Donkey Kong 64/YMMV

Ahhh...the Tropes...

• Accidental Innuendo: "His coconut gun can fire in spurts! IF HE SHOOTS YA, it's gonna hurt!"
• Awesome Music: Frantic Factory, Fungi Forest, King Kut-Out and Hideout Helm. Props also go to the boss intro theme.
• Badass Decay: Happens in-game. King K. Rool starts out as a legitimately menacing Darth Vader Clone, but eventually devolves into a complete goof and Villain Ball-holder.
• Breather Boss: Army Dillo in Crystal Caves, he's almost the same as in Jungle Japes except you have three melons now, making him a bit easier in that regard. The only upgrades he has are the fireball cannon and heat seeking missile. Despite that, he's only a smidge harder than the first two bosses.
• Ear Worm:
  • The DK Rap.
  • Funky's theme can sneak up on you and make you whistle it when you least expect it.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Diddy (who started finding his way into other Nintendo games with his power-ups from this one) and Funky.
  • Mad Jack is one of the series' most memorable bosses.
  • Lanky Kong from this game onward, as his only other appearance in the franchise ever since was as a playable character in Barrel Blast.
• Genius Bonus: Lanky Kong is associated with water. Orangutans are the ONLY non-human primates, in Real Life, to actually enjoy water and swimming.
• Good Bad Bug:
  • Using Lanky's arm stretching move, you can enter worlds with B.LOCKER on them, allowing you to access worlds you don't have enough golden bananas for. Chunky can do it too thanks to the Primate Punch.
  • The last Banana Fairy to be photographed is in the final room, and is nearly impossible to capture on film since due to her frantic flying. However, she only flies about when you're actually in the room, and you can take her picture through a window with no trouble at all. It's unclear if this is actually a glitch or a treat for thinking outside the box.
  • Using Donkey Kong's air attack while approaching a slope and then immediately using his grounded kick attack (it makes sense through actually playing) might cause him to soar through the air. It has been dubbed the "Moonkick" and is useful for sequence breakers and speedrunners.
• Hell Is That Noise: That strange moaning in the crypt of Creepy Castle...
  • GET OUT. That sound can give players nightmares.
  • Crystal Cave's calm, serene music suddenly being replaced every minute or so with intense music when the stupid guy in the ceiling begins making stalagmites rain down on you.
• Memetic Mutation: The "Puzzle in the Caves" and "Demon Resident Mine Cart" themes have gained more notice than others thanks to Painis Cupcake. Oh, banana! Well done! Okaaay. Yeeeeah.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • The slide beetle's laugh, which you will hear many times if you bother going after her bananas.
  • King Kut Out's voiceover. AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH YEEOWOHOH
  • Also, everytime Lanky gets hit.
  • That annoying sound the Gnawtys make, which goes Up to Eleven if you even bother (pun intended) to attempt any of the Beaver Bother minigames.
  • Most of Tiny's voice clips. WOOHOO! WHEEEEE! WOOHOO! WHEEEEE! WOOHOO! WHEEEEE...!
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Ohhh, banana!
  • The monkey sounds that show up whenever you solve a puzzle. Often followed up by the above sound.
  • "Don, Don, Don-key Kong!" Played whenever you get a Golden Banana, and certain other items.
  • DK's "YEAH" voice clip, which he uses after the aforementioned Golden Banana sound.
  • DK's voice is overall very well-received, fitting DK's laid-back tough guy persona he has in this game.
• Narm Charm: The DK Rap was deliberately written to be So Bad It's Good. It actually succeeded on that front to the point where people like it unironically.
• Nightmare Fuel: As always.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • For as horrifying as Frantic Factory's boss Mad Jack can be, defeating him causes him to utter out a small "Uh Oh..." while waving to the camera, before he stumbles to the ground.
  • The Bedsheet Ghost Kremlings are intentionally this.
• Polished Port: The Wii U release doesn't have any of the framerate lag the N64 original did, making it feel smoother, and allows players to create "restore points" so they can redo sections more quickly. The only drawback is that, because of the absence of slowdown derived from the faster pace, some parts of the game that were balanced to fit the original framerate are made more difficult than intended (though making use of the built in "restore point" feature of the Wii U's Virtual Console can help mitigate the problems).
• Replacement Scrappy: Tiny, who replaced fan-favorite Dixie, at least to some people.
• The Scrappy:
  • The goddamn racing Beetle and his hellish slide races, where you have to collect a certain number of coins AND win.
  • Troff and Scoff, for having very unappealing designs.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Beaver Bother. It's a basic herding game where, as a Klaptrap, you have one minute to scare Gnawtys into a tiny hole in the center of a round stage. Problem is, the collision detection for the beavers vs. the hole is a little too good, and your Klaptrap can't simply push them in, also due to collision mechanics. The Gnawtys also have a slowish respawn, and frequently get stuck on the wall. There's one game that requires you to herd 12 Gnawtys in the hole, which is difficult, but then there are two, count 'em: TWO, versions that require you to herd 15.
  • It should also be mentioned that the two that require herding 15 are both in the same freaking level! Way to be original, Rare!
  • A lot of those barrels are infuriating, especially Splish-Splash Salvage, where you have to collect eight submerged coins in a barrel. The biggest problems stemmed from the fixed camera and the fact that the coins used 2D sprites, which could render them nearly impossible to see if they were underneath the camera.
  • Also any of the races that require you to collect a certain number of coins and still beat your opponent. In particular, the slides. It seems Rare didn't learn their lesson from Diddy Kong Racing.
  • The submarine in Gloomy Galleon deserves a mention. You have to play Diddy's guitar on top of the lighthouse, get to the other section, dive underwater, and get into the submarine and then the fun begins. You have to shoot out all three of the lights (hit them three times to turn them from red to white to busted) but the propellor and respawning Zingers make this the last banana many players get. And that countdown timer gives you barely enough time if you do it exactly right. It's not only much tougher than Beaver Bother but at least with Beaver Bother you can jump right in the banana barrel again, here you have to go back to the top of the lighthouse and do that all over again.
• Signature Song: The DK Rap.
• So Bad It's Good: The DK Rap, the lyrics of which composer Grant Kirkhope has admitted were written to be deliberately cheesy.
• That One Boss: Several DK bosses more than qualify for this.
  • Mad Jack. He combines this with Goddamned Boss. You're forced to twirl back and forth between platforms to avoid being smashed. Worst of all, he speeds up as the battle goes on, so you need to land precisely on the edge of every platform or else you won't have enough time to reach the next one. This repeats for 10-15 times, and if you fall off, the pattern starts over. Also the camera is known to make a switcheroo mid-twirl. The secret is to stay in the middle four platforms, but this isn't even perfect because his panels can appear anywhere. Another trick is to jump off the edge and stay on the platform that raises you up until he jumps up again, though this will eventually require a difficult jump as he wises up and stays on the "corner".
  • King Kut-Out also qualifies for some who haven't mastered the patterns in his third stage. However, King Kut-Out becomes much easier once you realize you need to shoot him when he's actually in front of you, not when you predict he will be. Once you actually see him at any of the openings, you can shoot freely; once a shot is fired, he stops moving, so if he was somewhere else, you'll lose a Kong, but if he was right in front of you, it's a guaranteed hit.
  • Dogadon, the second time around. The final "form" of this boss involves him pounding the battle platform into molten lava. It's unclear exactly how much HP he has in the sections where you need to get big with Chunky and punch him. Chunky's stronger moves seem to be less effective than using his neutral B move over and over and over again, though repeatedly using his charge-up punch does the trick too.
  • Puftoss. To damage the boss, you have to pilot a little motorboat through a series of checkpoints. The problem is, it handles about as well as the hovercraft in Diddy Kong Racing, and the checkpoints get smaller and smaller. The first phase is deceptively easy, but then it gets cruel. In the second phase, the checkpoints are still as large as the first time where it's easy, but it becomes hard because they're all next to him, and he spams you with shockwaves that are an instant one-hit kill. So you can avoid them or risk jumping over them. In the third phase, the stars vary from close to far as they will in the last three. His shockwaves are less frequent thankfully, and disappear in the fourth and are replaced by heat seeking missiles that do half a melon's worth of damage (still better than one hit kill). Fifth stage of the battle near the end can be either almost impossible or easy, depending on if you have enough health left to take one or two hits since the star reappears in the same location.
  • While the final boss isn't a challenge with every Kong, he can be a nightmare with Lanky. You have to hit switches with his arms, grab a barrel before it drops down and if it ends up happening, you have to do it over again, drop the barrel with the banana peel and pray that he's in the right area to slip on the banana peel. What makes this so tedious is that he can run right next to the banana peel and completely avoid it, while you take damage and have to do the whole thing all over again. But you need to do this four times, in just three minutes, meaning that every second counts as you don't have any room to mess up, which is more than likely bound to happen and predicting where he'll run is very hard too in order to avoid taking damage from that. And if time runs out, you start another round with the same amount of hit points left when the round ended.
• That One Level:
  • Gloomy Galleon, as it's one of the largest levels in the game, along with a lot of backtracking if you're attempting to get everything in it. It doesn't help that in order to obtain bananas and reach Golden Bananas, you have to change the water level very frequently. Even for those that've played it before, it'll take at least a few hours to find everything.
  • Crystal Caves, at least until you kill the guy bringing the ceiling down on your head. Many golden bananas are also difficult to get, leading to a difficulty spike. Crystal Caves also has that spinning maze which you have to complete at a fixed camera angle, slices a whole melon from your health meter if you touch the wall, and gives DK only a marginal amount of space to move around in.
  • Also, contrary to Super Mario 64, either of the slides. Even in Angry Aztec, which is overall an easy level.
  • The arcade Donkey Kong game in Frantic Factory. It has to be beaten twice in order to reach the final boss, but you have to beat the entire game with one life both times. If you can get ten thousand points (reasonably easy in the second round), you can get another, but that's a small consolation when playing a game where the average player's lifespan, according to The King of Kong, is thirty seconds.
    • It's made even more annoying by the fact that you get sent back to the factory when you lose, and go through the whole cinematic of DK grabbing the lever and the title screen before you can try it again.
    • If you use the D-pad instead of the analog stick, it tightens up the controls a lot and makes things somewhat easier. Where is this hinted at? Nowhere!!
• That One Sidequest:
  • Beaver Bother. It's a basic herding game where, as a Klaptrap, you have one minute to scare Gnawtys into a tiny hole in the center of a round stage. Problem is, the collision detection for the beavers vs. the hole is a little too good, and your Klaptrap can't simply push them in, also due to collision mechanics. The Gnawtys also have a slowish respawn, and frequently get stuck on the wall. There's one game that requires you to herd 12 Gnawtys in the hole, which is difficult, but then there are two, count 'em: TWO, versions that require you to herd 15. As some kind of sick joke, BOTH of them are in the same world (Creepy Castle).
  • Any of the races that require you to collect a certain number of coins and still beat your opponent. In particular, the slides. It seems Rare didn't learn their lesson from Diddy Kong Racing.
  • The mechanical fish in Gloomy Galleon deserves a mention. You have to play Diddy's guitar on top of the lighthouse, get to the other section, dive underwater, and get into the submarine and then the fun begins. You have to shoot out all three of the lights (hit them three times to turn them from red to white to busted) but the propeller and respawning Zingers make this the last banana many players get. And that countdown timer gives you barely enough time if you do it exactly right. It's not only much tougher than Beaver Bother, but at least with Beaver Bother you can jump right in the banana barrel again, here you have to go back to the top of the lighthouse and do that all over again.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Rarely will you find someone who speedruns this game and also likes Lanky. This is mostly due to being attached to some of the hardest minigames and his weird hitbox and abilities being really bad for speedrunning tech.
• Vindicated by History: Somewhat inverted. The game has a 90 overall score on Metacritic, yet many people who revisit it today tend to have issues with the general gameplay, in particular, the fact that every one of the five playable characters had their own large amount of collectibles to obtain, leading to tons of tedious backtracking and character switching around. Likewise, a number of critics gave the game high marks upon release, due to the novelty of the DK brand going 3D, the amazing soundtrack and the polished models and animations (plus, Rare being at the peak of its popularity). Many, however, tend to retrospectively view the game rather unfavorably for the aforementioned reasons. IGN, for example, gave the game an "Amazing" 9.0/10 (though, when reading their review, it's clear that its positivity is somewhat artificial). They later trashed the game even excluded it from their list of the Top Nintendo 64 Games Of All Time.
• The Woobie:
  • K. Lumsy. Trapped in a cage where he can't even sit down and all because he refused to destroy DK isles.
  • The Banana Fairy Queen. When you first meet her, she's crying because her Banana Fairies flew away.