Ditty Kong Adventures

In summer of 2009, I lived in an apartment in Ohio with my parents and sister. I worked at a grocery store in the deli department and had recently dropped out of college for the second time. I was paying my bills as they came up, so on and so forth. When I got the chance, I’d accompany my family on Saturday mornings as they went to yard sales in the area. Sometimes we’d find things to buy, sometimes not.

I should mention at this point whilst I had some video games and consoles – a Nintendo 64 and a handheld or two – I wasn’t a serious collector yet. The idea hadn’t occurred to me at the time. I’d sometimes play my games, like Pokémon Snap or Dragon Ball Z: Buu’s Fury, but it wasn’t a frequent thing. I was pretty far out of the loop on the latest and greatest in gaming, though I still loved the older consoles, such as the SNES, Sega Genesis and Atari 2600. I’d only heard of the ColecoVision when it was mentioned in an episode of Family Guy but had never laid eyes on one.

Imagine my complete surprise when, one Saturday morning, my family happened upon a small cluster of yard sales and one had almost nothing but video games and consoles for sale. I believe the guy was selling off his collection to go on a mission trip or raise money for a developing country; details are fuzzy on that. Regardless, this guy was a serious collector who knew his stuff and answered every question I’d had about the games and consoles.

Naturally, my eyes fell upon the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis that were for sale, though I also saw a Virtual Boy and, to my shock, a ColecoVision. I’m sure there were other consoles, but those four had caught my attention. I didn’t have much money at the time and cursed my bad luck. I really wanted to buy everything there – can you imagine how cool it would be to have a freaking Virtual Boy?! – but with very little money, that was impossible. Instead, I settled for the two consoles I wanted more than anything: Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

I didn’t have enough money for both of them, so I begged and pleaded with my mom (who’d stayed in the car with my dad) to loan me some money to pay for them. There was no way I could decide between the two, and I certainly wasn’t going to walk away from this thing empty-handed. My mom reluctantly gave me enough money to help cover the cost for both, and I rushed back to the yard sale with money in hand. Er, pocket.

The guy was very friendly and even let me pick two games for each console to add into the bundle for free. I was so excited and happy, and eagerly looked over the game selection. I don’t recall which games I chose for the Genesis – I remember one was a space shooter I got for my sister, but she displayed zero interest in it – but the two chosen for the SNES have always stayed in my mind. The first one was Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I was told it was a hard-to-find Final Fantasy game for the Super Nintendo, and was a different, but fun entry in the series. As a fan of both Final Fantasy and RPGs (and JRPGs), I knew I had to have that one.

The second game was one I’d never heard of before, and, well…

The guy told me he couldn’t remember which game it was, only that it was a Donkey Kong game. The label was obviously gone, so he’d written the name of the game on the cartridge with a Sharpie marker. I only really knew of Donkey Kong Country, so I was intrigued and decided to get it as well. What kind of game was “Ditty Kong Adventures”? I had to find out.

After returning home later with the consoles and games, I hooked up the SNES and tried out Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. It was fun and certainly different from other RPGs I’d played before (usually Pokémon), but I was mostly concerned with ensuring the game and console worked. Next up was Ditty Kong Adventures; I was dying to know what kind of game it was and how it pertained to the Donkey Kong franchise.

I popped in the cartridge, turned on the console…

And was greeted with the title screen for Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest.

I was quite surprised to see the game’s title was vastly different from the title written on the grey cartridge, though I thought it was a nice stroke of luck to have the sequel to the well-known and well-loved Donkey Kong Country. I wouldn’t obtain that cartridge for several years to come, but it was great having the sequel game. I played through the game for a bit, then turned it off and kept the game and console.

Some years later, the SNES stopped working (I’d already sold my Genesis to a co-worker, though I later bought another one), so I replaced it with one I’d found on eBay. I kept all my games, of course, and tried to store and display them the best I could. The number of games slowly grew, I’d play them on occasion, etc.

In 2017, I’d obtained a small media shelf to store my then-tiny collection of games and found a spot to display my SNES games. I looked at my Ditty Kong Adventures cartridge and knew it needed an upgrade, badly. I recalled seeing reproduction labels for certain cartridge games on eBay and was certain I’d find one for this game easily. Within a week or so, I had the repro label in hand and was ready to get to work.

First, I cleaned off all the Sharpie marker letters and that weird white spot, along with the tiny remaining fragments of the original label.

After the cartridge had dried, I carefully added the repro label to make it look as nice and neat as possible.

I know in retrospect, I could have left the cartridge as is and it would’ve been an interesting conversation piece, but I’d really wanted it to look like the actual game – it gets rather tiring to me seeing the hand-written “Ditty Kong Adventures” and the strange white spot on the front – and cleaning the cartridge really helped it look much better. Personally, whilst it’s fun to recall the origin of my Donkey Kong Country 2 cartridge, I prefer it with the repro label, and it looks a lot nicer in my SNES collection.

Pokémon Black & White

I’m a big fan of Pokémon. I’ve been a fan since 8 September 1998, at the age of fifteen, when the English dub of the anime first aired on television. I normally watched Fox Kids at six in the morning during the week for the daily episodes of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. I had an old black and white TV my parents gave to me as a hand-me-down of sorts; this was the type where one had to turn on the TV and let it warm up for several minutes before a picture appeared. During this time, I would start preparations for breakfast, which included emptying the ice trays into the bucket in the freezer and refilling the trays with water, then I’d get the water and coffee grounds for the coffeemaker and start the machine. The coffee was only for my parents, of course.

On this particular day in ’98, when I returned to my room, I was astonished to not see Sonic, but rather the intro of some bizarre cartoon I’d never seen before. I watched, confused. What the heck was a “poh-keh-mahn”? Who was that kid – Ash, was it? – who wanted to become a Pokémon master? What’s a Pokémon “master”, anyway? And what in the world was that rodent who acted like a giant mouse with an attitude (and electricity)? I kept watching, of course, and by the end of the episode, I was in tears and a huge fan. I watched every episode, tried to doodle Ash and Pikachu; when the cards came out (and I worked a job more than a year later), I bought packs of cards and marvelled at the artwork, I talked about Pokémon all the time, on and on.

I was hooked.

There was talk about video games but psh, who had the money for a Game Boy, much less the games themselves? No one I knew had either one… no one had the cards either, really. I was the only one in my tiny cluster of school-only friends who loved Pokémon. But it was okay, I was used to being the only fan of something like this; a handful of years prior to this, I’d been totally obsessed with Toy Story (yes, the first movie), and absolutely no one I knew was as big a fan as I was. I’m not sure I knew anyone who’d even seen the movie, though it’s possible they had but didn’t want to admit it.

The first Pokémon game I ever bought – forget about my parents buying me this stuff, are you mad? – was Pokémon Yellow in 2002. When I was nineteen years old. I’d purchased a Game Boy Pocket to go with it and played and played that game like crazy. I was dumb enough to sell it some time later, but in 2004 or so, I’d bought another copy to play on my Game Boy Colour. Oddly enough, it didn’t come with a label, only the words “Pokemon Yellow” (without the accent) written in red Sharpie.

At the time, I’d printed out a picture of the title screen of the game and literally taped it to the cartridge. Left it that way for more than a decade, too. As you can see from the above photos, in 2018 I finally bought a reproduction label, removed the printout and tape, cleaned the marker off and put the label on. It looks much, much better now.

Over the years, my interest in Pokémon has come and gone, but around 2007, I was into it again big-time. I absolutely loved the Diamond, Pearl and Platinum games and the anime based on it; Dawn was my favourite character by far and admittedly I became a huge Pearlshipper (the fan-created romantic relationship between Ash and Dawn), I drew lots of fanart, et cetera. My interest in the anime finally ended for good around 2009, and I intentionally stayed out of the loop on the storyline and characters. It just got too repetitive and dull for me. However, I still loved the franchise, and I was extremely excited for the latest entries in the video game series: Pokémon Black and Pokémon White for Nintendo DS.

These games were released in Japan in September 2010, nearly six months before we would get them Stateside. As each character and Pokémon were revealed in the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, I’d attempt to draw fanart of each one. I’m aware of my inability to prove it now, but at least in terms of Deviantart, I was the first one to draw fanart of many of the Unova Pokémon, including Sandile, Munna, Pidove and Darmantian. I absolutely loved the female trainer, Hilda/White, and had made a fan club for her on Deviantart before her name was ever revealed. I also drew lots of fanart of her in various poses, using a pose reference website so I could have an excuse to keep drawing her. I memorised the Japanese names of each Pokémon and human characters, and I recall my disgust at the absurd number of puns used for the English names once they were revealed. When the game released in Japan, I downloaded a ROM of both games to play on my computer. I couldn’t read a thing, of course, but I was familiar with the game’s interface and basic method of play that it didn’t make much difference. Any Pokémon I caught was given a nickname of their Japanese name, written in Romaji so I could tell which one was which.

I was absolutely obsessed with these games, and with good reason. Although they were on the DS, the graphics were a step up from Diamond, Pearl and Platinum. There was a much better 3-D feel to the game, with rotation and scaling in various parts of the game; the Pokémon sprites were animated nicely, with continual movement throughout the entire battle; the scene – and some Pokémon – changed with the passing of seasons, which was a delight to see. It was a big improvement over Generation IV, showcasing what the DS was capable of before the 3DS came along.

North America got the games on 6 March 2011. I was living in Pennsylvania at the time and had recently started an early morning job at a department store, so I had some money. The idea of pre-ordering a game didn’t occur to me at the time, as I’d never bought a brand-new game on launch day. Even my copy of Pokémon Emerald, which I’d purchased new in 2005, wasn’t a day one buy.

So what did I do on launch day for Pokémon Black and Pokémon White?

I drove with my mom to Toys R Us in the next town over and stood in line roughly ten minutes before the store opened. When the doors opened, I walked with the others to the video game section and bought both games. The line was thankfully short, and surprisingly, only one person had pre-ordered the game. Not only was I the only one who bought both games, I was also the only AFAB (assigned female at birth) person. In 2011. I was surprised but kept that surprise to myself as I paid for both games – even got a little freebie, not in the picture below, for the purchase – and returned to my car. I was so, so excited to finally have the games in English and could play them without the aid of my computer.

The first chance I got, I tore into my Pokémon Black game and started playing it, grateful for the ability to read the text and have a better understanding of the game’s story. I poured a lot of hours into the game, having an absolute blast with it. When I got the ticket in-game to catch Victini, I was ecstatic and spent at least twenty minutes listening to the awesome battle music whilst trying and trying and trying to catch it. I eventually succeeded and it became a key figure in my party. I loved guiding the female trainer, who I named White in my copy of Pokémon Black, through each town and marvelling at the sights and sounds whilst catching all the Unova Pokémon I could and level grinding my Pokémon. It was so much fun.

Years later, I was excited for the release of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y on 3DS, and later still, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon also on 3DS, but I don’t think I’d ever been as totally excited, completely obsessed, with any series of Pokémon games before or since Black and White. Currently, my interest in Pokémon has greatly declined, especially with the disappointment of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield – I feel like the only person who genuinely adhered to the boycott, and not because of “Dexit” – though my interest has started to grow a bit with the announcements of the Diamon and Pearl remakes, in addition to the Pokémon Legends: Arceus game. But it’s nice to look back with fondness on those days of my excitement and obsession with the Black and White games, and occasionally, I’ll pick up one of the games and pop it into my New 3DS XL (that I bought refurbished, ha) for a bit of fun times.