Donkey Kong Country: Kiddy's Neglect
When I was a kid, I disliked the Donkey Kong Country series. I always found the games to be too difficult for me, but when I got older, I learned to appreciate the games for the same reason that I hated them in the first place. All of the games had a fair difficulty curve to them and it felt satisfying to clear each game.
I personally have trouble picking a favorite out of the whole trilogy on the SNES due to the games having a different atmosphere for each one. Gameplay was pretty much the exact same for all three of the games, so it was the different settings that made these games more interesting. If there was a Donkey Kong Country game that I slightly didn't like as much, I would pick Donkey Kong Country 3. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed that game as well, but there was one character that I didn't enjoy using as much, Kiddy Kong.
Kiddy Kong was the youngest of all of the kongs. He was a giant baby ape who wore a blue suit. I didn't like Kiddy as much because I would rather be using Donkey Kong since the series is named after him. He was also not as fun to use as the other kongs. His only cool ability was being able to toss Dixie to unreachable areas, but his ability to skip over the water was tricky to pull off. Also while Kiddy could break through walls, this ability was rarely used. In my opinion, he was one of the least memorable characters in the series because this was the only game he showed up in.
Now, I should be honest, I didn't just write this to rant about Kiddy Kong, the reason I am even bringing up the Donkey Kong Country series is because I experienced some strange easter egg that I had somehow discovered in Dixie's Double Trouble. I know that back then there were rumors about unlocking Luigi in Super Mario 64 which turned out to be hogwash, so I was surprised to see this sort of easter egg placed into a kids game.
To this day, I am still in the dark on how I could of triggered this. I only know one person who has also found this easter egg, but even he is clueless about it. I've tried to check online and I still haven't managed to find anyone who can clue me in about this. The only thing I can do is write about these events that were within the game and see if anyone else knows what I'm talking about.
It started when I was trying to do a speed run of the game. I would always use Dixie and lose Kiddy whenever I accidently hit a DK barrel because Kiddy was deadweight due to how slow he was. Dixie was able to rush through the stages faster and had a useful gliding ability that would help me get through tricky obstacles. I liked playing as Dixie and I think it's a shame that she was only featured in a few games. I quickly breezed through the first two bosses and made it to Cotton-Top Cove and then called it a night, making sure to keep track of the time I had spent playing. I shortly went to bed afterwards.
I woke up and found out that I had to work today. I made myself a promise that I would try to finish my speedrun today because I was rarely determined to finish what I had started. I left my home and walked over to my job which was luckly close to where I lived at. I ended up working for about 6 hours before punching out. I returned home to finally try and finish my speedrun of the game without anymore interuptions.
I rushed back to my room, setting up the timer and turning on the console. This is where it all happened.
Upon turning system on, I only saw a blank screen. I thought I would need to take the cartridge out and clean it, but after about 5 seconds, the boss theme began to play which played a bit differently. It played with some parts feeling a bit off and the whole thing was a bit unsettling to listen to. It wasn't until much later after all of this was behind me that I found out that the music playing was actually used on an error screen if you were trying to use a game genie or play a pirated version of the game. After about ten seconds, the music stopped. I thought something was wrong with my cartridge and that it needed to be cleaned, but just as I was about to turn off the system, the game started working again...
I was taken to the file select screen, the game had just skipped over the rare logo and the title screen . I had never had this happen to me before, but I selected my file and began to play as normal. Upon loading the file, I noticed that I was in control of Kiddy. Dixie wasn't even with him. I didn't find this to be a big deal because I could easily get Dixie and then get rid of Kiddy again. I was a bit annoyed since I wouldn't have the perfect speedrun now. Regardless, I went to play the first level of Cotton-Top Cove which was a water themed level.
Things began to get strange quickly when I discovered the lack of DK barrels. I tried looking around for one, but I was unable to find any. I played through the level as Kiddy trying my best to avoid the fishes that were scattered about. I also noticed while I was playing that Engarde the swordfish was missing as well. The level felt a bit more difficult thanks to the lack of the DK barrels and Engarde, but I managed to finish the level despite using Kiddy. I went to go and try the next few levels and I found that those levels also lacked DK barrels.
After clearing a few of those levels, I decided I to pay a visit to Wrinkly Kong and save my game, so I could turn off the system and clean the game. Just as I was about to save the game, Wrinkly Kong said something that surprised me. I don't remember what Wrinkly said word for word, but I can give a good summary.
Wrinkly talked like she was depressed which was hinted during her dialouge. She talked about how Dixie was now missing. Wrinkly also tried to get the other kongs to find her, but there was no luck in finding her. I guess this explained the lack in DK barrels since the goal was to find Dixie. As strange as this was, I grew interested because I had never been able to trigger this event before. Despite not caring for Kiddy, I decided I would call off the speedrun and continue playing to see if anything else had changed. After Wrinkly had talked, Kiddy just left on his own and I was taken back to the map. I did try to enter the save cave again and see if I could record my progress, but I was unable to enter it again. It seemed like I would have to do this all in one sitting.
I had to be extra cautious in the levels in order to avoid having enemies sneak up on me. I wasn't used to doing a full run as Kiddy and ended up losing a few lives, but I was able to learn from my mistakes and managed to clear the next couple of levels. I decided to pay a visit to Swanky Kong's tent to try and gather a few extra lifes. There was also a bit of a difference here.
Swanky Kong wasn't even anywhere to be seen. The whole place was just empty. I was actually able to control Kiddy and move him around a bit. There was no music playing, just silence. One of the few things that was different was the inclusion of a flying note, just like the one that was in the beginning of Donkey Kong Country 2 in the ship cabin. I decided to touch the note to see what it said. Sadly, I also don't know what the note said word for word, but I can also give a summary.
From how Swanky had written the note, it seemed he was completely scared. All the note consisted of was him constantly pleading to be spared. He hoped that if he was found that he wouldn't get killed and just be left alone. To be honest, I was beginning to feel a little disturbed at this due to Swanky Kong being out of character and even mentioning death.
Afterwards, I decided to see if I could enter the tent itself. I was able to go inside the tent slightly which ended up landing me a couple of red balloons which gave me three lifes in total. I was then able to leave the tent by just exiting the screen. I tried entering the area again to get more lifes, but just like the save cave, I was unable to enter Swanky's Tent again. I was now curious about the bear huts. If Swanky's tent had been changed, I wanted to see if any of the bears had anything different to say.
I tried visiting all of the huts I had access to, but it seemed I couldn't enter any of them. I wasn't ready to give up though, I tried all of the huts, but there was only one hut that I didn't bother to check. This was Bazaar's hut which was the first hut in the game. Bazaar was also the only reason you needed to collect bear coins in the first place besides spending them to play the minigames in Swanky's tent. I tried entering Bazaar's hut and much to my luck, I was able to. What happened when I got there was much stranger then what happened in Swanky's tent.
The game over music from the first Donkey Kong Country game was playing which was very weird. Bazaar's sprite also looked different. He looked paranoid instead of his usual cheerful self. When Bazaar began to speak, his dialouge was hard to understand. The text was in a huge mess with most of the words being mixed up. I wondered if this was a glitch, but I was unable to identify a word out of it.
After Bazaar was done talking, I was able to move around the hut just like how I was able to move around Swanky's tent. I decided to move close to Bazaar, but as I got closer, he decided to attack Kiddy for some unknown reason. Bazaar was able to throw barrels just like the kongs which was completely unexpected. I knew it was time to leave the hut at this point, so I did before I lost a life to that bear.
At this point, I decided to keep playing until I reached the boss for Cotton-Top Cove, but instead of being taken to a boss fight, I was taken someplace different.
When I entered what was supposed to be the boss level, I found that I was now playing as Dixie Kong. I didn't expect this but I also wasn't expecting the whole screen to be desaturated as well. The whole level was in a black, grey and white color including Dixie. The music playing was from the Misty Menace stage which was also from the first Donkey Kong Country game. I identified the level to being Riverside Race as I ran through it. There were no signs of any enemies including the annoying bee's that would chase you throughout that stage. As I played through this strange area, I thought the whole area would be a pushover until something finally showed up halfway through the level. I was horrified by what that was
It just came from out of nowhere, I saw what looked like Kiddy Kong except he looked messed up. He didn't look friendly, there were parts of him missing and he was also desaturated along with the level. I knew this messed up Kiddy wasn't a friend, so I decided to try and lose him. Evil Kiddy began chasing after me and I was unable to get a good complete look at him because I was focusing on getting away from him. Evil Kiddy was relentless, he was fast and unfortunately ended up catching me on my first attempt. When that happened, the screen just froze for a couple of seconds before taking me back to the Cotton-Top Cove map.
I noticed I hadn't lost a life during that attempt, so I was relieved that I was given infinite tries to beat that level. I ended up getting caught a couple of times because I wasn't fast enough, but on my fourth try, I was able to finally finish it. I ran to the end of the demented level and noticed that the goal flag wasn't even there. Kiddy was right behind me and was about to catch Dixie again before the screen faded to black...
It then cuts to the same crib that you see on the gameover screen for that game, but it's in a different angle. Kiddy is there with his regular features and colors back, but he looked sinister and I quickly knew why. Kiddy was holding a tiny monkey skull in one of his hands. I knew that skull used to belong to Dixie and Kiddy had just done something that I didn't think he would ever do...
Instead of the words "Game Over", the text read "Kiddy Kong gets his way."
After a little while, the door to the nursery closed leaving everything in the dark except for Dixie's skull which somehow grew in the dark. It stayed this way until you either shut the game off or reset it.
I turned the game off and cleaned the cartridge real carefully. I turned the system back on and the game was now playing normally again. I tried to get the same event to play again, but I've had no such luck in doing so.
The only other person I know who has had this happen to him is a friend of mine and even he doesn't know how he got the game to behave this way. He claims that he had seen this easter egg about two times. He ended up getting the easter egg to work on an older cartridge long ago when he was a kid. Later on, after that cartridge had been damaged and it had to be replaced, he ran into the same easter egg on his newer copy of the game.
Credited to KRokon
Originally uploaded on May 17, 2013
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