Written by Jessica Klein
Sophomore year, I made a mistake. I spent the night with a friend who still owns her SNES (that’s a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, to those of you born in the ’90s). We spent the night playing “Super Mario World” and “Donkey Kong Country,” reclaiming our hand-eye coordination and mocking each other’s (my) lost expertise. That Christmas, I made another mistake. I asked for an SNES. When we returned in the spring, my friend wisely left her system at home, but I couldn’t resist and set mine up in my dorm room. Whomever I lived beside that semester, please accept my retroactive apology. I know it wasn’t polite to scream at my television at two in the morning. Video games do inexplicable things to people, including replacing studying during finals week. When I packed away my system at the end of the semester, I vowed never to be foolish enough to let it replace schoolwork again.Then last week I dropped a friend off at McAlister’s and felt an otherworldly pull to stop at Game Exchange. There I found my Holy Grail: “Donkey Kong Country 2,” the most superior of all SNES games. It would have been a disservice to all things good and nostalgic to walk away without it, and so I am back to (occasionally) ignoring what I ought to do in favor of questing after K. Rool. Shortly after, I discovered a compelling cheat code, and in deciding whether or not to use it, I realized that Donkey Kong has taught me a few things that extend far beyond the world of gaming.1.A good ponytail can save your life.You fell off your hot air balloon and are now plummeting towards some red-hot lava and a fiery death? Didn’t you know that your ponytail doubles as a helicopter? You do now, and you’re welcome.2.I am capable of incredible feats of patience and persistence.I will admit that there are levels that have taken me days to beat. There’s even one (“Bramble Scramble”) that I didn’t face for 10-plus years after being unable to conquer it as an 8-year-old. Nothing says frustration like beating a level after dozens of attempts only to die before reaching a save point, and nothing says perseverance like taking a deep breath, sliding that purple reset button and starting again.3.Cheating robs the satisfaction from victory.That code I mentioned (Y, A, Select, A, Down, Left, A, Down) gives you a 50-life head start, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it. Completion will not be the same as success, and if I use the code to finally finish this game, I’ll always know that I haven’t beaten it. Not really.4.Things are never quite as bad as they seem at the time.When I picked up that beautiful gray controller after more than a decade, I couldn’t wait to start. I then proceeded to “game over.” On level one. I thought I would never beat that first world. This year, I grabbed that same controller and sailed through it in under 20 minutes. Sometimes all you need is a little distance to realize that things weren’t always as difficult as they appeared.5.Pride really does come before the fall.You’re cruising along, reciting to yourself, “Down, up, down, down, up, up down,” internally gloating at your superior knowledge of Zinger flight patterns, when you make a careless jump for the next rope and slip into the abyss. Just as you fall into a practiced rhythm, you fail shamefully. You were so confident! You knew that level so well! Never lose sight of the reason you’re so familiar with this territory: You’ve fallen so many times in the attempt for victory that the paths are second nature to you now.6.Don’t squander your second chances.In “Donkey Kong,” you’re blessed with as many lives as you can collect, midway-point “save barrels,” the ability to accidentally kill off one of your simian friends with no consequence and the chance to bring that poor dead primate back from the dead with strategically placed “DK barrels.” You only truly have to begin again if you exhaust all these options. Somehow, I manage to do that regularly, most often through carelessness and lack of appreciation for all the chances I’ve been given. Many times, I’ve thrown away my last chance and lost my progress simply because I failed even to notice I had zero lives left.7.Know when to walk away.“DKC2” has one of the most notoriously frustrating levels in gaming history. At the moment, I’m inclined to believe it has the majority of the most notoriously frustrating levels in gaming history. But when I’ve “gamed over” four times in a row, it’s time to give it up. I know it’s tempting. I got so close last time! I could see the target when that jerk in the Kloak threw his evil wooden carton of death at my parrot! I could practically hear Dixie jamming on her guitar, headbanging in victory! Unfortunately, when you start to think thoughts like those, insanity is obviously setting in, and it is time to set down the controller and walk away. (Especially if you keep mashing the last button you pressed, hoping somehow it will save you as it should have.) Sometimes, turning off the console and learning to let go is the only way to ever return and conquer.
