Donkey Kong Country

"Together with Yoshi’s Island, the best platformer of all time, that simple."

1994 was not just another year for the video game industry, it was THE year of the video game industry, some of the absolute best games of all time were released in that exact year, or what you think about Final Fantasy VI, Tales of Phantasia, Super Metroid, Mortal Kombat II, Tetris Attack...., or this Donkey Kong Country, a “revision” of the old Donkey Kong classic that ended up being one of the best video games of all time, and in my opinion, together with Yoshi’s Island, the King Kong of the platform genre.

Plot:
The plot is very simple, an evil crocodile-thing guy called Kaptain K. Rool and his bunch of minion called Kremlins have stolen Donkey’s Banana Hoard, when Donkey finds out, he calls his friend Diddy, and together they begin their journey to stop those brainless lizards.

Graphics 10/10:
The graphics were made using a new technique called Silicon Graphics or something like that, I don’t know exactly, but who cares?, Donkey Kong Country has some of the most astonishing graphics you will ever see in you miserable life, it is said that it has 32 megabytes of memory, but it sure had a lot more comprised, and that can be easily seen right from the beginning of the game. For me this is the Donkey Kong Country with the best graphics of the Snes trilogy, and that is only because they are the most beautiful and interesting, they just fit better in this first installment, with jungles, rain forests, caves, ruins, temples, etc, the other Donkey Kong Countries, specially Donkey Kong Country 2, are like more “urban” games with more bright colours and lights and things like that, it is only my personal opinion, because all the three Donkey Kongs for the Snes have killer graphics, in fact, I also think that the graphics are the best ever seen in a platform game period, even better than the ones of any new generation console, are you telling me that any 3D platformer looks better?, please don’t be stupid, not even the PlayStaion 2 or the Game Cube have games with better looking platformers, there places, like some caves, that are full of fog, or jungles where it is raining, or underwater places full of toxic wastes that look so good that I cannot even explain how good they are, and everything with such great visual effects that it is hard to believe you are playing a Snes game. The character’s animations are unbelievable and, even if this may sound odd in a game like this one, tremendously realistic, the way they run, jump, hit or whatever they do just looks too impressive to be true.

Music 10/10:
They don’t make games with music as good as this one anymore. Like the graphics, the music is so good that it is not possible to describe here how good it is. All the tunes not only are incredibly catchy, they are memorable, they are unforgettable. There is not a single bad tune, but what am I saying!, bad?, there is not even a single good tune, all of them are much more than good, SPLENDID, saying that they are good is like an insult, right from the funny little music Donkey is listening to at that mini intro the game has to the little tune played when we loose, everything is amazing, I have all the songs of this game stuck on my head after more than five years, and every time I remember this game all the songs come to my head in no time.

The sound is also terrific, monkeys and birds and god knows why are all the time shouting everywhere while in the jungle, or the incredibly realistic sound the carts made during our ride in the mine. There are very little voices, but they are funny as hell, hearing Donkey say: “Oh!, banana” is something that HAS to be experienced, or when the Kremlins laugh, and a very big etc. This game is so classic that even the sound is classic, the sound of a barrel exploding with Donkey inside, the sound when we jump over an enemy.... absolutely everything.

Gameplay 10/10:
The game’s structure is basically like in any other Nintendo platfomrer, using a side scrolling view, there are six worlds to beat, each one with a different number of stages and a big boss awaiting at the end, we are able to replay each stage or go back to any world we have already beaten whenever we want to find all the secrets, etc.

The barrels are very important in this game, there are lots of different barrels, explosive barrels, cannon barrels, barrels that act as check points, invincibility barrels...and of course bonus barrels. The bonus barrels are one of the game’s most interesting features, in each stage there are two bonus barrels (I can’t remember well but I guess there are some stages with three, but I am not sure I repeat), once we find one of this barrels, we will go to a bonus stage, and there are different kinds of bonuses, and we have to find them all to completely beat the game.

Another star feature of the game are your animal buddies, there are four animals willing to help us in our search for the stolen bananas. These buddies work basically in the same way than Yoshi worked in Super Mario World, when we find and destroy the box where they are being kept, we will ride them, and if we get hurt, they will start to run very fast without any direction and we will have to try to ride again until they fall into a pit or whatever

The two player options are terrific also, playing with a friend to compete and see which one goes faster or beats a world first. Aside from that there are also a coperative mode, and some others I can’t remember, but all of them wonderful.

Replay Value:
The replay value is much more than high, like in games such as Super Metroid, Super Mario World, or Yoshi’s Island, I have finished this game entirely so many times that I can barely remember, even after having found all the bonus stages I just couldn’t resist the temptation of playing through it again a lot of times. Like in most Nintendo platformers, we have to obtain a 100% (though here it is a 101%), and you are not going to stop playing until you reach that percentage, take that for granted.

Donkey Kong Country is also a pretty challenging game, it is harder the average Super Mario game, and that is without counting that task to find all the bonus stages.

So:
So?, there is no need to say more, but I am going to repeat it again, Donkey Kong Country is together with Yoshi’s Island, the absolute best, B-E-S-T platformer in existence, better than any other N64 or PlayStation or any other console, it is also better that any other Donkey Kong Country, and, to sum up, better than any other platfomrer you may imagine, agreed?, no?, that is your problem.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/08/04