A Look Into Video Games: Donkey Kong's Fun With Music

Donkey Kong's Fun With Music (Donkey Kong no Ongaku Asobi) was a game planned for the Famicom (Japanese NES) in 1983. It was cancelled before release however.

 The game apparently had two modes of play. The first was Music Quiz which was a two-player mode. Donkey Kong would play notes then Mario and Pauline would copy it.

The other was Donkey Band, but little is known. Most people thought it would be a free-style mode to compose music. I don't know, but despite the audio limitations it would have been a neat little title at the time. 

Ironically about 2 decades later, Nintendo gave Donkey Kong his own music series with the Donkey Konga games. Which feature great gameplay but a lousy music tracklist for the American release.

A Look Into Video Games: Chao

 Chao are a group of small creatures from the Sonic series. They generally are good, and were used as virtual pets in the Sonic Adventure games.

I missed out on the Dreamcast version, so I eventually played Sonic Adventure DX after Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Which was a bit weird on how Sega chose to re-release the two games. I had some fun, but the features on how to raise your Chao were gimp compared to the sequel.

 I had a lot of fun raising my chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on my Gamecube, and I'm not afraid to admit it. They could evolve, change color, hairstyles, and play around. Sure they didn't do much, but it was a neat idea for the time at least. I can't believe a game like Sonic Adventure had this but not something like a RPG.

 You even had a few world stages you could later unlock for your chao. From Heaven, to Earth, and to a Dark-setting with red "water"...yes water. 

You could also battle and race your Chao. Which was a fun time-waster but got boring a little quick. 

What was really cool is that in both versions, you could transfer your Chao into a more portable world. 

Dreamcast owners got a few quests on their VMUs, though I never got a chance to play those. A few friends had nice things to say about them though. 

Gamecube owners could transfer their Chao to their select Sonic games on Gameboy Advance. I put some of mine in my copy of Sonic Advance 2. 

 I think my favorite Chao is the huge walker robot from the battle mode of the Gamecube version. It has a huge beautiful laser attack that I loved using.

My brother would always man the Dark-Chao walker to make it an equal match. Good times.

A Look Into Video Games: Dinosaur Planet

Dinosaur Planet was an unreleased game for the N64 which later was pushed to the Gamecube, and remade into the Starfox universe as Starfox Adventures. While the N64 version lacked Fox McCloud it did show some promise. 

It seemed to be Rare's answer to Zelda just as Banjo-Kazooie was their response to Super Mario 64.

Krystal was even a playable character, and no that intro to Adventures doesn't count.

While I rode the hype train for both Dinosaur Planet and the eventual Starfox Adventures, I was extremely disappointed with the final game. But it's still neat to see it's origin.