The 99% Completion Rate

February 6th, 2008

dkc completition rate

Just recently my brother and I finished the original Donkey Kong Country on the SNES for the third or fourth time. We figured that unlike our previous play throughs when we were kids that we’d try to 100% complete the game. This is something that if possible I try to do for all of my games; 100% finish it, cross it off the list, shelve it.

On last run through we clocked up roughly a 78% completion rate. No troubles, we were all to happy to finish every level again for the 3rd or 4th time so that we can chalk this one up at 100%.

Now in order to finish the original DKC you need to find all of the hidden Bonus Barrels in each stage. So we tried again, this time on the look out for those bonus barrels. On the second run thru we finished up with a 92% completion rate. Good but still not 100% so after so quarreling we decided to run through DKC for a third time but this time with guide in hand.

About now I should probably note that unlike the other Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Land games the original game never told you if you had collected all bonuses per each level. There was no exclamation mark or DK logo to help you. So there was no way on knowing which stages we hadn’t found the Bonus barrels in.

So with guide in hand we set out to shelve this game for good. So we followed the guide and went through every level again, occasionally finding the cheaply hidden barrel down a slightly obscured pitfall. Once we hit the final level (actually the first level as we worked out way backwards) we unfortunately had the painful realization of a 99% completion rate.

The 99% Completion Rate

This hasn’t been the first time that I have been slammed with a not quite completed game file. I seem to be suffering the same curse with the Metroid Prime series:

Metroid Prime – 98%
Metroid Prime 2 – 99%
Metroid Prime 3- who knows?

What do You do About the 99% Completion Rate?

Usually when I run into this problem I don’t let that little 1% push me around, I just stick it on the shelve and cross it off the list. Sometimes I play through the game again but only if I had originally planned on doing so.

So what about you guys, what do you when this happens to you? Drop me a comment or vote in our site poll to let me know that you think?