Donkey Kong Country

"Platform gaming it was meant to be"

Donkey Kong really set a trend that has never died out- the genre of the platform game. Rather than a continuous level of some sort, Donkey Kong had several shorter levels spliced together to form a game. Imagine if Donkey Kong had been simply dodging barrels endlessly, trying to get the highest score you could by climbing up, up and up... That would've sucked.

Anyway, before I get too wrapped up in it, Donkey Kong introduced the "platform game" genre, where a character would go from point A to point B to finish a level, eventually beating all of the levels and coming to the boss, Donkey Kong. Defeating him only repeated the cycle- you had to beat more levels before facing the boss again. At any rate, this formula stuck and the genre grew. Super Mario Brothers certainly made it world famous, and platforming became incredibly popular. Tons of games spewed out; some of them good, some of them... not so good.

Years past and the systems evolved. We went from Atari to the NES, and from the Nintendo we moved on to the Super Nintendo or SNES.

Now, a lot of people call the Super Nintendo the greatest system of all time, but I don't think anyone has ever bothered to explain just why it is such a revered system. To put it simply, the SNES takes first over all systems because it perfected games in nearly every genre. RPGs took off after the SNES released Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasies IV, V, and VI, and for the less hardcore fans, Super Mario RPG. They are arguably the best RPGs of all time (well, maybe not SMRPG, although no one would deny how much fun it was.) As much as Final Fantasy has become popular today, it really can't compare with the golden days on the SNES.

Donkey Kong Country is of the same vein. Platforming reached a pinnacle in Donkey Kong Country, and it's all kind of gone downhill since then. It had everything needed to make the game work without adding too much so as to mess it up.

One of the things I still find irritating about Donkey Kong are the controls. The game itself wasn't very hard, and indeed it didn't have to be hard- the controls were so bad that the true difficulty was in mastering the controls. Super Mario World, the launch title platform game of the SNES, had better controls, but they still were not quite perfect.

Donkey Kong Country? They are flawless. The game pushes the limits on the SNES controller by giving incredible response to what you do with the controller. There are instances within the game where you need to manipulate "walking" through the air. That is, you roll out into the abyss with either character and then jump while in mid-roll, which allowed you to jump twice as far as you normally would have been able to- you couldn't have done that in Super Mario World. However, nothing illustrates the point better than the underwater worlds. Up until this point, swimming in any game had been tedious and needlessly difficult; the controls were bad and somewhat clumsy as the character jerked up and down. Rareware made the controls seamless, and it really showed in the many waterlogged stages. You could glide up and down, float in diagonals, and you could zip forward towards the end- it was the first to get it right, and with the introduction of 3D, we're still waiting on another game to get it right for this generation.

The stages extend far beyond the aquatic, though. Platforms thrive on variety, and Donkey is not lacking in that department- each set of stages (Or "Boards", as I called them when I was a kid) is radically different from the last. From the jungles where Donkey Kong begins to the snowy mountains, all the way to the factories of King K. Rool, the levels are unique. Better still, levels within the boards were unique as well. While a few stages had rehashed backgrounds, it was not so often that you were disgusted- they were few and far between.

These backgrounds were by no means boring, either. Donkey Kong boasts some of the best graphics on the Super Nintendo, and in 1994 they were absolutely revolutionary. When placed against Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario, it blows the competition out of the water. Even today the graphics are great. The characters were rendered in 3D and placed in a 2D world (or something like that; I'll admit, I'm no tech guy.) The scenery was incredibly detailed and was just incredible. Even the most inane of objects had remarkable graphics.

Of course, going hand-in-hand with good graphics is good sound, and oh, what a soundtrack! Every song was picked and crafted to fit the environment, and they all did so with spectacular accuracy. Now, Sonic (to this day) will have a place in my heart for being the first game I'd played to get that one right and so Donkey Kong is by no means a pioneer in that field, but you can't expect one game to be the first to break barriers in EVERY area, can you?

I can also say that this game didn't manage to revolutionize the gameplay, either. To be perfectly honest, there was nothing above and beyond about what Donkey Kong Country had to offer as a game... and maybe that's why it works so well. Donkey Kong Country 2 is often hailed as a better game owing to the higher number of levels and the enormity of extra things that you could/had to do. This game doesn't have any of that, but oddly enough, it's a bonus rather than a deterrent. Donkey Kong Country 2 tried to turn platforming into a puzzlesolving kind of game- search every nook and cranny until you find everything you need to find and then you can continue. Woe to those who choose NOT to find those things, for they will not be able to access the full potential of the game! Donkey Kong didn't bother with that- you went from Point A to Point B and finished the level, simple as that. It was true to the nature of a platforming game and it was very simple.

That's not to say that the game didn't have secrets of some sort. On the contrary, secrets could be found all over the place and were quite entertaining. They weren't overly complex- some of them simply gave you a shortcut to the end of the level and rewarded you with bananas and an extra life or two. Others led to a bonus level in which you could earn bananas or powerups. However, these bonus levels were very simple; "Pick the right barrel and win the prize!"
Finding these bonuses netted you very little, if anything. The second game gave prizes for successful completion of a bonus level- tokens to give you access to the hidden levels. Nope, none of that here; the total purpose of the bonus levels was to give you a simple bonus in the form of extra lives.

Not that you'd really need any lives in this game, though- Donkey Kong Country utilized a two person effort- instead of taking this solo, you had control of two characters, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. While you had both at once you would only use one at a time. Similar to any tagteam game you'd play today, you could switch one of them out for the other. They each had their strengths and weaknesses; Donkey, being a giant gorilla, was the stronger of the two but was nowhere near as agile. Diddy was (of course), much nimbler but unable to kill some of the stronger enemies. This only added all the more to the variety: there are times where strength is needed, others where agility will save your neck. However (I forgot to mention), when you get hit by something/someone, you "die", and if you have a partner, they take over. You cannot use your other partner again until you rediscover him (they trap him in a barrel... I don't know, so don't ask me.) So if you manage to screw up at a completely inopportune time, you've got to just plow through without him or suffer defeat and death.

That doesn't really happen much, though- the game was quite easy. The first time through you're likely to get stuck on a few levels, but playing it through, there are more than enough extra lives available to make it a piece of cake to finish. It doesn't take long, either. It's doable (although not altogether simple) to beat the game using one life in less than an hour. Despite that, it's an incredibly fun playthrough every time you might choose to do it.

The graphics are fantastic and the music equally so. The levels are simple, but not so simple as to lose their fun. The game is quick and fairly easy, but hard enough to provide an entertaining challenge. All around the game has plusses. True flaws? Well, I've yet to find one.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/07