The Brilliance of Donkey Kong Country Part 1: The Revival of an Icon

2021 is the year of gaming anniversaries. Many of gaming's most popular and beloved franchises all celebrate major tentpole anniversaries in this one year alone, it’s kind of insane. Zelda and Dragon Quest both celebrate their 35th anniversary, Sonic the Hedgehog his 30th, Pokémon is turning 25 and Halo and Monkey Ball are both turning 20. All of these are major milestones, and each are celebrating them with new game releases, or re-releases in some cases, tie ins with other games, musical events and a wide variety of merchandise.

But there’s one anniversary that, at least at the time of this writing, has gone largely unnoticed and ignored, even by its own publisher, despite it being one their most important franchises. Donkey Kong, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Donkey Kong is a name that needs no introduction. Everyone has heard of Donkey Kong even if they’re the most casual of gamers. His original arcade game was one of the biggest smash hits of its generation, rivaling even the almighty Pac-Man. Donkey Kong is one of the most recognizable icons of the golden age of arcades, appearing on breakfast cereal, toys, t-shirts and even his own Saturday morning cartoon.

But this isn’t about the classic arcade game or it’s two sequels. No instead I want to talk about what introduced me to the big ape, Donkey Kong Country. The series that would establish him as one of the most successful franchises in Nintendo’s library and one of the greatest set of platforming games of all time.

So for Donkey Kong’s 40th anniversary, I'm going to look back on the Donkey Kong Country games and discuss why they aren’t just the best platformers of that generation, but also some of the best platformers of all-time. And we kick things off with the game that started it all, the original Donkey Kong Country.

Donkey Kong Country was developed by British developer Rareware, later simply known as Rare. Founded by brothers Tim and Chris Stamper, Rare got its start on the ZX Spectrum under the name Ultimate Play the Game. They found decent success on the platform, but with it only being popular in their home country they considered it a dead end for the company’s economic growth.

Then Rare got their hands on an imported gaming console, the Nintendo Famicom. Seeing potential in it, Rare got to work on reverse engineering the system to see how it worked. Despite Nintendo claiming such a feat was impossible, Rare actually pulled it off and were able to develop a few demos. Nintendo was so impressed by this they gave Rare an unlimited budget to make whatever they wanted.

The Famicom would later be released in the west as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, and Rare would be one of the systems most prolific developers. Developing over 60 games for a variety of publishers. Rare made bank with the NES, but outside of a handful of titles, most of their output at the time were not major critical successes.

So when the NES’s successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), came around, Rare decided to strip down and limit their output. This time focusing on quality over quantity. So Rare decided to take a major financial risk and purchased state of the art Silicon Graphics Workstations. The computers allowed Rare to render 3D models and they developed a way to compress these models into 2D sprites. Rare developed a small demo using this technology, a boxing game called Brute Force, which they then showed to Nintendo.

Nintendo loved what they saw so much that they purchased a minority stake in the company and tasked Rare with revitalizing one of their dormant franchises using the technology. Nintendo needed something to compete with the Aladdin game on Sega Genesis, which was impressing critics and audiences due to its impressive animation done by actual Disney animators. Something the SNES version didn’t have, but that’s a story for another day.

Rare chose to revive the Donkey Kong series, which had been dormant after the disappointing sales of Donkey Kong 3. Despite Nintendo being protective of its IP, they stayed out of Rare’s way during development. The only guy at Nintendo who had any hand during development was Donkey Kong’s original creator Shigeru Miyamoto who provided some design ideas. Other than that, this was entirely Rare’s project.

Rare decided to forgo the original arcade roots and made the game a platformer akin to the Mario games, wanting to provide a more modern take on the genre. They also redesigned Donkey Kong with a new sleeker design, the same one that’s still being used to this day. They also redesigned Donkey Kong Jr, but Nintendo didn’t like it and asked them to either redesign him closer to his original look or make him a completely new character. Rare took option no. 2 and thus, Diddy Kong was born.

Donkey Kong Country was developed by 12 people over the course of 18 months. At the time of its release, it had the most man hours ever put into a videogame, over 22 hours. Something lead designer Greg Mayles claimed in 2019 would be impossible in modern game development. I call bullshit on that, just look at Cyberpunk 2077’s development for God's sake.

Donkey Kong Country eventually released in November of 1994. Nintendo was determined to make this game a big hit, spending over $16 million in advertising for just the US alone. For reference, most big budget games marketing budgets at the time were around $5 million.

They went to town to promote the game. Probably the most infamous marketing for the game was the VHS tape sent out to subscribers of Nintendo Power. Most of these kinds of tapes are kind of charming in how bad they are, but this one is a unique breed of dated 90’s cringe.

But it all paid off in the end. Donkey Kong Country was a major financial success, selling 9.1 million units and going on to become the third bestselling game on the console. And it received praise from critics, citing its impressive graphics, music, and gameplay. If Nintendo wanted a game to compete with Aladdin, they got it.

Despite its status as a classic, some retrospective reviews have been a little more critical of the game. Calling the gameplay unoriginal and not as good as other platformers of its time. I completely disagree with that, but I suppose I should finally get into the game and explain why.

Alright, first things first, we need to talk about the big thing that helped this game standout back then the graphics. I mean, this is the one aspect of the game that even its hardcore detractors recognize and it’s not hard to see why. On a technical level, this game is a marvel. Keep in mind that a single of the game on the original SGI workstations took up an entire 32 Megabit SNES cart. The fact that Rare got this thing running without any external chips whatsoever, is the kind of technical wizardry not even Gandalf could pull off.

What’s even more amazing is how well it runs. Star Fox had to have an entire chip made to play it, and it chugs more than a frat boy on Amphetamines. Donkey Kong has no external chips whatsoever, and it runs at smooth 60 FPS throughout.

This thing is an amazing technical achievement. However, just because something is a great technical achievement, doesn’t mean it is a great artistic achievement. Technology ages, what was impressive 10-20 years ago isn’t going to be as impressive now.

A lot of pre-rendered games don’t understand that, most of them relied on the technology being impressive and not much else. As a result, many of them have aged incredibly poorly. Donkey Kong Country, thankfully, being one of the few exceptions. Rare knew that they had to rely more on the games technology in order to wow audiences. One of Rare’s co-founders Tim Stamper said that he wanted to make sure the game still looked good 2 decades after release.

Donkey Kong Country is not only strong in its technical aspects, but it also boasts a strong art direction with detailed levels, and excellent character animations. It’s the character animations that I think have helped this game age as well as it has. They have so much charm and personality. The way Donkey Kong beats his chest in his idle animation, or how Diddy Kong stomps his hat when he loses a bonus stage, or how Cranky Kong beats you with his cane, they give these characters a lot of, well, character.

It’s not just the main Kong characters either, even the enemies have a ton of personality to them. They feel like villains from a Saturday morning cartoon. They're so goofy I almost feel bad killing them. There's a reason why fans have been pining for the Kremling Crew to come back in more recent Donkey Kong games.

And then there’s the levels and environments. Donkey Kong Country has some of the most rich and detailed backgrounds in a platformer of its era. One interesting aspect with the game is how almost every platform is connected to the main level geometry. Aside from the occasional floating barrel, oil drum or arrow platform, everything you jump on is something you would find in that setting.

In the jungle levels for example, the upper level involves jumping across jungle trees. It helps make the levels feel like real places, at least as much as a Super Nintendo game is capable of doing. This is helped by the game using more subdued, borderline natural colours. Admittedly this was likely a limitation of the art style, most games with pre-rendered graphics have more subdued colours since it just works better for the style.

Add in some special effects like various weather effects and differing lighting, and this gives Donkey Kong Country something you don’t see a lot in 2D platformers, a sense of immersion. I know it sounds weird given this is an SNES era platformer but that’s kind of how they feel. When you’re running through the first level and you see the sun set only for it to be nighttime in the next, it’s hard not to be immersed in the game's world. Rare even made the HUD as minimalist as possible to help with this.

You know what else helps with this, the music. Composed mostly by David Wise, with some assistance from Eveline Fischer and Robin Beanland, Donkey Kong Country’s soundtrack is, simply put, a masterpiece. I know that term is overused, but I fully mean it here. How good is it? Well, it was one of the first videogame soundtracks to get a CD release, so there you go.

While each track is catchy and most have a strong melodic hook to them, it’s in the more atmospheric and ambient parts where the soundtrack truly shines. My favourite part of the opening jungle theme isn’t the big hook in the middle, it’s the slow build up in the beginning. The calming ambient sounds of the jungle mixed with the slow building percussion of bongo drums, slowly building up more and more until it slams you with the main melody.

Every track manages to perfectly capture the environment in which it’s played. The minimalist stylings of the Cave Dwellers Concert perfectly captures the feeling of exploring the dark unknown, Ice Cave Chant has the perfect wintery sound to it, the Fear Factory theme sounds cold and mechanical. But as good as those songs are, they all pale in comparison to the majesty that is Aquatic Ambience.

Hands down my favourite track in the game. Simultaneously haunting and beautiful at the same time, Aquatic Ambience captures the feeling of being underwater so well that I automatically hear it whenever I see an underwater setting in anything. It’s the greatest underwater theme in all of gaming. Sorry Dire Dire Docks, you’re still a close second though.

The whole soundtrack is a banger. It's got that perfect mix of strong melody and atmospherics. If it’s not the best soundtrack on the SNES, it’s at least in the top 5. By the way, do yourself a favour and look up the decompressed version of these tracks. They sound amazing.

The presentation in this game is phenomenal across the board. Even the story and writing is pretty good, by platformer standards anyway. The main story is simple, Donkey Kong is trying to get back his giant banana’s back from the greedy King K. Rool. A typical set up for a platformer, it’s not any more complicated than a Mario game, hell swap the bananas for a princess and it’s basically the exact same plot, but it is presented in a far more interesting way.

Right when the game starts your shot out of Donkey Kong’s house right next to a cave where he holds his Banana’s. Enter it and, BAM, no banana’s and you know exactly what you’re fighting for. I find this method of telling you the main goal more interesting than a basic text box. There's even a bit of environmental storytelling in the game.

The only location on Donkey Kong’s Island associated with the Kremling’s is Kremkroc Industries Inc, which is a rundown factory with broken lights, flaming oil drums and polluted lakes. This contrasts with the rest of the island which is made up of lush jungle, sparkling ice caves and ancient temples. You know things that invoke natural beauty. So when you get to the Kremling’s factory, you can tell how bad they are and why we need to stop them purely because of the level and world design.

One tiny detail I love is K. Rool’s pirate ship. At the beginning of the game, you can see it way off in the distance, but as you progress, it gradually gets closer and closer. It’s a little foreboding watching the big bad slowly make his way towards you. Gives you a good sense of what your end goal is.

Most of the story is told visually, but there is some dialogue when talking to the other Kong’s. It's good stuff and can be very funny, especially with Cranky Kong. This was another thing I loved about Rare’s games, they always had a great sense of humour.

But I think you get the point. The presentation is fantastic, but that was never in dispute. Even people who dislike the game will admit that the presentation is amazing. But what about the gameplay. You know the most important part of any game. Is this game, as its detractors say, an example of graphics over gameplay. Well in my opinion, no.

But if there’s one complaint that I will concede to, is that the game is rather simple. The game is a very traditional platformer, and there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s done well, and I think Donkey Kong Country is. Donkey Kong doesn’t have a very extensive move set, he can run, jump and has a roll attack. A standard move set for the time, but unlike Mario who had a vast array of power-ups to play with, or Sonic who had insane momentum that allowed you to blast through stages with enough skill, Donkey Kong keeps things rather basic.

That isn’t to say there aren’t any tricks to pull off. One of Donkey Kongs more unique techniques is the super jump, which is done by rolling off a ledge and then jumping. It's a fun move to pull off, it can make tricky jumps a lot easier making it a good move to master. And in keeping with his arcade roots, Donkey Kong can pick up and throw barrels at enemies.

But the simpler move set doesn’t really bother me. You can have the biggest move set in the world and none of that matters if the character isn’t fun to control. If I don’t enjoy the fundamentals of running and jumping, then no amount of excess moves and mechanics are going to make the game fun to play. I'm happy to report that Donkey Kong isn’t just fun to control, but that the game feel in Donkey Kong Country is some of the best in any platformer I’ve played.

It’s not an easy thing to describe, but the weight and bounciness of the controls makes the game satisfying to play. I like the Super Mario games, but Mario always felt a little too heavy for my liking. Donkey Kong feels a bit lighter, but never to the point where it feels floaty. They find the perfect middle ground where it isn’t too floaty or heavy, it's just the right amount of weight.

There is some slight automation with the controls. Whenever you roll into an enemy and come in contact with another enemy, the game will automatically continue the roll until there’s no enemies to roll into. It's immensely satisfying through a whole group of baddies in one clean roll. And that’s the way to describe how Donkey Kong controls, satisfying.

Ah but Donkey Kong isn’t the only character you control in this game. Joining the big ape is his little buddy, Diddy Kong. Diddy Kong sort of acts like an extra hit. Whenever one of the Kongs takes a hit, you lose that Kong and if the remaining Kong gets hit lose a life. The only way to get a Kong back is to find and break a DK barrel in the level. The DK barrels are never hidden though, they’re all in plain sight so it’s just a matter of getting to one in the level.

Both Kongs share the same basic move set, except Diddy does a cartwheel instead of a roll, it does the same thing it just looks different. Here's the thing though, Diddy and Donkey do play differently. Diddy is lighter and more agile so he can make trickier jumps a lot easier, but he struggles when dealing with larger enemies. Donkey is the opposite, he can deal with enemies no problem, but his heavier weight means jumping is slightly more difficult.

You can swap between Kongs with the press of a button. If you find a section where Diddy is more useful, just swap over to him and have at it. One big difference is that Donkey Kong has an exclusive move, a hand slap that can uncover secrets, but you’ll barely use it so it’s not too exciting.

Another difference is how the Kongs hold and throw barrels. Donkey Kong throws them overhead while Diddy throws them from his chest. What's interesting is that the barrel holding positions are consistent across all three Country games despite them all having a change in playable characters.

I like the dynamic between the two playable Kongs. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses with some sections being easier with a certain Kong. This is never to an extent where you need that Kong to get past that section, both can handle any situation it's just that they have an easier time with some sections and a harder time with others.

Control and game feel are both solid, but what about the level design. For the most part, Donkey Kong Country’s levels are very well constructed. Every level is straight forward, just get to the end while dodging the enemies and stage hazards. You won’t have to deal with obtuse bullshit like mazes or trying to collect a certain number of objects, it’s simple and straight forward which is exactly how I like things.

One element where Donkey Kong Country shines is in the level variety. You’ll travel across jungles, caves, factories and tree top villages. The settings are all decently varied, and each individual level has its own unique gimmicks. One level has you climb on ropes that will slide you up or down, one level has you jump on moving platforms that require fuel to keep going and one has you travel through a factory where the lights flicker on and off just to give a few examples.

Every level introduces a new idea that keeps things fresh. Like the original Crash Bandicoot, the variety comes from the varied level design and not additional gameplay styles or vehicles. Although, Donkey Kong Country does have both.

There are underwater levels where you travel through tight underwater caverns. Have you played an underwater level in a Mario game? These are pretty much the same thing. Then there the mine cart levels where you simply have to jump to avoid hazards. Both these level types would become staples of the series and are some of the most entertaining levels in the game. A game with good underwater levels? I don’t believe it.

One other way the game adds variety is through the animal buddies. In the levels you’ll find crates that contain one of 4 different animals the Kongs can ride. Expresso the Ostrich can run super-fast, ignore smaller enemies and can glide through the air by tapping the jump button. Winky the Frog can jump high, that’s about it. Rambi the Rhino can charge through basically everything. And finally there’s Engaurde the Swordfish, who is basically Rambi for the underwater levels with the bonus of having better swimming controls.

Rambi and Enguarde are the most fun since you can just plow through enemies with them. Winky and Expresso are kind of weak though. Expresso is tricky to control due to his high speed and Winky is boring since all he can do is jump high. There is one more Animal Buddy in the form of Squawks the Parrot, but he only appears as a level gimmick and isn’t playable, not yet anyway.

The variety in the game is excellent, even the enemies have variety with a lot of different enemy types. However, the variety is not without its issues. While I like that every level has something unique about them, they aren’t all created equal. Some level ideas are more frustrating and annoying than they are fun.

Blackout Basement is a stage I've always hated. The level itself isn’t too bad from a design standpoint, it’s not too difficult all things considered. The problem is that the level gimmick is that the lights keep going on and off, which means you can’t see any of the enemies or platforms. The level lacks any kind of flow because you’re constantly stopping and waiting for the lights to come back on so you can safely progress. You could keep going with the lights off but then it becomes a series of blind leaps of faith.

Another stage I dislike is Torchlight Trouble. This is the one with Squawks, he holds a torchlight so you can travel through a pitch-black cave. What makes this so bad is every time you turn, Squawks flashes his light in your face. This one is physically painful to play because you keep getting flashed. The Switch online version that I played did turn this down slightly, but it’s still an uncomfortable level to play. If you suffer from epilepsy, be careful on this stage.

The last level I'll mention isn’t one I hate, but it is one of the more infamous and difficult levels in the game, Snow Barrel Blast. This level is all about the Barrel Cannons. Now in most other stages these are fun, you jump in and blast out of them with a high burst of speed, it’s awesome. Most of the sections involving them usually involve blasting between multiple cannon in a row. They aren’t too bad as it’s just a matter of getting the timing right which isn’t too hard.

Except for Snow Barrel Blast. This one is one long Barrel Cannon section, and it has some of the strictest timing to get down. They even throw in a blizzard which is just distracting and makes it harder to get the timing right. This level can be an absolute nightmare for newcomers. It's a big difficulty spike for being the first level in world 4.

Donkey Kong Country is a tough son of a bitch. This game will kick your ass over repeatedly until you get it right. This is an old school platformer; you need to have plenty of patience if you want to make it through its many challenges. It's a difficult game, but barring a few levels here and there, never an overly frustrating one.

Donkey Kong Country may be challenging, but it’s never in an unfair way. There's nothing here that feels cheap. No bullshit enemy placements, no bad hit detection, if anything the hit detection is pretty forgiving here, it’s a fair challenge. And while you will likely lose a lot of lives, the game gives you so many of them that you’ll have plenty to spare.

I’m not joking, it’s very easy to rack up lives in this game, mainly because every collectable gives you them in some way. Aside from the extra life balloons which are self-explanatory, you have Banana’s which reward you with a life when you collect 100 of them, there are the K.O.N.G letters in every level that give you a life when you get them all, and the Animal Buddy Tokens which take you to a bonus stage when you collect 3 of them, and you can get a bunch of lives in those.

You will have plenty of lives in this game, which give you more than enough chances to get through some of the game's trickier sections. There is one problem, however. Every time you save the game, it doesn’t save the number of lives you had. Every time you load a save you’ll always start with the default amount of 5 lives. This can be extremely annoying when you’re in a tricky part of the game. You may have to go back and grind lives in a previous stage if you’re struggling and that’s never a fun process.

I should probably talk about how saving works. You can only save your game at Candy Kong’s stations. Where these stations are depends on the world, you’re in, it might be early on, or it might be near the end. There’s only one per world so it’s a little frustrating if you’re running low on lives in a level and you haven’t saved yet. This was standard for its time though so I can’t be too harsh on it.

I will be harsh on Candy Kong’s design though. No clue what they were thinking with it. Candy’s the only character in this game I actively dislike. Her design just makes me feel weird and uncomfortable, I don’t mind sexy character designs, but can we agree that at the very least Monkey’s should not be sexualized. The only people into that shit are not ones I want to associate with.

Candy is not the only Kong that will help you on your journey. There's also the surfer dude Funky Kong who provides a flying service that will take you to previous levels if you want to replay them to get more lives or look for secrets. And if you want help in finding said secrets, head to Cranky Kong’s hut. Cranky will give you tips for finding some secrets, as well as brow beat you for how much you suck.

The secrets are one area where I think Donkey Kong Country stumbles. Finding them is fun, it feels rewarding when you uncover one because of your own intuition. You’ll find hidden out of the way barrels and hidden breakable walls all over that will take you to a Bonus Rooms where you can get more goodies. They're well hidden, though some are a bit too obtuse for their own good, they even hid a Bonus Room inside another Bonus Room.

The issue with the secrets is that there isn’t much incentive to finding them all. Finding every Bonus Room is the only way to get 101% completion, not sure what the extra 1% means, but all that gets you is a slightly altered ending sequence. And trust me it’s not worth going out of your way to see.

Compare this to Sonic 3 and Knuckles which came out the same year. In that game you could find a bunch of hidden giant rings that would take you to a bonus level that would reward you with a Chaos Emerald. And collecting all 7 would let you transform into Super Sonic and let you play the true final stage. And that’s not counting the Super Emeralds which let you go Hyper Sonic. All of this is a much better reward for finding all the secrets than just having a slightly altered ending sequence.

Or how about Super Mario World, which had alternate paths and secret levels to uncover. Hell, Super Mario World felt like a game built around uncovering secrets. It just feels like Donkey Kong Country could have done so much more when it comes to its secrets and 100% completion. In fact, I know it could have done better because its own sequels do exactly that.

To be fair, it’s not like the secrets are handled badly. They could have been better, but they also could have been worse. But if there’s one area where the game does handle things badly, it’s the bosses. The boss fights in this game just flat-out suck, they’re way too easy, boring and repetitive. Two of the earlier bosses get palette swaps later and they count them as new bosses, that’s just lazy.

Thankfully, the final boss against King K. Rool is great. It's a decent challenge and they even throw in a fun fake out gag at one point. It also has possibly the best final boss theme in any game ever, that definitely helps. Outside of that, the bosses in Donkey Kong Country are lame.

And that’s it for Donkey Kong Country. How does it hold up? Great in my opinion. It's a fun platformer, it’s got great level design, a decent challenge and phenomenal presentation. I will admit that it is rather simple especially compared to other platformers of the era.

The secrets also not being worth it does hurt the games replay value a little. But I've this game numerous times and I never go for 100%, this review is the first time I've done it. To me this is a game that’s just fun to play through, the game feel and overall level design is good enough to warrant repeat plays to me.

The game isn’t very long. You can beat it in about 3-4 hours, so it’s a perfect game to play if you want to kill an afternoon. So, if you want a simple platformer with a lot of challenge and variety, then Donkey Kong Country is a good one to check out.

Regardless of your thoughts on the game itself, no one can deny it’s importance. Donkey Kong Country helped revitalized the SNES at a time when people were starting to move on to more powerful hardware and it breathed new life into one of the most beloved videogame characters of all time. It took a character that hadn’t been relevant since 1984, and not only made him relevant again, it made him popular again. This is an important game in the history of the SNES, and no one can take that away from it.

Next time we look at the game's sequel. Rare had proven themselves with the first game and the second would take them to even loftier heights. And we’ll see why when I review Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, the best 16-bit platformer ever made.