We keep saying it, but it’s a really weird time right now. I’ve been feeling the anxieties of both the pandemic world we live in, and the stress of starting a new job in the midst of said pandemic. It’s a lot of adjustment and I’ve spent many a night lying awake and wondering what time it is, and what time I might finally fall asleep. I’ve washed my hands until they’re raw and sanitized between every class at school. And while I’m excited about so many things in my life right now, I’m also very scared about the world, you know, how things are going.
This is why I played through the entirety of Rare’s 1994 Super Nintendo Entertainment Center (SNES) game, Donkey Kong Country.
I loved my parents’ SNES as a child, and I played it constantly, first getting beaten in Street Fighter II by my dad, and then working my way up to being the undefeated champion of the house. I remember playing Donkey Kong Country some, but I mostly lump it in with a group of games that I used to watch my mom play. I’d spend hours sitting on my red bean bag chair, looking on as she played Super Metroid, Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Donkey Kong Country. Later, when my parents got divorced and my mom moved across country, I rented and played the other Donkey Kong games, and playing them brought me some sense of comfort and normalcy, as weird as that sounds. It felt familiar in a world that was increasingly unfamiliar to me.
Later, when I was working on my comprehensive exams and prospectus for my dissertation, I turned to these classics again, and another favorite Rare game, Banjo Kazooie. Each Tuesday, my friend and I would get Chinese food for lunch and play Banjo for a couple of hours, ultimately completing the game 100%, down to the very last jiggy. I got a tattoo the week before my defense of a jiggy from the game, golden and crisp on my thigh.
Banjo holding a jiggy. Yes, it’s kind of just a puzzle piece.
And sure, there have been weekends where I’ve blasted through all three Donkey Kong games, become obsessed with them. They’re fun! But I’ve never really been able to pinpoint why I keep returning to these games over and over, well into adulthood.Why do they feel so right? During the end of my time as an undergrad, my writing center boss gave me a homemade plaque that said “Donkey Kong High Score Champion.” It hung in my bedroom for about 7 years, and I only took it down once I got married (sorry, Todd).
Recently, Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country on their SNES emulator (which is available to all subscribers to Nintendo Online). Soon enough, I was deep in the hole again, swinging on vines and collecting bananas. Curled up on the couch with a blanket and my Switch, I felt like I was diving back into my childhood, and to a time much like now, when everything felt unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. It was a good feeling, or maybe a good feeling at the center of a very bad type of dread.
There are some people who read the same book over and over, or watch the same movie each night to fall asleep, and I’ve never understood it. But playing the same video game over and over, even if it’s a really good video game, is kind of the same thing. I know every nook and cranny of Donkey Kong. I know where the secret barrels are, where the animal statues are, when a barrel will take me straight down into nothingness or to a secret reward. There’s a comfort in repetition, and in a time when everything is so uncertain, that’s important.
Rare made some of the best games of the 90s, and their dissolution is one of the dark spots in gaming history. That being said, I’m thankful that Nintendo has continued to release Rare games over and over again. It’s a comfort to me.
There is a comfort to revisiting—not living in, but revisiting—past loves. They remind us of different times in our lives and serve as a familiar touchstone in the midst of uncertainty. I know how Donkey Kong Country ends, with King K. Rool falling off the side of his own boat, the banana hoard reclaimed. It feels good to have control over something, to be able to say, you know, things are going to be alright for the Kong family.
Now if we could only get a rerelease of Banjo Kazooie.
This is what my happy place looks like.