I am a terrible, wimpy gamer. At least, that's what Donkey Kong Country Returns convinced me of after stealing dozens of balloons (lives) away from my defeated ape. While my colleagues, James and JC, hinted at its difficulty during E3, they didn't detail how truly sadistic the level design is. James' conclusion that this is the return of old Donkey Kong Country was wrong -- this is Mega Man.

I also made the silly assumption that the mine cart level -- as they were in the past -- would be a breeze to get through. But, I was wrong. I started the level, doing just fine. The first long jump came as no problem, but then the deaths kept on accumulating: jumping for the letter K caused me to jump off the track to my doom, jumping over an enemy led me to a cliff, forgetting to duck while mid-air in a jump got me killed by spikes, jumping on top of an enemy got me killed by another pair of spikes, I didn't have enough momentum to make a short jump followed by a long jump, etc. etc. By the time I actually reached the end of the level, a Nintendo representative had to reset the demo, because I had managed to whittle down the dozens of lives down to... three?