Game Center CX Season 10 – Back to Contents
#76
The "Super Donkey Kong" Conclusion Special

Chousen

Last time, Arino was challenged by Super Donkey Kong (Donkey Kong Country), the classic Nintendo action game. But after 14-and-a-half hours, Arino failed to defeat the boss of the third area, keeping him from the halfway point. Vowing to return after the New Year, Arino packed up and took the Super Famicom with him.

We begin on Day 2, at the start of 2009. AD Nakayama greets Arino as he walks into the room. He wastes no time sitting down and starting up the game again, continuing right where he left off, at the Queen B boss fight. After a couple of deaths, he finally surmises that he shouldn’t attack Queen B while she’s red and angry, so on the next try, Arino smartly his distance, and tosses barrels when she’s yellow and calm again. Success! Area 4 is finally open!

Area 4 is Gorilla Glacier, so every level is quite snowy. And the first level is another "barrel blast," meaning there’s a lot of barrel cannons that Arino will have to shoot through. He’s careful, but not careful enough, and most of his deaths are due to running into enemies. After a couple more deaths, it’s Game Over, and he’s forced to re-defeat Queen B.

Arino makes it back to level 4-1, and later on, enters a barrel cannon that’s spinning a full 360 degrees, and can only go straight ahead. He’s naturally scared. He tries a shot, but it goes backwards, almost into an enemy! He jumps back into the barrel for another try. Miraculously, his second shot is spot-on, and he lands safely. But the next section involves tiny, slippery ledges and more than a few Neckies to jump over. He doesn’t make it, and slips off an edge.

Back into the barrel, where he again shoots at the correct angle, but then slides right off the first slope and dies again. Eventually, though, he gets past the section, and continues on to face more 360-degree barrels — it’s not getting any easier. Though he continues being careful and does well for first few barrels, the sheer amount of them and the precariously-placed bee enemies finally get to Arino, and he starts getting Game Over after Game Over.

AD Nakayama steps in and offers to help with the timing. He sits next to Arino and watches as the kacho gets into another barrel. For this particular section, Nakayama says Arino should fire at "2 o’clock" in order to properly be shot out at "3 o’clock." Arino waits for Nakayama’s signal. The tension is palpable. Arino assumes Donkey Kong must be getting pretty sick in there right now. And then, finally, Nakayama says "okay," and Arino makes it!

Makes it past the first barrel, that is. The next one is a half-victory, since Arino flies into a bee, but is saved by Diddy and just automatically hops into the next one. After a few more automatically-firing barrels, Arino enters another one — and it’s turning while sliding up and down! Amazingly, he makes it by the first one, but the second one isn’t much better. Moving barrels, moving Zingers… it’s too much. He fires diagonally, going over a barrel and landing right on a Zinger. The next barrel challenge is also bad: a diagonal shot with a red Zinger circling the barrel at the other end. Arino asks what angle he should take this one at: 12 o’clock? Sure, but the Zinger has to be at 5 o’clock. Arino eyeballs it, then fires… directly into the Zinger. Another Game Over.

Nakayama doesn’t see this going anywhere anytime soon, so he has a plan for Arino; a secret trick that will get him infinite lives. Nakayama has him go back to level 2-5, Millstone Mayhem. There, at a certain point, you can use Diddy to constantly rebound against the Krusha enemy. Nakayama just gives Arino hints on how to do it so far, though. After 30 minutes of attempting it, Arino finally lucks into a jump loop and watches as the lives rack up. The counter stops at 99, but is still going on in the background. Arino pauses after another minute or two, then heads back to area 4.

Arino keeps screwing up at the barrels again, but Nakayama continues to offer his help with timing. This time, Arino shuts his eyes, and sits back — he’s putting all his faith into the AD this time! Arino gets in the barrel and waits for Nakayama. "Go!" says the AD. Arino hits a Zinger. "Right!" No, too late — he’s dead.

Another miracle: after Arino gets through that part, he mistakenly flies over a barrel, but down below is a secret barrel that instantly shoots him across the bottom of the level, grabbing about 200 bananas in the process, and ending up right on the home stretch! Well, that only took… three and a half hours.

The next level is Slipside Ride, and takes place inside a crystal cave. It’s a short trip, though — it only takes one try! — and then Arino’s on to Ice Age Valley, yet another barrel level. After dying once, Arino finds Expresso the ostrich, and uses his floating jump ability to glide across the level. After running into an enemy, though, Arino loses Expresso, and follows him right off a ledge. Eventually, Arino gets past that level and onto the next, Croctopus Chase. Despite a couple of deaths, Arino makes it through quickly, and then breezes through the next level as well.

On Rope Bridge Rumble, Arino really starts to fail again, undershooting jumps and slipping off ledges just like before. Then, he notices something… the lives counter is going down! He calls over Nakayama, because clearly his "infinite lives" trick wasn’t infinite at all. All Nakayama has to say in responseis that he beat the game with 99 lives remaining, but then again, Nakayama is not Arino.

Arino tries the level again. He runs up to a particularly tricky part with a moving platform and three Zingers lined up and ready to destroy him. But he doesn’t think much about it, he just takes the leap, and that’s the last one he has to take before the exit. Another small victory.

And then it’s on to the boss! It’s Gnawty again, or rather, Really Gnawty. He’s not much different from the old Gnawty, except that his big jumps are really big, and tend to hit Arino in midair. After Arino stops being anxious, he hits Gnawty with more accuracy, and finally lands the five hits needed to defeat him.

And now, with six hours having gone by, we’re nearing the end! Area 5 starts at Oil Drum Valley. The main danger are flaming oil barrels with flames that are too high to simply jump over. Arino uses nearby tires to get extra height, but still manages to fall on other barrels up ahead.

A particularly tricky part has several barrels suspended in midair, and Arino must jump off of them when their flames temporarily withdraw. He’s a little too fast at first, and runs straight into the fire, but after a few misses, he’s more patient, and gets through. And that’s the last section before the exit, too. Next is Trick Track Trek, an awfully annoying level where Arino must stay on a moving platform for the entire run. Yet despite a couple of stupid deaths (like jumping just short of the next platform), Arino makes it through just fine.

The next level is Elevator Antics. The first part is hard enough, and it doesn’t even involve elevators yet — a series of ropes with Zingers moving up and down the line consistently messes with Arino. And then, when he finally does get to the elevator part, he finds it hard to keep track of the lifts that are going up and down, and often just falls straight down to his death. When he gets to the end of the section, he bounces off a bulky Klump enemy as Diddy and dies again! And now he has but four lives left, that are uickly spent after more ridiculously bad maneuvers.

As the first Game Over in a while, Arino is forced to start again at 51, but then he remembers to go back to Millstone Mayhem and try for another 99+ lives. When he’s fully stocked, he returns to Oil Valley. And back at Elevator Antics, Arino finally gets to the end without incident.

After that, it’s on to Poison Pond, another water level. And its murkiness connotes its higher difficulty: a bunch of metal wheels slide back and forth, and Arino must hide in an adjacent spot to avoid them, then quickly rush past. Things are a little easier once he gets Engarde, but he loses the fishfriend on the last third of the level. Left alone, Arino must act extra careful as he swims past the spiky wheels. Then, he must swim past a school of Bitesize enemy fish, and nearly bites it himself, but does, eventually, make it to the exit.

The next level is sure to be hellish: Mine Cart Madness. The first mine cart level was the first level that really held Arino back last time. On the contrary: although Arino falls victim to a 1UP devilishly placed just before a flying Necky, he gets through the rest of the level with nary a scratch. A few death-defying jumps, sure, but no scratches. OK, so maybe not so hellish. Why wasn’t this the first mine cart level instead?

Another oil factory level follows: Blackout Basement. Here, the lights flick on and off periodically, which also hides the enemies in the dark. Arino nearly dies here due to enemies surprising him from the shadows, but makes it through with just one try. Hopefully he isn’t getting too confident by now.

…Because it’s boss time! And the fight is against Dumb Drum, a large oil drum that just drops regular enemies onto Arino. All he has to do is kill all of them, then avoid Dumb Drum’s stomps, but manages to die once from touching the enemies. He almost does on he second try, too, but after defeating the last two Armies, Dumb Drum slams down and blows up, ending the fight. On to the last area… at last!

Level 6-1, Tanked Up Trouble, is another "trick track" level, but this time, the platform needs a regular supply of fuel, or else it falls. This one’s pretty tense, as halfway through, Arino needs to keep a tire on the platform so he can jump over and grab fuel drums that are too high up, or just leap over Zingers. With patience, he’s able to keep the platform going and stay away from Zingers until he reaches the exit.

Following that is Manic Mincers, where Arino must avoid more of those stupid spiky Mincer wheels, but it’s a cinch for him. Misty Mines is a relative cinch, too. Loopy Lights is another "lights out" level, but Arino can keep the lights on if he hits the ON/OFF barrels. Regardless, it’s a comedy of errors for him, like hitting the "ON" barrel only to fall right down into a pit, or running into Manky Kong just as the lights go off, and worse, running right into the Klaptrap that guards the exit and dying.

After that is Platform Perils, the final proper level before the boss fight(s). Falling platforms keep Arino on his toes… or not, as the case may be. When he’s not missing jumps, he’s missing jumps and failing to hit the Krushas with barrels so that he can actually stand on the next platform. Death upon death is seen as Arino is constantly tricked by the movement patterns of the platforms. The suspenseful music builds as Arino makes one more run. From jump to jump, he finally has the pattern down, and successfully clears a path to the exit, as the total challenge time (for both days) exceeds 24 hours.

The next-to-last boss awaits, and it’s merely a meaner version of the giant Necky from earlier. It spits more nuts at once, though, and that tends to throw Arino off. After eight tries, he begins to be pateitn again, and wait for a break in Necky’s nut-tossing before leaping over to strike its head. That eighth try is a doozy, and Arino finally defeats the boss. The end is nigh!

The game immediately takes Arino to the final level, Gangplank Galleon, and faces the evil King K. Rool. Arino thinks it’s the ending, so he just waits. Unfortunately, K. Rool is already tossing his spiky crown at him, and it bounces back, killing (and surprising) Arino. On the next try, Arino knows to jump on the king’s head when his crown is off. That angers the king even more, and he jumps to the other end of the screen, then starts raining cannonballs down on Arino. Arino dodges the cannonballs, but then gets hit by the crown right after, causing the room to erupt in laughter.

On the second try, after hitting the king three times, the cannonballs start coming in successive waves, and faster each time. Arino’s ready for them, though, and manages to swifty dodge them. After bonking King K. Rool enough times, he finally collapses. Arino wins! A credits screen scrolls by, but they’re just the names of the enemies… and then, "The End?" Arino slowly reahces for the controller, and grabs it again. Just as he does, the staff screams. It’s not over! The king gets back up and jumps to the other side, causing Arino to lose Diddy. He jumps over the next crown, but then is hit by the king as he again hops across the screen.

Attempt six. Arino successfully avoids the king’s hops for the first little bit, but the big green guy gets more hop-happy, and throws Arino off. At least he still has 99 lives! Attempt eight. He loses Donkey Kong, but that means he has one more chance with Diddy. It’s tense, but he manages to avoid K. Rool’s hops. And then, one more bop on the head…

King K. Rool collapses again. And this time, a giant banana falls! That’s it! Arino’s done it! After a total of 26 hours, Arino finally finishes the game. Nakayama comes by and offers Arino a glass of the GCCX wine that a fan made as a gift.

The Game-itization Project 2

More new stuff for Arino no Chousenjou 2 is shown. First up is the "give up" feature, where you can now give up on a challenge by having Young Arino call Game Master Arino and ask to give up.

And then, the final game in the collection is revealed: Super Demon Returns, the first and only 16-bit game in Chousenjou 2.