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In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo R&D1 created Donkey Kong, an arcade title that introduced gamers to two of Nintendo’s most recognisable characters: Mario and Donkey Kong. To celebrate everyone’s favourite King Kong knock-off, I’m dedicating a few days this week to gaming’s most famous ape!

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Released: 23 September 2020
Originally Released: 21 November 1995
Developer: Nintendo
Original Developer: Rare
Also Available For: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

The Background:
After making a name for themselves Stateside with the financial and critical arcade classic Donkey Kong (Nintendo R&D1, 1981), Nintendo captured the home console market with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Largely supplanted by their moustachioed mascot, Super Mario, Donkey Kong gained a new lease of life thanks to legendary British developers Rare. Donkey Kong Country’s (Rare, 1994) revolutionary pre-rendered graphics pushed the SNES to its limits, saw a redesign of Donkey Kong Jr., and became the third-bestselling SNES game. Accompanied by universal praise, development of a sequel began shortly after Donkey Kong Country’s release and was purposely designed to be more challenging compared to its predecessor. Although it utilised the same pre-rendered graphics pioneered in the first game, Donkey Kong Country 2 was designed to be less linear and focus more on speed, leading to Diddy Kong taking the lead role. He was joined by a new character, Dixie Kong, who was designed to offer gameplay mechanics similar to those in the first game but different enough to be unique. Donkey Kong Country 2 was a massive hit upon release, one met by both critical acclaim and numerous awards. The game was seen as an overall improvement in every way and has been ported to both other platforms and Nintendo’s digital mediums, and inspired Retro Studios’ 2020 revival of the franchise.

The Plot:
When Donkey Kong is kidnapped by the vengeful King K. Rool, his nephew, Diddy Kong, teams up with his girlfriend to rescue him from the Kremling army.

Gameplay and Power-Ups:
Like its predecessor, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (a clever pun that took me years to pick up on) is a 2D, sidescrolling adventure brought to life using pre-rendered graphics converted into 2D sprites. This time around, Donkey Kong has been kidnapped, forcing you (and a friend, if you have one) to play as his nephew, Diddy Kong, or Diddy’s girlfriend, Dixie Kong, and traverse the Gangplank Galleon worlds to rescue him. You’re given three saves and three player options: either going it alone, tagging between the Kongs with -, playing two-player co-op or playing a “contest” mode against a friend. The control scheme should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s played the first game: you jump with B, attack with Y, grab your partner with A, and throw them with Y. Your Y attack differs depending on which Kong you’re playing as: Diddy performs a cartwheel to hit enemies in his path and add some momentum to his jump while Dixie twirls her ponytail, which lets her glide for a few seconds and thus makes her the better choice for clearing the game’s many gaps and bottomless pits. Your partner acts as your life bar; as long as you have a partner Kong, you can take at least one hit. You’ll need to smash DK barrels to reunite with your partner and collect bananas, KONG letters, and 1-Up balloons to earn 1-Ups. These can also be earned by spending Banana Coins to play Swanky Kong’s Bonus Bonanza mini game, and you’ll need a fair few lives as the game’s platforming and hazard placement can get pretty tough as you progress. Occasionally, you’ll find the odd invincibility barrel but there are no new power-ups included here. You can save your game at Wrinkly Kong’s Kong Kollege, where you can also spend Banana Coins to learn about various game mechanics, or abuse the Nintendo Switch’s rewind and save state feature to mitigate some of the game’s difficulty.

Whereas Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong controlled very differently in Donkey Kong Country, with one being slower, bigger, and more suited to attacking and the other being fast, nimble, and better suited for platforming, Diddy and Dixie are very similar here. Dixie’s better for crossing gaps, though, and since there’s a lot of platforming and tricky jumps you’re usually better off sticking with her. It’s a shame that Diddy Kong remains unchanged from the last game as there’s little incentive to play as him beyond giving yourself a greater challenge. The Kongs’ animal friends are back, once again freed from crates and opening additional exploration and attack options. Rambi charges through enemies and destructible walls, Enguard slices through water with a sleekness the Kongs can only dream of, and Squawks the parrot spits peanuts with Y. Not only can Rambi charge up a gore, Enguarde attacks with his needle-like nose, and Squawks flies with taps of B, they’re joined by two new animal buddies. Squitter the spider fires a web projectile with Y and creates temporary web platforms with B while Rattly the snake allows you to charge a big leap to reach higher areas. Many of the hidden mini game rooms are played with these companions, too, and multiple animals can be found in certain stages, allowing you to take different routes and acquire different collectibles. The Kongs can also hurl barrels, TNT barrels, cannonballs, and treasure chests, with the latter two activating cannons to bonus games and yielding collectibles, respectively. Your goal is the target at the end of each stage, with each set up to gift different rewards depending on when and how hard you hit the target, awarding you extra bananas, lives, coins, or a KONG letter. Giant DK Coins and Kremkoins are also hidden across the various worlds; the latter are spent at Klubba’s Kiosk to access a bonus world. You can also hire Funky Kong’s airplane to fast travel across the overworld, climb ropes, chains, and ride wind gusts and, of course, blast across the environment using various barrels.

Barrels either automatically shoot you or you must time your shot to reach an adjacent barrel, often with the risk of plummeting to your death or hitting spiked thorns. Pits, water, toxic gunk, and lava all spell instant death and can be difficult to avoid thanks to some gaps being frustrating to clear. Dixie helps with this, as does bouncing on enemies, but you’ll also want to utilise any animal companions to help squeeze through narrow gaps or around thorns. Some stages have you traveling from the right side of the screen to the left; others force you into a race or a timed challenge. You’ll see many of these in the many bonus rooms, which challenge you to defeat multiple enemies, collect bananas or stars, or reach the end goal after a short obstacle course to earn rewards. Many hazards and gimmicks seen in the first game return here: you’ll ride mine carts and high-speed rollercoasters (hitting lights to open gates and jumping to new tracks), swim through mazes of crates, avoid plenty of pits, and slip on icy ground. Vertical traversal is as prominent as horizontal, requiring you to hop and barrel blast up ship masts as often as you explore the submerged interiors. Sometimes, water, lava, and toxic gunk rises after you, creating a sense of panic as you desperately hop to platforms and climb higher. Others, the floor rises, creating a crushing hazard, or you’re forced to make pixel perfect jumps or fly through thorny mazes. Sometimes, you’ll need to jump on seals to freeze water or cool lava, giving you a short window to slide under enemies or swim to safety. Other times, you’re floating between Zingers, dodging cannonballs, jumping to poles and hooks, and making desperate leaps across chasms to progress. Your animal friends are invaluable in many of these situations but you’ll definitely want both Kongs on hand, especially in the endgame when tight corridors filled with spikes and obstacles make even the simplest movements hazardous.

Presentation:
Donkey Kong Country 2 doesn’t really look or play any better than the first game, in my opinion. I’ve never been a fan of the aesthetic of this franchise and it continues to be ugly, blurry and pixelated here. The sprites, especially, have some mess on them that looks sloppy at times, though I did like how animated and cartoonish the Kongs were. Diddy and Dixie celebrate when you hit the end goal, cry when thrown, juggle and loaf about when left idle, and it’s funny how their eyes comically bug out whenever they see bosses. Each has little exclamations for when they’re hit or victorious and they control pretty well, but they have large hit boxes and can be clunky to move around, making them easy targets for the equally large hit boxes of enemies and hazards. There’s no introduction cutscene this time and the title screen is as basic as you can get, but you can talk to a few more Kongs (including the returning Cranky Kong) for some lore, tips, and to break up the gameplay. The music is mostly the same as before; I recognised some of the tunes from the first game and it’s all very whimsical and enjoyable, if not very memorable. Gangplank Galleon is a more foreboding overworld than Donkey Kong Country’s, featuring lava, dungeons, and a frigid mountaintop. I liked that Pirate Panic starts you on King K. Rool’s pirate ship, essentially starting the game where the first one left off, and the pirate theme continues throughout in the enemy sprites and level layouts.

Typically, stages fall into a routine very quickly. You’ll either be hopping about on the deck of a ship, clambering about in the masts up top, or exploring the inside, with these areas being flooded, riddled with lava, or beset by wind and rain. Wind is a particularly dangerous element as, while you can ride updrafts to new areas and it boosts your jump, it also pushes against you and can screw up your platforming. Caves, mines, and frozen mountaintops also appear, with some being remixed into the pirate-themed stages. While the mine cart stages are disappointingly bland, the game makes up for it with Krazy Kremland’s fairground and rollercoaster, where you’ll see fireworks and rides in the background. Stages like Jungle Jinx and Mudhole Marsh can be difficult thanks to the dense forest and contrasting colours, which swallow up the sprites and make for some muddy, ugly visuals. I liked stages set in the beehives, with their sticky nectar offering new platforming challenges, and those like Gloomy Gulch that adopted the haunted forest trope and the scorching volcano aesthetic of Crocodile Cauldron. However, any stages that incorporate the thick, maze-like mess of thorns and brambles can go die in a ditch. By the time you reach Toxic Tower, you’re avoiding toxic gunk in a suitably medieval dungeon before boarding King K. Rool’s steampunk-like airship, The Flying Krock. Gangplank Galleon features many paths, shortcuts, new worlds, and required stages, though it can be clunky to navigate. Also, while Donkey Kong Country 2 performs well, I did notice some frustrating slowdown one I reached K. Rool’s Keep. The game struggled to render all the sprites and hazards, slowing the gameplay to a crawl, and the large hit boxes became aggravating thanks to the sadistic enemy and obstacle placements of the game’s latter stages.

Enemies and Bosses:
King K. Rool’s army is familiar but largely original here in Donkey Kong Country 2. His ships are infested with rats and little snapping crocodiles and seemingly every stage is populated by Zingers, spiked bees whose red variants can’t be killed and who act as much as hazards as they do enemies, flying back and forth, in circles, or in vertical formations that force you to squeeze by. His Kremlin army is still easily dispatched with a simply bop on the head or a barrel to the face, but they’re sporting some new designs. Some bounce in place or at you, larger Kremlins wield cannonball-firing blunderbusses or toss boomerang-like hooks, smaller ones patrol back and forth with cutlasses that have a shockingly large hit box, and others are large and muscular and become enraged (and harmful) when you hit them. The wacky (and somewhat familiar) Cat-O-9-Tails either hurt you or toss you across gaps (or into spikes) with their tentacle-like tails, vultures swoop from the skies, porcupines totter across the ground, and stingrays and voracious fish lurk in water. You’ll be chased by a skeletal pirate ghost while speeding across broken rollercoaster tracks, jump to temporary ropes that are actually snake-like ghosts, slide and jump out of the way of rope-climbing Kremlins, gain a mid-air boost from passing dragonflies, and get bashed about (usually down a pit) by barrel-wearing Kremlins. You’ll race against Screech, hop to Krocheads to clear bodies of water or swampland, hop to Kannon’s barrels to achieve the same goal, tip over Click-Clack beetles to attack their underbelly, and encounter rotund sorcerer-type enemies who toss barrels and suicidal Kremlins at you.

Each of Donkey Kong Country 2’s worlds end with a boss battle, though you’re awarded a Kremkoin rather than a giant banana this time around. Each boss has at least two phases, no life bar, and rarely a DK barrel to restore your partner if you’re hit, and they’re all essentially invulnerable until a barrel spawns for you to throw. Your first boss is Krow, a large, pirate-themed crow fought up in a crow’s nest (…get it?) Krow dives at you and launches giant egg from his nest. You must hop on this egg and toss it at Krow to deal damage, which eventually sends Krow into such a frenzy that he causes eggs to erratically rain down, making it trickier to score the final two hits. Kleever, a sentient sword, hides in lava for the first phase and tosses fireballs you must dodge. Eventually, a cannonball drops which you must throw at Kleever, then you must use the hooks to cross the lava pool and repeat. In the second phase, Kleever emerges from the lava and flies about, swiping and chasing you as you hop to the many hooks scattered around, tossing cannonballs to finish it whenever you get a chance. Kudgel, a roided-up Kremlin wielding a massive club, leaps offscreen and stuns you when he lands if you’re standing on the ground. He also swings his club like a baseball bat, after which a TNT barrel drops in. Toss this at him enough times and he’ll start pouncing at you, forcing you to run or cartwheel under him and making timing your throws a tad more difficult. King Zing is fought in a sticky beehive after previously chasing the player (on Rambi) in Rambi Rumble. King Zing is unique in that you fight him as Squawks, fluttering around and spitting peanuts at his stinger (a difficult target to hit considering how small it is). After enough hits, King Zing fires a spread of stingers and splits into smaller, regular Zingers, all of which can be tricky to avoid with Squawks’ awkward controls and hit box.

Another giant crow stands as the game’s penultimate boss. Fundamentally, battling the spirit of Kreepy Krow is the same as battling Krow except this time you’re up in the masts and sails of a pirate ship and he sends his minions after you. You must avoid the ghosts and hit the living enemies to spawn a barrel to toss at Kreepy Krow, trying not to plummet to your doom or be hit by the giant bird’s swoop. In the second phase, more baddies fly at you and you must climb hooks and chains, dodging Kreepy Krow’s falling eggs, to finish the deadbeat off. When you finally confront King K. Rool in his stronghold, where he’s gleefully torturing Donkey Kong, the Kremlin captain flees to his airship and you’re forced to beat Screech in a race through dangerous thorns and brambles. With Donkey Kong held hostage aboard The Flying Krock, you battle King K. Rool and his gigantic blunderbuss in a three-stage fight. In the first phase, you must dodge his rocket-powered charge and toss his cannonballs back when he sucks you in for a clobber. After enough hits, he collapses and the game tricks you into thinking you’ve won, only for King K. Rool to rise again and add new attacks to his arsenal. He fires spiked balls that reduce your dodging and jumping area, blue shots that freeze you, red shots that slow you, and purple shots that screw up your controls. He also turns invisible and speeds up his shots which, alongside his large hit box and the lack of DK barrels, makes this the toughest boss fight in the game as it just keeps going on and the margin for error is very small. If you’re playing the Game Boy Advance version, you’ll also battle a final final, version exclusive boss, Kerozene. A titanic Kremlin, Kerozene attacks by slamming his fists and summoning two Kleevers. You must dispatch these with cannonballs and then chuck another at Kerozene’s face when he starts glowing. After ducking his fists, you must jump to them to avoid the plumes of fire he spawns, waiting for them to die down so you can retrieve your cannonball and continue your attack.

Additional Features:
Your save file tracks the collectibles you’ve obtained in your playthrough and Cranky Kong will comment on or criticise your progress once you complete the game. While KONG letters and Banana Coins are easy to spot, they’re not always easy to acquire. DK Coins are even more elusive, requiring skilled platforming and tricks to reach. Many are rewarded by finding and completing bonus stages or discovering hidden paths. These are fun distractions and offer bite-sized challenges, but it can be tedious and frustrating revisiting the stages to hunt these down. If you collect all seventy-five Kremkoins, you’ll not only collect everything the game has to offer but also pay off Klubba and access the Lost World, six additional stages that remix enemies and gimmicks from the main game and offer an even tougher challenge for hardcore players. The final of these, Krocodile Kore, offers another boss battle with King K. Rool that’s a reskin of the regular final boss, but made even tougher. As if that wasn’t enough, the Game Boy Advance version adds Golden Feathers to upgrade Expresso II’s stats in the version exclusive Expresso Racing mini game and Photographs to fill Wrinkly Kong’s scrapbook. Collecting everything sees Cranky commend your performance and places you higher on the pedestal in the final cutscene, but offers no other tangible unlocks.

The Summary:
There’s no doubt that Donkey Kong Country is a Nintendo classic. While I’m not the biggest fan of its visual style or clunky gameplay mechanics, it was an impressive title that breathed new life into the cantankerous ape and showcased the power of the Super Nintendo. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest is more of the same, which you might think means it’s just as good if not better, but there’s something decidedly off about the execution. The absence of Donkey Kong hurts the game as there’s just not enough visual or gameplay difference between Diddy and Dixie Kong. If Diddy gained some new, tangible gameplay mechanic beyond just being a bit faster, maybe I’d appreciate the game more. Like, maybe Diddy could toss barrels but Dixie couldn’t; or if Diddy’s jumps were shorter to emphasise Dixie’s helicopter mechanic more. Instead, they’re so similar that you may as well stick to Dixie since you need her to clear gaps. The animal friends were fun, as ever, and the new additions added some unique aspects to the game, but I would’ve liked to see them incorporated more. The developers almost did this by giving Squawks race sections and a boss battle, but it would’ve been nice to see the other animal get this luxury, too. There is a load more collectibles this time around, which adds some nice replay value, but many are so difficult to reach and you don’t get anything substantial for finding them all so it’s barely worth your effort unless you want to punish yourself with the more difficult Lost World stages. I liked that the bosses were a bit more diverse this time, but I would’ve liked to see more variety in the environments. Everything feels like a carbon copy of the first game, just with the difficulty cheaply ramped up and very few new mechanics to make this an improvement on the original. It’s a shame as there was a fair but to like here, but the janky hit boxes, aggravating difficulty spike, and lack of originality mean Donkey Kong Country 2 feels like an inferior and less enjoyable retread of the first game to me.

My Rating:

Pretty Good

What did you think to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest? Was it part of your SNES library back in the day? What did you think to Dixie Kong and the new animal friends? Which of the boss battles was your favourite? Did you find all of the game’s secrets and bonus rooms? Did you struggle with the dramatic difficulty spike? Which of the Donkey Kong Country games is your favourite and why? How are you celebrating Donkey Kong’s anniversary this year? Whatever your thoughts on Donkey Kong Country 2, leave them below, support me on Ko-Fi, and go check out my other Donkey Kong content.

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In 1981, Shigeru Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo R&D1 created Donkey Kong, an arcade title that was not only one of the earliest examples of the platform genre but also introduced gamers everywhere to two of Nintendo’s most recognisable characters: Mario and Donkey Kong. Mario, of course, shot to super stardom but today’s a day to celebrate everyone’s favourite King Kong knock-off and to say: Happy birthday, Donkey Kong!

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Released: 15 July 2020
Originally Released: 18 November 1994
Developer: Nintendo
Original Developer: Rare
Also Available For: Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), SNES Classic Edition

The Background:
After establishing themselves in the United States with the financial and critical success of Donkey Kong (Nintendo R&D1, 1981), Nintendo then captured the home console market with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and their moustachioed mascot, Super Mario. Although Donkey Kong wasn’t completely forgotten during this time, featuring in sequels and spin-offs during the NES’s lifecycle, it was legendary British developers Rare who breathed new life into the cantankerous ape with their Donkey Kong Country series (Rare, 1994 to 1996) that pushed the SNES hardware to its limits with their revolutionary pre-rendered graphics. Rare impressed Nintendo back in the day with their ability to reverse-engineering the NES and publishing over sixty titles for the console, and by utilising Nintendo 64 workstations to produce SNES titles. Wishing to compete with SEGA’s Aladdin (Virgin Games USA, 1993), and seeing the long-dormant Donkey Kong franchise as low risk, Nintendo handed the character to Rare and they assembled a team of twelve developers (their biggest yet) to develop the title. Inspired by the level design of Super Mario Bros. 3 (Nintendo R&D4, 1988), Rare sought to make the game’s levels short bursts of challenging fun that tailoured to a player’s increasing skill level. Kevin Bayliss redesigned Donkey Kong to be more muscular and cartoonish to aid with animation and Rare were given license to completely redesign Donkey Kong Jr. into a brand-new character, Diddy Kong, to act as DK’s physical opposite. Donkey Kong Country was one of the first videogames to utilise pre-rendered 3D graphics; their computers ran night and day to decompile the 3D models into traditional 2D sprites and, although physically taxing for the team, the result was the third-bestselling game on the SNES. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with the game seen as a significant benchmark in the presentation of videogames; the visuals and soundtrack have stood the test of time and the game is still heralded as a classic. Donkey Kong Country re-established the popularity of the brand was followed by a couple of equally well-regarded sequels but has only been sporadically released on other hardware due to legal issues. Thankfully, it was later included in the SNES Classic Edition and to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers in 2020 and developers Retro Studios made the franchise relevant again with their 2.5D rebranding of this influential title.

The Plot:
When the greedy King K. Rool steals his beloved banana hoard, Donkey Kong and his nephew, Diddy Kong, set out to recover them from the king’s Kremling army.

Gameplay:
Donkey Kong Country is a 2D, sidescrolling action/platformer that, thanks to the benefit of its pre-rendered sprites and backgrounds, takes on a bit of a 2.5D aesthetic at times. Players take control of the titular ape, now reimagined as a tie-wearing, banana-obsessed scamp more likely to bop on a lizard’s head than toss a barrel at a plumber, but the game does support two players and offers two characters to control. You can go it alone, tagging between the brutish Donkey Kong and his nimbler nephew Diddy Kong with the A button, or play with a friend in simultaneous co-op not unlike Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), or take it in turns to clear levels in a competitive contest mode. Both Donkey and Diddy Kong share many of the same abilities but are physically distinct in a number of ways: B allows your Kong to jump, Y sees Donkey roll into enemies and Diddy cartwheel into them and also allows both Kongs to pick up and throw a variety of barrels. Donkey Kong is slower, a far larger target, and has a bit of a stunted jump compared to his more agile nephew, though he can slap the ground by pressing down and Y, but you’ll probably want to switch to Diddy to make getting past larger obstacles a little easier or have more control when making jumps. Both Kongs can also squeeze through small gaps and act as the game’s health system; if you have both Kongs onscreen, a hit from an enemy or obstacle won’t kill you, but it will send your partner running off, though you can call them back by finding and tossing one of the many DK barrels scattered across the game’s environments.

For the most part, Donkey Kong Country has you hopping across gaps (often with the aid of swinging ropes), bopping on enemies and collecting bananas. It’s not long before you’re jumping into barrels to clear greater distances and progress forwards; some of these rotate or move side to side and up and down, some automatically fire you and some are activated by a button press, with timing being key to avoiding a fall down a bottomless pit or damage from a spiky Zinger. Platforming quickly becomes trickier as the game progresses, with gaps becoming longer, requiring a roll or cartwheel into a jump for a longer jump, slanted platforms and greater hazards all testing your reaction times. Some stages require you to jump at special Stop & Go barrels to briefly light up the area or deactivate Rockkrocs so you can progress, others are set underwater and see you swimming about with no means of defending yourself unless you find one of the Kongs’ many animal friends, Enguarde. One of the most prominent stage designs are those set in the mines where you’re stuck in a runaway mine cart and must make split second decisions to jump over gaps, hazards, and from mine cart to mine cart to progress, which can be difficult with the low lighting and oncoming enemies. Level hazards soon play their part in the platforming as well, with snowy stages robbing you of your traction, Gnawties trying to crush you in giant wooden wheels, and flaming oil drums not only spitting out an endless supply of baddies but also charbroiling you when you hop to them as temporary platforms. As if falling and moving platforms didn’t make things difficult enough, there’s also a time where you’re forced to jump from a moving conveyor belt to grab fuel drums; you can’t afford to miss a single one or else your platform will fall and won’t come back so you need to make quick decisions about when to jump.

The game features forty levels, all accessed via a word map; between levels, you’ll automatically progress onwards into new areas, including jungles, rainforests, temples, mines, and caverns, and interact with the Kongs’ allies. Funky Kong allows you to fast travel across the island once you’ve visited at least two areas, Cranky Kong offers fourth-wall breaking advice that comes across more like bitter criticism, and Candy Kong allows you to save your progress (though you can obviously create a save state at any time using the Nintendo Switch’s menu options). The Kongs are also aided by allies within levels as well; they can ride Rambi, Enguarde, Expresso, and Winky to bash through enemies, charge through water, temporarily fly, and spring up even higher, respectively, while Squawks will light your way with a useful lantern. These buddies also act as another hit point and, if you’re hit or jump off them, you can often hop back onto them as they run around the environment, and you can use their abilities to find secret areas in each level. These lead to hordes of more bananas, balloons, or K-O-N-G letters. Collecting a hundred bananas, all four K-O-N-G letters, or a balloon awards an extra life and you’ll be stockpiling a fair amount of these without even trying, but you’ll also find golden buddy statues that will take you to bonus games where you control that animal and must collect as many bananas as possible within a time limit. This all adds to your completion percentage and injects a little gameplay variety to the title, but also encourages exploration as sometimes bananas floating just out of the way indicate a hidden barrel or tossing an explosive barrel at a wall will open up a new bonus area.

Graphics and Sound:  
If I’m being brutally honest, I never really thought too much of Donkey Kong Country’s visual presentation; even as a kid, seeing these pre-rendered 3D models pixelated down to 2D sprites looked a little messy and not quite as crisp as other 2D platformers of the time. However, having said that, I rarely had the chance to be hands-on with the game as a kid, or in the years since, so this is my first time actually playing it from start to finish and the visuals work really well when in motion. Donkey and Diddy Kong are full of life and personality, sporting idle animations and having distinctive movements and quirks when performing the same or similar moves. Their enemies are equally charming, sporting that exaggerated anthropomorphic quirkiness that Rare did so well back in the day, though their animations are noticeably less varied than the two protagonists. One thing I did enjoy was how clean the screen is; the heads-up display is absent until it’s actually required (appearing when you grab pick-ups or earn or lose a life), allowing you to really appreciate the variety of visuals on offer here. While you’re not going to see anything you’ve not seen in a hundred other platformers from Donkey Kong Country’s environments, the game presents them in a wholly unique way with its pre-rendered aesthetic. You’ll be swinging through jungles, jump to broken mine cart tracks in dank mines, and hopping to conveyer belts in a rusted factory all while some absolutely jamming tunes play throughout the game.

There are some opportunities for exploration and experimentation (try charging walls when on Rambi or jumping to bananas up above on Winky) and the game does a fairly decent job of recycling its level tropes with new hazards and such, like having Croctopi chase after you in later underwater sections rather than just spinning around or having you bounce on tyres on moving platforms to cross gaps and gain the extra height needed to avoiding enemies and obstacles. Even better, the game’s locations are bolstered by some environment effects; day turns to night, jungles are battered by thunder, lightning and rain, the frozen mountains become swamped by blizzards, and the mines and caves are seeped in low lighting. Often, there’s no lighting at all, with your sprites being the only things being visible onscreen until you free Squawks or activate a light-up barrel, and the use of lighting and foreground objects really helps to add to the tension when trying to avoid slipping off the edge of a platform and jump to another. Although the game is light on cutscenes, they story is effectively told using dialogue strings between the Kongs and their allies, though the focus here is very much on dropping you into the next action-orientated area to take on an ever-escalating challenge rather than trying to overcomplicate the simple plot. All you need to know is that the banana hoard has been stolen and Cranky is better than you.

Enemies and Bosses:
Donkey and Diddy Kong will face a number of King K. Rool’s most disposable pawns in their quest, from regular Kremlings like the Kritters to their more jumper variants, to voracious little crocodiles, sharks, and slippery snakes. Wasp-like Zingers will often be found hovering around in mid-air, usually surrounding a platform or a barrel you need to blast to; larger enemies will prove difficult for Diddy to take out without a barrel so you might want to switch to Donkey Kong if you’re having trouble, and orangutans will incessantly throw barrels at you in a fun call-back to the original Donkey Kong. Spiked wheels, hungry fish, and vultures will also cause a headache, especially the latter as you’re often asked to fire your Kong/s at a flock of vultures to bounce off them and reach out of the way platforms, which can be tricky to do as if you hold the directional pad for too long you could overshoot and if you don’t hold it long enough then you’ll undershoot.

Each area of Donkey Kong Country houses a boss battle; victory against one of King K. Rool’s elite earns the Kongs a large, Nintendo-branded banana and allows them to progress onwards to the next area but, while you’ll fight seven bosses in the game, only three of them are unique and the others are, disappointingly, reskins and repeats of each other. The first boss you’ll take on is Very Gnawty, a giant beaver who hops about in a cavern full of the Kongs’ bananas; with each hit he takes, his jumps get a little faster, but it doesn’t take much at all to put him down. It’s thus disappointing when this same boss is repeated for the fourth battle, even though Really Gnawty jumps much higher and is noticeably much more aggressive in his attack patterns. The second boss you’ll fight is the Master Necky, a huge vulture who pops his head in from the left or right side of the screen to spit bouncy coconuts at you; thankfully, there’s a tyre conveniently placed in the centre of the boss room that you can use to avoid his projectiles and hop onto his head. This boss is recycled for the penultimate boss battle as well; again, Master Necky Snr. might have a different colour palette and be a bit more aggressive, but he’s essentially the same boss battle, which I can’t help but be a little let down by considering how good the game is otherwise. Thankfully, Queen B. mixes things up a little bit; this gigantic Zinger flies around the arena in a specific pattern, immune to all attacks except a barrel to the face. However, she becomes temporarily invulnerable and hyper aggressive after each hit, so you’ll need to position yourself in the right place to avoid her erratic swoops.

Dumb Drum also stands out as a unique boss battle; a giant, sentient drum, this guy tries to crush you from above and spits out a number of enemies into the area that you’ll need to take out. You can’t damage Dumb Drum no matter how hard you try; you simply have to outlast it and it’ll take itself out from ramming the ground once too often. Finally, you’ll confront the Kongs’ mortal enemy, King K. Rool, onboard his pirate ship, which stands as the final area of the game. King K. Rool has two methods of attack; first, he’ll run from one side of the screen to the other and try to charge into you, then he stands on one side and tosses his crown at you as a projectile. When he does this, it leaves him vulnerable to attack so you can jump on his head and, after a few hits, he’ll fold like paper and the credits will roll. Well, the “kredits”, at least, and it turns out that this is a fake-out as King K. Rool pops back up for another round. This time, his charge is much faster, and he also causes bouncing cannonballs to rain down from above, which can be difficult to avoid unless you make use of Diddy’s smaller hit box. Otherwise, your strategy remains the same; jump over him, avoid his projectiles and hazards, and hop on his head until he’s done in for good and you get to enjoy the real credits sequence (and Cranky’s embittered criticism of your performance).

Power-Ups and Bonuses:
Your primary power-up in Donkey Kong Country will be those DK barrels; you’ll want to break these open every chance you get to have both Kongs at your disposal and stave off a death from your next hit but be sure to not accidentally break them if you don’t need them. Star-branded barrels acts as checkpoints and a number of other barrels (wooden, metal, and TNT ones) can be thrown as projectiles to take out one or a whole group of baddies in single throw. Otherwise, you’ll want to collect every banana you see and hunt down those K-O-N-G letters and red balloons to rack up some extra lives and keep an eye out for golden buddy statues or hidden rooms where you can earn more of them to access bonus stages. Finally, of course, there are the buddies themselves, with Enguarde being especially useful to making navigating those maze-like coral reefs that much easier.

Additional Features:
The ending you get (or, at least, the feedback you get from Cranky Kong) is directly tied to how many of the game’s secrets you uncover; this includes finding all of the K-O-N-G letters, hidden rooms, and bonus areas, all of which adds to the completion percentage seen on your save file. However, while you’re free to revisit and replay every level in the game and try to find every secret, it’s not actually necessary and you don’t get anything for it except for bragging rights. Thankfully, the Nintendo Switch Online version of the game allows you to make use of the save state and rewind features to make playing this game a breeze; now, if you make a mistake, you can just rewind or reload your game and try again, which is a God send in some of the game’s trickier sections.

The Summary:
It’s always exciting for me, a childhood SEGA boy, to finally play classic Nintendo titles. I’ve always had a fascination with the SNES and love to get my hands on the system’s most famous games whenever I can, and a full playthrough of Donkey Kong Country has been a long time coming for me. Despite my apprehension concerning the graphical style, the game holds up really well; environments pop through some fun and unexpected weather and lighting effects and Donkey and Diddy Kong never fail to impress when they’re onscreen, controlling and animating beautifully. Enemy and hazard placement becomes increasingly challenging, but not impossible, and I liked how many of the levels were short, sharp bursts of action that tested your reaction times. I can’t imagine playing the game on the original hardware without the aid of save states or the rewind feature, however, as I think it would’ve become quite frustrating quite quickly even though the game dishes out the extra lives like they’re going out of business. It’s a little disappointing that the game didn’t do more with its levels and bosses; repeating boss battles is always as much of a let down for me as a boss gauntlet, but I enjoyed the addition of ridable animal buddies, the hidden secrets and bonus rooms, and that trademark Rare humour that pushes you to find everything. In the end, I can see why Donkey Kong Country is so beloved; I’ve definitely played better 2D platformers but there’s so much more happening here than the unique visual style and it’s easily one of the best, basic platforming adventures of the 16-bit era.

My Rating:

Great Stuff

What did you think to Donkey Kong Country? Did you own the game for the SNES as a kid and, if so, were you surprised by Donkey Kong’s dramatic visual overhaul? Did you find all of the game’s secrets and bonus rooms? Which of the animal buddies was your favourite to control and did you favour Donkey or Diddy Kong when playing? Were you disappointed that the boss battles weren’t more diverse and what did you think to the fake-out ending? Which of the Donkey Kong Country games is your favourite and why? How are you celebrating Donkey Kong’s anniversary this year? Whatever your thoughts on Donkey Kong Country, leave them below or share them on my social media.