BRIEF: King Kong 2: Yomigaeru Densetsu (1986)

 

This game was never released in English; only through a 2000 patch am I playing.

      

King Kong 2: Yomigaeru Densetsu

"King Kong 2: The Legend Returns"

Japan

Konami (developer and publisher)

Released 1986 for MSX (mostly unrelated to NES action game from same year, although both are from Konami)

   

Today, we're going to coin a new keyword: "hydlike." It describes, as you may guess, the sub-genre of RPGs embodied by Hydlide (1984). You can argue that Hydlide didn't do it first, but I don't really care. Rogue wasn't the first "roguelike," either. Hydlide works better for the portmanteau.

   

The sub-genre is characterized by the following:

        

• Action gameplay   

• A squat, childlike protagonist with a defined name and starting attributes. There is no meaningful character creation process.

• Simplistic combat, either by bumping into the enemy or by using a single attack button.
  

• "Character development" through increasing some kind of power statistic, often represented as a bar. 

• Limited attributes--either just health or maybe strength and health

• Gameplay across multiple screens in which multiple enemies of the same type move in a random or half-random manner.

• Limited inventories. You might have a few items (say, weapon, armor, shield) with a handful of obvious upgrades throughout the game. You might be able to carry a few potions that you can use at will.

     

I would consider these the core elements, although I'll take nominations for more. ("Relentless music that you cannot turn off independently of the rest of the sound" might be a good one; it certainly is for King Kong 2.) A game could miss maybe one of these and still get slapped with the label. More than one, and I might consider it at least a hybrid.

      

I kill an enemy while others lurk nearby.

      

Hydlikes tend to walk the razor's edge on my definition of an RPG. Sometimes they make it. Hydlide itself did. It had both a strength bar and a life bar, which increased in maximums as the character's experience did. Combat success was based partly on that strength bar, and it had a small inventory of items. Rambo, although similar, was a pure action game because the "Power" bar's improvement depended on finding food, not killing enemies or solving quests, and combat success was based entirely on the player's skill and the character's inventory (i.e., not on any underlying character attributes). (It gets confusing because I played Rambo to the end anyway, but that's because it was so short I made an exception.) Courageous Perseus had attack and defense scores that determined success in combat, and they increased with experience, but there was no inventory.

    

King Kong 2 is yet another hydlike. It is not a sequel to anything. Rather, it is based on the 1986 American film King Kong Lives, which was known in Japan as King Kong 2. (The film was a sequel to 1976's King Kong, not the original.) The setup follows the basic plot lines of the film. Although King Kong closed with the beast lying dead in the World Trade Center Plaza, we learn in the sequel that he didn't die; he was just badly injured. A government surgeon plans to replace his damaged heart with an artificial one, but he needs a blood transfusion to accompany the procedure, and since Kong is the only known member of his species, they're out of luck. An adventurer named Hank Mitchell agrees to search for another one in Borneo. For some reason, in the game, Mitchell's name is shortened by one l and "Borneo" becomes "Golneo."

         

"Mitchel" arrives in "Golneo" at the beginning of the game.

      

Really, the entire Kong thing is a framing story. In his quest to find Kong, Mitchel fights so many fantastic creatures that the game makes more sense as a fantasy, particularly with the use of "magic points." Gameplay is what you'd expect in a hydlike: you run around from screen to screen, fighting various creatures after you learn their movement patterns. There's one attack, using the SPACE bar, with maybe half a dozen weapons that you can find throughout the game. There are occasional huts that you can enter to find shops and clues.

        

I get a somewhat incomprehensible hint.

         

But King Kong 2 fails as an RPG in a couple of ways. There are no attributes to increase with leveling except maximum health, and I don't generally regard health alone as significant enough character development to meet my first criteria. (There are magic points, too, but these are "found" rather than achieved by leveling.) I don't believe character level influences attack power; only the type of weapon does that. (Every 10 levels, you can increase your movement speed, which has some effect on combat success, but . . . come on.) There is, however, a limited inventory of items, including spells that expend magic power and herbs you can eat to restore health.

The inventory is limited, but it does meet my qualifications under this point.

     

The game is quite hard. Your health doesn't regenerate on its own; you have to find herbs or pay for healing, and both options involve fighting monsters, which could easily leave you worse than when you started. I've seen other sites call this game "grindy," but grinding only works when at least one resource (usually health) is inexhaustible as long as the player is willing to sacrifice time. That's not King Kong 2.

  

The key problem with combat is that you have to be right up against an enemy to strike him. There is maybe a single pixel where you can strike him but he can't strike you. Otherwise, you have to be willing to take damage to deal damage. And then there are creatures that you can only strike from behind, or that only take damage from certain weapons, or that have erratic movement patterns. For instance, an early enemy called "wildboars" lumber along perpendicular to you, then turn to face you, then suddenly rush in a charge. "Grassworms" attack in arcs that seem like they ought to be foreseeable, yet almost always caught me off-guard.

       

I could never find the right pattern for these guys.

        

Enemy AI is also fairly diabolical. It would be impressive if it wasn't annoying. I'm not an expert in this type of action game by any means, but it seems to me that among others I've played, the best strategy is to usually study the enemies' movement patterns, anticipate them, and have the pointy end of your sword waiting when they show up. That doesn't work here. Enemies actively avoid your facing direction and will thus almost never walk into your swing. They know your strategy. If you desperately need them to go left, they will always go right. If you think you've figured out that pattern and thus plan for them going right, they'll somehow figure it out and go left.

    

You could argue that the game is still quite "easy" despite all of this because if you die, you simply have to hit "Continue" to resurrect on the same screen with a full health total and no loss of experience or items. But even here, the game has a final screw to twist.

     

If I had bought this game without knowing anything about it, I'd have been rather unhappy that, except for a few statues, King Kong himself only makes a brief appearance in the endgame sequence. To get to the end, you have to collect clues, solve inventory puzzles, and win at least 15 boss battles to finally find Lady Kong and lure her with some fruit. You bring her to a helicopter pad and radio the helicopter for the winning sequence. (All screen shots after this point are from YouTube videos, not my own experience.)

        

The few moments in which you lead Lady Kong are the only time a Kong appears in-game.

     

If you reach the end having taken fewer than 365 game days and used less than 33 lives, you get the "good" ending in which Lady Kong's transfusion saves King Kong's life, and both Kongs are returned to Golneo to romp around with their new baby. (This ending is quite a bit rosier than the film's.) If you met the deadline but used more than 33 lives, you get the same basic ending but with no mention of Baby Kong. If you used more than 365 days, you return from your adventures to find that King Kong has died.

         

If you take too long.

A shot from the "good" ending.

     

If I played this one honestly, there's no doubt that I would use more than 365 days and more than 33 lives. But then, I'm not great at action games, which is why I play RPGs instead, which this isn't, which is why you got a BRIEF.