Donkey Kong Country

"It looks pretty, but it's still a little better than your average 16bit platformer."

What would've Nintendo be without Donkey Kong? Without this big stupid giant King Kong clone Shigeru Miyamoto wouldn't become Nintendo's most important man (or maybe he still would because he later made even more important games) because the arcade classic Donkey Kong pretty much saved Nintendo back in the early 80's. In fact you can even go so far that if Donkey Kong never would've been made, Mario would never gets the chance to get his 15 first minutes in the spot light and then alone saved the whole game industry with the Nes classic Super Mario Bros. But lets get back to Donkey Kong.

The arcade game was as I already said a huge hit, and Nintendo didn't waste any time and ported this game to a lot of different systems. One that really got popular was the Donkey Kong Game&Watch game, and of course later the Nes port which was really similar to the arcade game, except that it didn't have all stages. After that Donkey Kong got two sequels, one where Mario was the villain who had kidnapped Donkey Kong and it was up to his son Donkey Kong Junior to save him. After that almost nothing happened with Donkey Kong, and he was about to become another of the arcade heroes that didn't get much attention anymore like Pac-Man.

This was all about to change when the British company Rare who had already done games like Battletoads and R.C. Pro:am got the job to make Donkey Kong one of the biggest characters of the Super Nintendo just like how he already was for those who had played arcade games in the early 80's. It was going to be a simple platform game just like the Mario games, but have graphic that no one had ever seen before in a platform game. The game was released and quickly became one of the most popular ones on the system, and the only Super NIntendo game that managed to sell better was in fact only Super Mario World.

Even if it would've been cool if Mario was the villain in this game, Rare created a new villain for the monkey. King K Roll is a big lizard king who have together with his underlings called the kremlings stolen all of Donkey Kong's giant bananas. Now Donkey Kong sets out on a quest on the Kong Island to find all his bananas. With him is his best buddy Diddy Kong, a younger monkey with a red cap and a red Hawaii shirt. A lot of other Kongs will also support the two on their quest to retrieve all the bananas.

The game is really similar to a lot of other platform games, and some even consider it a kind of a clone to Super Mario World. Just like in Super Mario World, there's an overworld map where you can go from one stage to another. If any of the apes touches a barrel with the DK sign on it, then the other ape will be released and will be just behind the leading ape. While Donkey Kong is the heavy one while Diddy is the lighter one, sometimes it's good to be heavy and sometimes it's not. You can at any time change if Dk or Diddy will be the leading ape, but it's possible to beat almost every challenge with both. When one enemy hits the first ape, he will be captured and you must find a new DK barrel to get him back. If only got one of the two and gets hit by an enemy, then you lose a life.

On each stage you start on one place and then have to reach the goal of each stage. Of course there are always enemies in your way, and there are a few ways to kill them. The most common thing is of course to jump on an enemy in order to kill it, but there are some enemies that can handle if Diddy jumps on them but not when it's heavy Donkey Kong who stomps them. Another way to kill most of the enemies is to bump into them while you are rolling, and doing a roll also makes both apes move a lot faster. The last way to kill and enemy is to do what Donkey Kong is most known for, to pick up barrels and then throw these barrels at his enemies.

Aside from the typical stages where you just have to avoid the enemies in order to reach the goal there are three other type of stages. There are a couple of stages in this game that takes place underwater, and unless you find a friendly fish that can help you, it's not possible to kill these enemies, you just have to avoid them. The control here is just like in the Super Mario games, you go up by pressing the jump button. Then there are a few mine cart stages where all you have to do is to time your jumps correct.

Finally there are also a couple of barrel cannon stages. In these you jump into barrels that spins in different directions, and when you press the jump button the barrel will fire DK and Diddy away in that direction. There are a lot of stages where these barrels are in the air, and you must aim carefully to not fall down into a hole and lose one precious life. This looks next to impossible at first, but after a little practice you will get the hang of it.

On every stage, there are a couple of hidden bonus levels where you can get more bananas and even find red balloons that gives you one extra life. On your save file you see how many percents of the game you have found, and when I beat the game it said I had only found about 50%, so there's a lot of hidden bonus rooms to be found. The only purpose for these are of course to give those who have beat the game a new challenge.

Speaking of challenge, that's the major flaw in this game. Most of the stages except the last are ridiculous easy, and the only challenging ones are those which are tough only because it's gimmick. For example I died about 15 times on the last underwater stage because it's not easy to control monkeys under water. Then there's the boss fights, which are perhaps the least challenging boss fights in any game I've played. Except for maybe the final boss, none of them should give you any trouble.

Donkey Kong Country sure gets a lot of love, but now that Rare no longer make games for Nintendo systems a lot of people seems to think that Donkey Kong Country was just a Mario Clone with great graphics and some cool music. But it's the theme of the levels with the gameplay that is almost impossible to screw up that makes Donkey Kong Country a fun game to play even to this day. I admit that I didn't think that this game was as good as I thought it was when I recently replayed it, but it's still fun. And you got love the dance that Donkey Kong do in the opening.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/09

Game Release: Donkey Kong Country (EU, 11/24/94)