Donkey Kong Country came out 30 years ago this week, which apart from making me feel very old, made me go back and re-watch this video which Nintendo gave out on VHS to promote the game:
In America this VHS tape was given free to Nintendo Power subscribers. In the UK, if I remember correctly, it came free with a Football magazine and a friend at school got it that way and gave it to me. (It didn't come with Nintendo Magazine System as I brought that each month).
To state the obvious, this came out at a time when there was no internet to see game trailers and you only saw a game actually running if it got a commercial, appeared on Gamesmaster or your local gaming shops had them running on a Kiosk or demo unit. So to see footage of a game running before owning it felt special.
I was so hyped for this game that I must have watched this tape more then 50 times! The novelty of seeing the game in action added to that excitement, plus of course, the game looked incredible and fun so I couldn't wait to play it.
Weirdly, the tease of Killer Instinct at the end of this video was removed from the UK version and replaced with some commercials for the Gameboy, which featured a talking brain in a jar.