How Donkey Kong Country Returns HD comes across to eight-year-olds

For decades, I’ve trekked to office buildings and hotel suites to meet with game developers and public relations people in order to play upcoming video games ahead of their release.

Until last week, I’d never brought my kids.

But, when Nintendo invited me to do so for a meeting last week, it seemed like a fun idea.

The game was Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, a Switch remaster that was not yet released last Friday when my twins, freshly turned 8, hopped on the train with me to head into Manhattan for our appointment.

The original DKCR on Wii was a fairly hard game. I’d forgotten. I shouldn’t have.

But what is parenting, if not a succession of twists that you — an adult who thought you’d prepared for everything — should have seen coming?

My kids have been gaming since age 5 ½, exclusively on Nintendo systems for the first two years, so I was focused on the excitement that they could meet real Nintendo people.

No, I explained to them a few days prior to our meeting, the man who created Donkey Kong wouldn’t be there. But I’d interviewed him a bunch of times! (Cool points for dad?) And people who work with him would be there.

Better: We’d get to play a game before it came out! This concept delighted them last September, when we played early review code of Astro Bot — their first PlayStation game. At the time, my son surmised that a bonus area that was labeled in the game with a row of question marks hadn’t been named yet, because we had Astro Bot early and the game wasn’t done.

Of course, this Donkey Kong game was a remaster, but my kids hadn’t even been alive for the original. It’d be new to them.

The Nintendo people were welcoming. A rep greeted us in the lobby, escorted us up an elevator, and we were soon greeted by Nintendo officials. We went into a room that my daughter would later marvel “had a lot of TVs” and sat at a table where the game was paused. A few other families took their spots, too.

Before we could play, a Nintendo rep began an obligatory presentation, explaining the game via a set of slides marked “confidential” that explained the controls for Donkey Kong and his pal Diddy. The rep promoted Nintendo Switch Online as a means to play other Donkey Kong games.

Then we encountered reality.

Co-op gaming experiences are a risk with my kids. The twins, eternally seeking balance, can easily get frustrated with each other when they have different ideas about what to do in the game they’re mutually controlling. DKCRHD triggered that tension within seconds.

When my daughter, playing as Diddy, wanted to race ahead, my son, as Donkey Kong, wanted to hang back and explore. Naturally, as soon as he wanted to proceed, she wanted to hang back. The game isn’t the hardest thing ever, but they usually take turns playing Nintendo games and have rarely played anything in co-op that’s tougher than Kirby. Some of the jumps were tough. He cared about collecting things; she did not.

My kids started getting testy with each other, and I started getting mortified.

A Nintendo rep kindly floated the idea of switching to single-player mode. Yes, please!

That went better. As my son played, I tried to get my daughter to chat with the Nintendo folks. Maybe they could learn something from each other, I hoped.

She played Mario Kart, she told them. And Smash Bros. One of the reps asked who her favorite Smash characters were. She likes Zero Suit Samus, she said. And the lady who shoots things from her feet.

Meanwhile, my son was learning how to make Donkey Kong hang from moss-covered ceilings. He was also trying to find the level’s hidden KONG letters. It had become really important to him.

Soon, he took a break and my daughter resumed playing. With time running short, she finally landed a tricky jump, exclaimed “I did it!” And we called it there.

Success! They were happy. I exhaled.

What’d my son think of his first ever Donkey Kong Country game?

“I like it, but it’s really hard,” he said. “I liked the first level and how you have to go on the vines and stuff, and when you find the hidden areas.”

“Hard but good,” she said.

Both liked the game. But what they really liked were the Donkey Kong-themed water bottles that had been placed at each family’s gaming station. The kids hoped they could keep them. The Nintendo people said they could. Who am I to enforce no-swag ethics on my children?

My daughter, giddy, marveled at the “DK” initials on her bottle.

“There’s this restaurant,” she excitedly told me. “And the commercials are like…” [she started singing that Burger King jingle… ] “DK, have it your way!”

“Oh, that’s BK.” I said.

“No,” she said confidently. “It’s DK.”

And that was about it. We headed to the Lego store afterward, didn’t buy anything, then dropped into the Nintendo Store (he picked out a plush Fireball Mario and a Bullet Bill; she grabbed Kirby and Toadette).

My kids said they had a good time meeting with Nintendo. They liked the game, loved the bottles. The brief squabble didn’t even register. They’d love to do it again.

As for me, the evening was the latest reminder of another truth of parenting: I’m just along for the ride. Better hold on tight.