Donkey Kong Country Returns

Otherwise, however, it's all familiar stuff. Diddy Kong accompanies Donkey on his adventures, skipping and jumping around behind him. Levels are littered with bananas to collect and checkpoint balloons to grab before they float out of reach. Look harder and you'll find hidden goodies, such as gold coins and K-O-N-G tokens. Plenty to keep people who should probably be reading Ulysses busy.

The other good news for serious DKC fans is that the difficulty level doesn't appear to have been lowered just because this is a Wii game. Enemies are plentiful, fast-moving and varied. There are lots of falling blocks and deadly spikes to look out for. Even in this opening level, there are sections where moving enemies and environmental hazards combine to make staying alive a properly tricky prospect.

You might need some help, then, which is where DKCR's two-player mode comes in. As you might expect, one player controls Diddy while the other controls Donkey. On dying you respawn in a floating barrel which your partner must jump into to release you. There are sections where you have to work together to progress - for example, Donkey must bash a platform into the ground to make the one Diddy's standing on pop up, which sends him soaring over an obstacle.

Pressing the B button will make him jump on Donkey's back. Then whoever's controlling Diddy can flick the remote to make him lob projectiles at enemies, while the other player takes care of negotiating jumps and hazards. The chap manning the demo pod explains that Diddy also has a jetpack which can be used to make both him and Donkey fly through the air for a short time.

However, I don't get to try this myself. Turns out the VIP area of Nintendo's booth is just as crowded as the rest of it. There's only time for a quick run through of Jungle Hijinx and a brief trial of the two-player mode before I'm booted off so someone more important can have a go, someone who's probably more interested in the potential market value of resurrected intellectual properties in the run-up to the lucrative holiday sales period than whether you can ride the frog.