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Donkey Kong Country SNES box

Donkey Kong Country is one that is close to my heart. I believe that it was received by my brother for his birthday in November of 1994. Nintendo did a great job promoting this game for months, making me want it more and more every day that came closer to release. Finally, the month before the release of the game, a VHS videotape arrived in our mailbox covered in jungle green leaves. As I saw it was from Nintendo, we popped in the video and were dazzled. Before the Internet had streaming video, all we had seen of the game were pictures in magazines. This marketing tactic was the best idea that Nintendo had at the time. Seeing this game in full motion video had sold not only me and my brother on the game, but all the other neighborhood kids that had seen this video. It was better looking than any game we had ever seen, and at least twice as good as anything SEGA had put out on the Sega Genesis.

Donkey Kong Country VHS Tape

Now about the game, this game is a 2-D platformer that uses 3-D wireframe models to give the illusion of the game being three dimensional.  The game holds a basic premise that any player can understand: Donkey Kong (formally a bad guy in most previous games) has had his entire banana hoard stolen by the lizard Kremlings.  He grabs his buddy Diddy Kong and they need to get their bananas back with help of some animal friends around the island.  The entire adventure is fresh from start to finish with standard platform levels, barrel levels, mine carts, ice, swamp, jungle, and tons of bonus levels.  The number of secrets in Donkey Kong Country is astounding and all of them would be found unless assisted by a guide of some sort.  Collecting Bananas, letters that spell “KONG”, and golden animal tokens has never been so much fun.

Donkey Kong riding Rambi the Rhino

The music in the game is catchy and the ambience whether it be in a cave, water, or the jungle makes the soundtrack one of the best of all time.  (It can be purchased but it is quite rare, do an eBay serach for “DK JAMZ CD”)  There is a two player feature that allows two players to switch off like a standard platformer, or have one player control DK and the other Diddy. 

Overall this Nintendo designed and published game was revolutionary and sold over a million copies of the Super Nintendo cartridge alone.  It was so popular that Nintendo even packed it in with some versions of the Super Nintendo system.  It spawned two SNES sequels, three Game Boy versions, a Game Boy Color port, a Nintendo 64 unofficial sequel, and three ports of the SNES games back onto the Game Boy Advance, not to mention the Wii Virtual Console downloads of the SNES versions.  Most importantly, it revived a ten year old franchise and put Donkey Kong back on the map.  This game is one of the best that Super Nintendo has to offer, I highly encourage you to check it out, the SNES cartridge can be had for about $10 or you can download it from the Wii Virtual Console for 800 points ($8).  Now excuse me while I go eat a banana. 10/10 -C