Tendo City

Donkey Kong Country Review

By Derek Miller

Near the end of the Super Nintendo's life span, things weren't looking too good for Nintendo. Sega's Saturn and Sony's Playstation has already hit the market and had begun to take a chunk of the 16-bit crowd away from the SNES. Not helping matters, the Nintendo 64, known back then as Project Reality or the Ultra 64, was constantly being delayed. 3D was the"in-thing" and the SNES, while it did have some 3D games like Star Fox and Stunt Race FX, was really starting to show its age. That's where a little-known company called Rare came in. They used a large amount of resources, partly donated by Nintendo, to create a make-or-break game that would star Nintendo's own Donkey Kong. When Donkey Kong Country was being released Nintendo promoted it to no end. People were awed by it's graphics and many originally thought it was a game for the upcoming Nintendo 64. Donkey Kong Country even looked better than many of the games on Playstation even though it was really only 2.5D. Donkey Kong Country was one of Super Nintendo's last great games and it helped top off one of the greatest consoles ever.

Graphics

Easily the best graphics on Super Nintendo, bar none. Even compared to the next generation consoles Donkey Kong Country was able to hold its own. Whereas games like Star Fox and Stunt Race FX had the extremely noticeable textures and were really buggy, DKC did a fantastic job putting 3D characters in a 2D environment. The landscapes were awe-inspiring and the characters and enemies looked terrific. Not much to complain about in this department. There was never even any noticeable slowdown.

10.0

Sound

Catchy tunes and funny sound effects helped make this game sound great. The music seemed to fit the stages perfectly and the monkey sounds and grunts from the enemies were just plain hilarious. The sound effects were professionally done and were a foreshadowing of Rare's unbelievably sound tracks and effects for their Nintendo 64 games. I truly think there are very few companies that produce better sounding games than Rare.

8.5

Sound

Donkey Kong Country was a classic 2D platform that added a few tricks to make things interesting. The buddy system worked great in the game. Donkey and Diddy each had their stregths and weaknesses and you'd soon learn which situations each excelled in. Playing the game with two players was a lot of fun. You could either make it a competition and try to get farther than your opponent or you could each control either Donkey or Diddy to try to beat King K. Rool. This was one of the first games to use a lot of different mini-games and it was something that would be used in later games again and again. In order to truly beat the game you had to find all of these mini-games which was a task in and of itself. And who could forget the minecart races? While there weren't many of them, they were so much fun to play over and over again. Donkey Kong Country was not just another 2D platformer, it was an incredibly addictive game that would bring Rare into the spotlight as a videogame developer.

8.0

Modern Appeal

Even today Donkey Kong Country looks good. The game has a polished look and the graphics won't turn people off like many NES games sometimes do. The classic platforming action is just plain fun and it's the kind of game you can pick up and play for a few minutes or a few hours, depending on what you're looking for. A thoroughly addictive game if you haven't played it or are a fan of 2D platformers.

8.0

Purchase Price

Donkey Kong Country is a very common game and should be easy to find. Expect to pay anywhere from $10 to $20 for it. Don't pay much more than $20, even if it's brand new.

Total (not an average) : 8.5

One note of contention, it wasn't even 2.5D. It was pure 2D gameplay. All the 3D artwork? Those were 2D sprites and nothing more. The only thing is, rather than hand drawing them, they were prerendered on a computer. The SNES couldn't tell the difference though. This game is about as graphically advanced as Yoshi's Island when you keep that in mind. Still though, it is a VERY good looking game.

Hmm... try to find the battery-backed but superior SNES versions, or go for the inferior but EEPROM-saving GBA ports...

I've recently replayed this game, and I have a few things to add to all this because, wow, the popular opinion of the DKC series has swung wildly over the years.  This is less a review and more varied observations, but here goes.

I recall just how excited I was for this game, thanks almost entirely to Nintendo Power's advertising campaign for it.  It was sold as many things, but the biggest was as a sort of "preview" for the upcoming Nintendo Ultra 64.  This wasn't really released at the end of the SNES's life span though.  There were still two more years to go, thanks to N64 release delays, which meant this was the first of an amazing trilogy.  I remember Nintendo sending out a VHS tape advertising the game in the most... 90's possible way they could have.  Lots of dutch angles and fisheye lensing plus a teenage "too cool for this" try-hard of a "host".  Frankly, the tape's embarrassing, but I still have it and a working VCR to play it on.  But, I should go back a little bit.

Before DKC was even announced, they were plugging Gameboy Donkey Kong in Nintendo Power.  They mentioned in those articles that Donkey Kong Jr should make an appearance again, but he'd look " a bit different".  Something like that.  I'd have to dig out the issue, but I recall being very surprised that Donkey Kong Jr would end up getting a massive modern platformer and not just another little spinoff game, and that he'd ditch the "Jr".

It's with that in mind that I love all the little nods to the arcade game Donkey Kong Jr.  Even a lot of the enemies seem inspired by the random baddies Mario sent out to fend off DKJr in that original game, like the klaptraps and birdies.  I'm fine with this, as I generally prefer DK Jr. to the original DK anyway.

When the game finally came out, I got it that Christmas.  There's three revisions, and it turns out I got the second version (I've since "updated" it to the original release, which has more fun speedrunning bugs and a few more challenging levels).  I alternated back and forth between it, Link's Awakening, and King's Quest VI.  (Yes, VII was already out, but I was playing VI alright?)  Some of the best gaming memories I have...  DKC apparently drew some ire from Miyamoto back then, as he apparently said something about just the graphics making that game popular.  I still am not sure how much truth there was to that, because Miyamoto was apparently hands-on during Rare's development of the game and they met often to discuss and get advice from him.  Also, he since went on to embrace CG himself, but on the flip side apparently the childish art style of Yoshi's Island was some kind of dig at the advanced CG of DKC?  Again, I really have no clue how accurate the rumor is, but if true, it could be a momentary burst of frustration that didn't entirely reflect his full views.

One thing's for sure.  The nature of CRT displays went a LONG way towards improving the look of the game.  If you can, try and find a modern CRT filter for whatever emulator you're using.  Something to imitate shadow mask or aperture grill effects, which "blend in" the pixels in a way that makes them less jagged, but still avoids the blur of something like a composite signal.  It's the ideal way to see the game the way the designers saw it while they were designing it.  The game was jaw dropping on CRT, and one design element they paid extra close attention to was making sure there was high contrast between background and foreground elements.  You could always pick out enemies, items, and what was a platform you could actually stand on.  The only fuzzy elements were where a platform stopped, since the CG nature of the sprites and tile sets made the EXACT edge of platforms a little ambiguous.  They also made heavy use of breadcrumbs, with bananas very clearly signposting so very many secrets in the game that it almost feels like they aren't secret at all.  In fact, the biggest secret in the game is a bonus level inside another bonus level, only accessed by intentionally going for the lowest value reward, getting a barrel instead, and breaking through a wall with it.

All these graphical details really made levels feel "real" and gave a certain "flow" from one to the next.  The first level slowly turns from daylight to dusk as you move through it, leading to the next level starting in darkness leading to a storm.  Later levels might have a blizzard start in one level and end in the next, or a level suddenly taking place in a factory, the next in another underwater level that's flooded with the toxic waste from that factory.  Every level has a feeling of a natural "place" in the journey, blending into the next.  Every level also has little details like the aforementioned weather effects, little bits of wildlife in the background (both visually and through sound effects) and even the bonus levels feel like natural parts of the levels they are found in (an element I think the more "showy" visuals and indicators in the sequels would detract from a bit).

The music is absolutely legendary.  Distinct from the likes of Mario, it had an ethereal dreamy quality that made it feel like you were on a grand legend and not just a gorilla beating up a lizard to get a snack.  The composer would go on to make just as legendary a sound track in the sequel, but wouldn't be picked for the third game.  As DKC3's soundtrack wasn't particular favored, they made a Wise decision in the GBA remaster and brought him back to create a brand new alternative soundtrack for the game.  I like it, but the GBA doesn't exactly have the best sound compared to the SNES so it doesn't come through well.

The gameplay set a new standard.  Again, it took DK Jr. as a loose base, but extended it dramatically as well as introducing character switching mechanics to bring in alternate tactics for tackling different challenges.  The game does suffer a little in it's boss design however.  Most of them are just "enemies you fought, but bigger", which Yoshi's Island would also do but to much more dramatic and unique effect, and there's also the matter of two of the bosses getting recycled.  They redid the boss mechanics in the GBA remake which I think was a pretty good improvement.