I played about 2 hours of Donkey Kong Country Returns this afternoon and lo and behold I beat it! :O I wasn't expecting to work my way through it so quickly, but considering I only got about 50% completion (levels, secrets, KONG pieces) I guess doubling the time I spent would put completion time around 6 hours, so that's not to bad for an early 90's SNES game. (Really interesting that lately in the game industry consumers complain when a game is only 8 hours, but you never really think that back when gaming was really picking up certain games that are praised nowadays aren't very long at all.)
Anywho, tangent over, let's go over what happened.
World 4 was Gorilla Glacier, and is the "Ice World" that every platformer eventually has. It was annoying, but had a couple stand-out levels. I enjoyed Snow Barrel Blast for the snowy transitions going on in the background (the level starts out as clear but you slowly see a huge snowstorm come in), but not necessarily for the precision barrel blasting that was required.
Torchlight Trouble was an awesome level that has you rely on a parrot with a flashlight to help you make your way through the dark cave.
At the end of the world I faced off against the reincarnation of Gnawty - Really Gnawty - but in the end he went down just as easy as the other.
World 5 was Kremkroc Industries Inc. and had some really cool levels, highlighted by the Kremlins tearing apart the landscape and building factories, poisoning the water and generally just being assholes.
Mine Cart Madness was a twist on the minecart level from World 2, but instead of jumping and bringing the minecart with you, jumping in the minecart just makes Donkey and Diddy jump. This made for interesting level design.
Blackout Basement was a terrifying level. Every 3 or so seconds the light would go out - completely. The only things you could see while the lights were out were Donkey and Diddy and any items they could collect. You couldn't see enemies, the environment, platforms, nothing. o_O
The boss of World 5 was called Dumb Drum, and it was appropriate. He tried to squash down on me but failed, and then when he realized he was terrible he spawned enemies at me to try to take me down, but that didn't work either. He went down easy enough.
Chimp Caverns was World 6, and only had one level really worth mentioning. It was the first level of the world, but it was the best. Possibly my favorite level of the game outside the minecart levels. Tanked Up Trouble had you travel along the level on top of a moving platform, pretty standard. The catch was that the platform could only move when it had fuel, and would lose fuel as it moved more. Scattered along the level was fuel that I had to collect to keep the platform moving. Awesome level.
The boss of World 6 was a reincarnation of Necky, but he was easily dispatched as well.
That brought me to, unexpectedly, King K. Rool, the final boss. He was more annoying than fun to fight, and it was really just pattern recognition and memory that was required to beat him, nothing else really.
HOWEVER, just when you thought the fight was over - and I thought this was really neat - fake credits start to roll, but then he revives himself for round two. There wasn't a round three, luckily, and I had beaten the game.
The real credits rolled (which were really cool) and I had beaten the game.
Really glad I can cross this one off my bucket list. I had never beaten it in my childhood, and it was really nice to come back and revisit the levels I had already played, and get to experience the ones I hadn't.