Donkey Kong Country

aka: Chaoji Dajingang, DKC, Donkey Kong 2001, Donkey Kong Country 1, Super Donkey Kong
Moby ID: 5199
SNES Specs
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Description official descriptions

King K. Rool has stolen Donkey Kong's banana stash, and Donkey Kong needs your help to get them back. In search of K. Rool, the Kremling horde impedes your progress. Kremlings, crocodile-like creatures, include Kritters (they succumb to a simple jump on the head), Krushas (they are virtually indestructible), and others. There are also other enemies that block your path, such as beavers, snakes, vultures. Leading them are dastardly bosses, including Very Gnawty, Necky, Queen B., and Dumb Drum, and they all bar the way with their own special blend of villainy.

Donkey Kong is joined by Diddy Kong: these two primates differ significantly. For example, Donkey Kong is generally stronger; he can destroy most enemies with a single jump and can lift barrels straight over his head to throw them farther. On the other hand, Diddy is faster and not as strong as Donkey; he can run really fast and do cartwheels. Diddy carries barrels in front of him, creating a shield against frontal attacks.

The game is split into different worlds, which are split into different levels. Each level contains bonus areas, where one can collect bananas, medallions, and lives. At the end of each world is a boss, which is usually a larger version of a minor enemy.

The original Super Nintendo game was later released for Nintendo's handheld systems. The Game Boy Color version has an exclusive level (Necky Nutmare) and additional bonus games, Funky's Fishing and five Crosshair Cranky minigames. There was also the addition of collectible DK sticker packs scattered throughout the levels. These sticker packs could be printed out using the Game Boy Printer. The game also has two more difficulty options that become available after beating the game.Beating the game once lets the player turn off DK barrels and beating the game a second time will let the player turn off checkpoint barrels.

The Game Boy Advance version also had additional bonus games. It to has a version of Funky's Fishing but instead of the crosshair themed games, there is now Candy's Dance Studio, which hosts six dance games. There is also the additions of a time attack mode called DK Attack, a harder difficulty mode called Hero Mode (can only play as Diddy Kong and the game no longer offers Donkey Kong barrels and checkpoints throughout the levels), and the sticker book idea from the Gameboy Color version was replaced with collecting scrapbook pictures instead.

Spellings

  • スーパードンキーコング - Japanese spelling
  • ドンキーコング2001 - Japanese GBC spelling
  • 超级大金刚 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (SNES version)

52 People (45 developers, 7 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 80 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 270 ratings with 8 reviews)

A counterpoint to the popular view of DKC...

The Good
1. A satisfying platformer in many respects. Engaging level design with lots of hidden shortcuts and tricks to keep you interested. Not a lot of variety, but succeeds in that it finds the fun things (riding animals, mine carts) and hits you with it enough to keep you happy but not so much as to trivialize things.

  1. Good music that attempts to move away from the three-tone-ditty or faux-rock of most other games. For me, the most memorable part of the game.

  2. Overall design that distinguishes the game from others. In the platforming genre, that's doing something.

    The Bad
    1. This game was popular in its time because of the graphics, and those graphics haven't aged well: they now look a little chunky, a little too ambitious. I don't think they've held up as well as the clean lines of Super Mario World, the tricked-out SMB2 and SMB3 of Super Mario All-Stars, or the minimalist sci-fi of Metroid or Super Contra, all of which seem to me a more timeless design. I'm not comparing DKC's graphics to those of current games, I'm looking at those graphics in the context of those of the time, and I think the design of DKC comes off as a little gimmicky.

  3. Looking at the graphics in this way allows us to do something many other gamers didn't do when DKC was released: divorce our opinion of the gameplay from our opinion of the graphics. I think doing this allows us to look back on this game and realize that while it's a good platformer, it's not as fantastically great in terms of gameplay as many people made it out to be when it was released. A few notes on the gameplay:

2a. Riding animals is fun, but is it that fun? For instance, it doesn't take a lot of skill to hop on the rhino and move right, and I think because most animal riding doesn't engage any game skill, the novelty of it--hey, I'm ridin' a crazy rhino! woo-hoo!--wears off pretty quickly.

2b. Not many things to do with your characters in terms of movement. While it's a testament to quality level design, which manages to make playing the game interesting despite the limited moves, it's still something.

2c. The play control to me always felt slightly off. Let's pick on the rhino again: Whenever I was on that guy, jumping around felt non-responsive, like there was some kind of variable, minuscule lag between when I hit the button and when the rhino jumped. The same goes for the timing on DK's roll and leap: I learned that the key to nailing it was to be a little too patient and wait past the moment you feel like you should be jumping to nail it. I'm sure the control on DK's roll and leap is by design, but I just didn't care for it. Would have liked for it, and the rest of the control, to be a little tighter.

2d. Easy. Never really challenging at all. Part of the reason is the amazing amount of lives you can rack up without really trying. Yeah, you can get tons of lives in other platformers, but normally you have to go out of your way to get those additional lives. In DKC, the lives rack up as a consequence of simply playing the game. It makes the game too forgiving.

  1. At the time I hated the snow levels because of the snow storm falling between you and the character sprite. I know that this was a "cool" feature at the time, but I hated it then and I still hate it.

  2. Please don't take this as a "hater" comment, but I don't care for the character design and resent that it's been taken on by the Mario karting universe. Diddy Kong to me is solely appealing to the "cute monkey" perception and lacks a lot of the imagination put into many of the Mario characters. I dunno: chimp in a baseball cap isn't exactly what I'd call exciting. But the cute factor caught on, and now Diddy's befouling the Mario kart series. DK Jr. in Super Mario Kart wasn't so bad, but the Rare designed Kongs to me just don't do it as far as character design goes.

    The Bottom Line
    I wrote this review for the reasons the title suggests: I wanted to give a counterpoint to the notions upon the game's release and the notion held to this day by some nostalgic DKC fanatics that the game, coming near the end of the SNES life-cycle, was by default the pinnacle of SNES platformers. It's easier to realize you're being unfairly nostalgic when you're looking back on an Atari 2600 game that clearly benefited from cool cover-art--it's harder to recognize nostalgia when it's a game that's only 10 or so years old.

I don't think it takes much of a serious playthrough of DKC to see that it just doesn't have the ageless qualities of other great platformers. Where I identify many other great, older games with their gameplay, I can't help identifying DKC with those chunky graphics that were such a big deal at the time. That to me suggests that DKC isn't maybe all it was cracked up to be at the time in terms of gaming goodness.

None of this is to suggest that DKC is a bad game. It's a good game, a very good game that obviously had a lot of time put into it. But does it belong in the rarefied company of platformers like SWM, SWM2, SMB3, Super Metroid, some of the Mega Man games, etc? I don't think that it does.

Still, a good platformer that's worth playing.

SNES · by MagFram (33) · 2005

Possibly the best platform game for the SNES

The Good
Super Mario World and Super Metroid, step aside. What those platform games may have had in layout, depth, and mood, Donkey Kong Country makes up for with the most beautiful graphics of any SNES game. They look like they belong on a primitive PlayStation game, not on a simple cartridge system.

With simple Point A-to-Point B level layouts and catchy, toe-tapping music, this is without any doubt a game for anyone and everyone.

The Bad
The game may seem rather easy to more experienced players. There is no real room for deviation, with the exception of various bonus levels, which may aggravate players who enjoy more freedom in their games. Also, even though the game is said to be playable by 2 players, it suffers from the same problem as all the Super Mario Bros./World game before it, in the fact that the 2-player mode is alternative, not simultaneous, which forces one player to sit and watch as the other plays.

The Bottom Line
This game definitely ranks in the top 5 platform games for the SNES, and the top 10 games for the SNES, period. You may breeze through it quickly, but the journey is much more enjoyable than the reaching of the destination.

SNES · by lechuck13 (296) · 2003

My favorite game of all time.

The Good
This game always had great graphics. Even today on a 50 inch screen tv it still is amazing. I really loved the scenery. It always seemed real. The music was great too. This game really showed what the SNES could do better than the genesis at the time. Being my favorite game for the graphics, scenery, and game play, this game is great and can be enjoyed over and over.

The Bad
There wasn't many things I didn't like about this game. If there was anything it would be not being able to save after each level. The candy kong save points weren't really that far apart, but some of the harder levels placed before a save point or a funky flights left you with few lives to get though more levels to the save point.

The Bottom Line
This is a really fun game with incredible scenery. The game play is great not being to hard but hard enough. The music is better than most games at the time and so were the graphics. I recommend everyone should buy this.

SNES · by Jeff Robinson (64) · 2008

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Game Problems with Game Boy Color version Jeff Robinson (64) Jul 4, 2008

Trivia

Animated series

An animated TV series was based on the characters and world of the Donkey Kong Country game. Running from 1997-2000, the series featured all of the cast from the game plus additional new characters. The series was animated with computer-generated imagery (mostly with SoftImage).

Board game

In 1995, Milton Bradley combined two youth trends of the 1990s and brought together the world of Donkey Kong Country and a POG-slamming game.

Cranky Kong

Cranky Kong is actually the "original" Donkey Kong from the early 1980s and will drone on and on about how games don't need 16-bits and etc.

Donkey Kong Junior

Donkey Kong's sidekick for Donkey Kong Country was originally going to be an updated version of Donkey Kong Junior from the 1980s arcade game. Nintendo, however, objected, and told Rare to either keep Junior's original design, or create a completely new character. This resulted in the introduction of Diddy Kong, who has since replaced Junior in all later Donkey Kong games. Following this, DK Junior's appearances have been reduced to that of an unlockable/trophy in sports-based Mario spin-offs.

Game Boy Advance Version

The Game Boy Advance version has the contrast cranked up to make the game easier to see on the darker LCD screen.

Soundtrack

The music that Cranky Kong plays on the Victrola during the intro is a rendition of the actual Donkey Kong music from the original 8-bit Nintendo game.

Super Power review

The game got a full 100 % in the Swedish magazine Super Power. The game was rated in the one day they got to borrow the early cassette. The reviewer today claims that he committed a breach of duty, and was completely astounded by the graphics so he couldn't make a proper review of the game.

Technology

Donkey Kong Country was the first game to feature the new ACM graphics technique. ACM was a new graphics technique which allowed rendering of sprites, which made the graphics for the 16 bit games that used it (the DKC games, Killer Instinct and more) extremely detailed. When it first was presented most people took it as a game for what was at the time called Project Reality (i.e. Nintendo 64). People were really shocked when it turned out to be a game for the SNES.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • November 1994 (Issue 64) - Game of the Month
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Game of the Year
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - SNES Game of the Year
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Best Animation
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Best Game Duo
  • FLUX Magazine

    • Issue #4 - #17 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
  • GameFan

    • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss. 1) - Best SNES Action/Platform Game of the Year 1994
    • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss. 1) - Best SNES Special Effects
  • VideoGames

    • March 1995 - Game of the Year 1994
    • March 1995 - Best SNES Game in1994
    • March 1995 - Best Action Game in 1994
    • March 1995 - Best Graphics in 1994
    • March 1995 - Best Gameplay in 1994

Information also contributed by Alexander Michel, Andreas Vilén, Big John WV, Pseudo_Intellectual, So Hai, WildKard and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • DKC GBA Website
    Official site for the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country
  • OC ReMix Game Profile
    Fan remixes of music from Donkey Kong Country, including the album "Kong in Concert".

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 5199
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Syed GJ.

New Nintendo 3DS, Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. Nintendo Switch added by Kam1Kaz3NL77. Game Boy Advance, SNES added by Kartanym. Wii added by gamewarrior.

Additional contributors: Kartanym, uclafalcon, Unicorn Lynx, Exodia85, Alaka, Freeman, gamewarrior, Evil Ryu, Fangusu, Zaibatsu, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, Mario500 ..

Game added October 21, 2001. Last modified October 13, 2023.