The last video to be made came out in the summer of 1999. It's just as well, because it was the worst one ever. I put 90 percent of the blame for this on the host.....

"NINTENDO'S coming at you with the HOT HOT new releases that are so HOT that all those 'other' guys will be begging OH PLEASE PLEASE NINTENDO SHARE WITH US YOUR AMAZING TITLES but no we have no mercy you can get these ONLY on the NINTENDO 64 and that is ONLY where they'll be because they are too HOT and their HOTNESS can only be contained on the one, the only, N64!!!!" That's not a direct quote, but you get the gist of it. Believe it or not, if I were to get you a direct quote, it would be something even worse. And probably even funnier, but getting an exact quote would mean putting the tape back in and having to listen to him again. You can't make me do it.
Before this hideous person began really selling N64 games, he pulled a surprise and turned the camera over to Dan Owsen and his online advice column. It really was unexpected to see Dan, and I had followed his column for a while. I had even sent him a letter once. Then a really angry letter when he didn't answer my first letter. THAT he responded to:

Hm, I don't know what kind of a response you are expecting so...

Yes.

DANO

As for what I originally asked....I think I'd forgotten by then.

I'll tell you why Dan's face was blurred next paragraph. I'm not entirely sure that letter is real because Dan hadn't given advice from a Nintendo tape before. The guy also asked where to find the Triforce in Ocarina of Time, which was what every dumb person was asking in 1999. Dan could have basically told them anything. And he did, once...there was one column where Dan "revealed" how to make Talon and Malon naked; through a 47-step, extremely lengthy series of tasks which were almost impossible and incredibly monotonous. After the column appeared, hundreds of angry players came back and demanded to know why it didn't work. True.

On to why Dan's face was blurred out. Two weeks after the video, Dan released another column. One person asked, "Hey, I tried your trick you mentioned on the tape, and destroying the Skull Kid only gave me 200 Rupees, not 500." Dan said, "Hmm, you know the real Dan would never give away a bogus code!" The next letter said "I don't think that was you on the tape," and Dan said "I don't know what you're talking about." But by the end of the page, he came clean and said that the person sitting there was indeed NOT him, and he wasn't there for the shooting. So they just used someone else, and blurred the face out. Dan's "clue" to the viewers was that he gave the show producers a semi-fake code to reveal. Dan was cool...supposedly he's still there, working for for Nintendo's online division, but I don't know if it's true.

Fake Dan: "All right, that's all. No more free codes for you. ...Unless I decide to reveal one for Star Wars Racer later in the videotape."
Evil Host: "OOOOHHHHH!! I guess that's what they call a...TEASERRRRRR!!!"

"ALL RIGHT are you ready AND I MEAN ARE YOU REALLY READY because it's time for JET FORCE GEMINI the ultra super duper amazing bug-shooting blasting FRENZY and it IS BY RARE that's right RARE the people behind GOLDENEYE 007 AND BANJO-KAZOOIE but are you REALLY READY this is by RARE here we go prepare to be BLOWN AWAY this is JET FORCE GEMINIIIIIII......."
I'll give this tape credit for the game footage--it was thorough, nice and not covered with weird reporters flying in the air or taking a dump. The only real problem was, when you're looking at real live footage, the ugly framerate of the game was a LOT more apparent that when you were looking at a picture. Remember Jet Force Gemini? Of course you don't...it was forgotten right after it was released. From what I've heard, it's not bad though.

Dan came back after the Gemini preview. He didn't have the Racer code, but he had something better: a letter that said:

DEARE DAN: PLEASE GIVE ME ALL THE CODES EVAR MADE FOR EVEY GAME THAT EVAR WAS, AND BRING ALL THEM TO MY HOUSE, AS I AM GROUNDED. P.S. YOUR EVEL"
---GAMEBOYBOB

Now THAT one couldn't be fake. He only gave the kid a Mario Golf tip, but something's better than nothing.

It's a Rare double-feature! The second game on the tape to be shown was Donkey Kong 64, the last DK game by Rare--and the most infamous. Many people don't like platformers where the only goal is to collect junk. DK64 not only embraced the idea, it married it and drowned you in its children. The game was very long, but very monotonous. You had to collect 75 bananas per level to earn a Banana Medal, complete 25 tasks per level(5 per character) to earn 25 Golden Bananas, retrieve 40 blueprints from 40 spiked punks to give to some weasel to get even more bananas, photograph 10 Banana Fairies to get bananas which you exchanged for bananas which you fed to a hippo for more bananas, which....I'm getting tired of typing.
Also notice the logo up there is different than what they ended up using. We can't have people thinking the game is called "Donkey Konc."

In the middle of the DK64 preview, the hyper host took some time out to reveal that there was something with Donkey Kong in it even worse than Donkey Kong 64, and it ran on what was then the "Fox Family Channel." And now it was getting its own movie--well, a video one. Every cartoon character has their own movie on video. The "Swan Princess" has three.

As for Donkey Kong's TV version being the "hippest ape of them all," I've included a picture so you can judge for yourself. The "Donkey Kong Country" TV series is well-known by many as the worst video-game-based show ever made. It was abomination to the great SNES sidescrollers, turning DK and Diddy into whiny weird losers and everyone else into the same. Worst yet, everybody sang. All the time, every 5 minutes. The DKC show was so bad, Rare denied any personal input into it and Nintendo Power Magazine didn't even mention the show's existence until someone wrote them in about it. When NP won't pretend you're good, you must be reaaaally bad.

Dan came back one last time and finally spilled out the "Racer" code--this screen was on for 5 seconds. Whoever was playing Dan did a pretty good job of being Dan--he was likely reading from a script.

And last but not least, the usual avalanche of "other N64 titles," among them Pokemon Snap and one where you have to dress in a moose costume and knock on people's doors(that one has the best graphics of any N64 game I've seen--I could swear that was PS2). If you have to choose a video for your date tonight that has Donkey Kong on it, make sure you go for the original 1994 DKC tape, not the 1999 DK64 one...and don't even think of touching the DKC video movie.

When this last tape came out, the DVD was gaining steam. The next year, there was no tape and two years later Nintendo started handing out DVDs instead. The DVDs aren't as interesting because they don't need to be connected by an annoying host or need any special gimmick--they just do what they're told to when you select the game you want to see. I guess the videos should have been done that plainly, but where would the fun be?

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OR, view the end of the legendary DKC video! (warning: 11.8 megs)