Donkey Kong Country, 22 Years Later

Rareware or, as of 2003, Rare, are one of the few companies that I have adored since my childhood. Many of the games that they produced in the 90’s and early 2000s remain some of the best designed gamers to have ever have been released. Banjo and Kazooie, Battletoads, Goldeneye, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, Blast Corps, and the Donkey Kong Country series.

One of the games that stands in contention to be considered the best of a great bunch is Donkey Kong Country aka DKC. A title that blasted onto television screens at a time when the SNES was about to face stiff competition from upcoming release of the PS1 and Sega Saturn. Nintendo needed a signature product that could show the world that it could compete with the graphical finesse of these two consoles and, like Iceland beating England in the Euros, they somehow delivered.

Nintendo looked towards Rare in the early 90’s after seeing the results of their experiments using Silicon Graphics computers and quickly bought a 49% stake in the company, putting the team to work on producing a game that would show off the potential of the SNES. Rare showed an interest in producing a Donkey Kong game and the rest is history. Rare used a cornucopia of high-end graphical techniques that provided Country with its quirky appearance. These effects included parallax scrolling, ray tracing, as well as pushing past the perceived 256 colours limit. Donkey Kong Country was – and still is – a beautiful game filled with rich, waxy plants, clay-like rocks, big eyed, cartoony characters and bright and vibrant environments that brings the world to life. Each and every item, environment, and character pops out from the screen.

During this short adventure, DK and Diddy trek across a plethora of uniquely styled environments: jungles, snow capped mountains, industrial areas, underground caverns, as well as a smattering of cart, water and boss levels. Every second is a visual delight and It is especially impressive as Rare managed to achieve a bevy of visual effects such as blowing snow or a heavy downpour of rain effectively without it impacting the framerate.

Equally as important as the visuals, the soundtrack plays an important role. Some of the tracks are inspired. It was so good, in fact,that it was released as a separate album, DK Jamz. David Wise did a crackerjack job, producing some of the most memorable audio ever used in a videogame. Aquatic Ambiance, for instance, is universally hailed as a classic, but other tracks including Jungle Hijinx and Minecart Madness are equally deserving of praise.

Saying this, it would be easy to undersell DKC as its two most memorable attributes are its soundtrack and graphics, but DKC is a fun game, even if it is occasionally rage inducing. Humour is another element that plays a huge role within the game. Everything within the game is used for visual gags, whether it is DK and Diddy, the enemies or the environments, they are all filled with little, easily overlookable visual gags that provide the game with its character. For example, when Diddy jumps into Klump, a huge, lumbering enemy, this bulbous creature momentarily stops and giggles, or when you jump on a giant bird’s beak their eyebrows rise above their head in a comical fashion. Other moments include D.K looking terrified when he is near a ledge, or cowering when Kranky smacks him with his cane.

There is a lot to love about DKC, but, unfortunately, the gameplay wasn’t one of its stronger attributes. The controls were tight and responsive and the level design was taut, but there were odd inclusions such as DK’s hand slap, a move that causes him to slam his hands against the ground, that was ineffective against jumping, flying or larger foes. Similarly, rolling, one of their most important moves, can be rendered useless when it should be at its most effective. For example, if there are a line of approaching enemies and a gap between one of them, DK or Diddy will keep their momentum by rolling into successive enemies until they reach this gap. At this point, they will stop rolling and become vulnerable to attack and, annoyingly, the player will barely have enough time to move out of harms way before this approaching enemies smacks into them.

The level design was another area which I found occasionally frustrating, even though, for the most part, stages were well designed and enjoyable. There were a handful of moments where the game suffered from unexpected difficulty spikes, turning otherwise easy levels into something that will take multiple attempts to complete. The worst offender of this were the segments where D.K and Diddy would load themselves into canons so they can blast to another area or into another barrel. There were two types of these barrels: one which the player could partially control and one that would fire automatically. The latter became frustrating during levels where the player has to chose between two or more of these canons; chose the wrong one and you die; chose the right one and you can continue with the level. I never liked these segments as they involved either luck or memorization, not skill.

With all of the gameplay faults out of the way, I can now focus on the positives. Yes, the controls more-or-less only involve jumping, running and rolling, but the simple controls meant that the environments had to be varied and interesting for the gameplay to be fun, and it delivered in spades. Ropes, barrels, enemies that could be used as platforms if you time your jumps correctly, slippery platforms, chasms, bounceable objects, ridable animals, water levels, cart levels, secret stages, as well as a tonne of collectables that can be collected to gain extra lives. Donkey Kong was not sure on variety and the enemies were equally as varied throughout the 8 world adventure, providing a constantly varied challenge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAbL8NjoRhI

These collectables make up a large part of the experience, but it is not a component that is forced on the player, nor are they essential to progress in the game. These collectables take the form of letters that spell out KONG, balloons and bananas. All three have the same effect and that is to add extra lives for the player, but then there are also the secret areas that have to be found if completionists wish to get 100% at the end of the game. The collectables within the game are a fun addition and can add an extra layer of challenge.

There are a handful of niggles with the level design, but these are often due to the fact that the camera is zoomed in quite close, causing quick moving enemies to occasionally appear from the side of the screen and collide with the player within half a second of appearing. This is particularly noticeable during the underwater levels as I often found small fish would suddenly appear from above or at either side and I would end up dying through no fault of my own. This can be especially annoying because you can only be hit once or twice before you have to restart the level or head back to a previous check point.

However, all of the issues occur infrequently and do little to diminish from the overall experience. Some may find the sections involving firing between autonomous canons to be an exercise in patience and the mine cart levels to be unfairly difficult, but most of these stages can be completed within a couple of attempts once you have worked out when to jump or how to avoid falling into the same pratfall. Conversely, the positive of DKC shine bright consistently throughout the experience.

What Donkey Kong Country does well, it does very well. The level designs are short, tight and filled with little collectable nuggets that will make the repeat playthroughs an enjoyable experience. Equally, the variety provided the level design such as mine carts, canons, flying enemies, stop and go signals, giant wheels, mountable animals, provides more than enough content to keep the experience compelling. However, it is the graphics, soundtrack and humour that I remember most fondly and the reason why I have replayed the original an inordinate number of times over the years.