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News - Why bringing Donkey Kong 64 into the third dimension required a mental shift

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Why bringing Donkey Kong 64 into the third dimension required a mental shift

<div style="margin: 5px 5% 10px 5%;"><img src="https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/why-bringing-donkey-kong-64-into-the-third-dimension-required-a-mental-shift.jpg" width="200" height="200" title="" alt="" /></div><div><p><em>Donkey Kong 64</em> is about to turn 20, and to celebrate that marvelous but inevitable milestone, <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/making-of-donkey-kong-64/">GamesRadar&nbsp;had a sit down chat</a> with some of the creative leads behind the beloved&nbsp;platformer.</p>
<p>While the full interview contains plenty of tidbits and tales from day days gone by, it’s particularly&nbsp;interesting to hear how lead designer Mark Stevenson struggled to yank the franchise into the third dimension for the very first time.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Describing the process, Stevenson, who was working for developer&nbsp;Rare at the time, explained how “going 3D was a whole different ball game” back in the ’90s.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“The technology, at that point, was in its infancy,” he recalls. “From an art perspective, you couldn’t achieve anything visually comparable to the <em>Donkey Kong Country&nbsp;</em>games. It was an incredible challenge to produce 3D graphics, and building 3D models was really hard work —&nbsp;they only had a few hundred polygons but it was tough using the tools we had to manipulate them.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>Having largely&nbsp;worked on 2D titles until then, Stevenson was so used to designing characters from a fixed side-on view, that he struggled to break those habits when making the switch to 3D. It meant a lot of trial and error before he landed on the models players eventually saw in-game.&nbsp;</p>
<p>“As an artist who was on the <em>Donkey Kong Country&nbsp;</em>games, I used to build and animate the characters from a fixed side-on view,” continues Stevenson. “Being able to see this character from any angle, you’d make an animation, put it in the game, and you’d think it looked good side-on, but awful from every other angle.&nbsp;It was challenging from a technical and design perspective.”</p>
<p>For more game development anecdotes from yesteryear, be sure to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/making-of-donkey-kong-64/">check out the full interview on GamesRadar</a>. It’s well worth a read.</p>
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https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2020/10/...tal-shift/
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