those coins makes the need to collect any at all for 100% runs more bearable.

I largely agree with all of this analysis, but a small thing to consider: the bananas in DK64 often came in bunches of 5, I believe, which I would argue is just 1 single collectible each. It might add 5 to your counter, but you only have to locate and walk over them once. That might bring the number down just a little bit.