PixlBit

Back in 1994, Rareware breathed new life into Nintendo’s arcade game antagonist Donkey Kong with revolutionary pre-rendered graphics and created Donkey Kong Country for the SNES. Despite the pretty looks, it is a solid side-scrolling platformer with great controls, organic level design and a superb soundtrack.

DKC is a side-scrolling platformer not unlike Super Mario World; you mostly go through stages from left to right, jumping on enemies and avoiding hazards to reach the level goal. While there is a map screen, the game is strictly linear so there are no branching paths on the world map except for visiting either Cranky Kong for hints, Candy Kong to save your game progress, or Funky Kong to return to a previous world.

What makes it unique from other games of its ilk back in the day was a number of things. You had a choice of switching between two playable characters, Donkey Kong and a newly created character, Diddy Kong, both with their sets of strengths and weaknesses. Donkey Kong is stronger and can kill certain enemies in one hit, while Diddy is faster and carries barrels out in front of him, making hidden bonus rooms easier to find. In Yoshi’s place are four different animal buddies: a swordfish, a rhino, a parrot, and an ostrich, which each have lifelike, pleasant animations that add to the realism of the various exotic locales.

There are six worlds, each with about five to six levels to complete, ranging from basic run and jumping levels with numerous bottomless pits to swimming levels with hazardous wildlife. The settings of the levels are varied and unique, encompassing everything from jungle, coral reefs, dimly lit mines, to Aztec temples and dangerous factories. Littered in these levels are hilarious and quirky enemies, like the Kremling troops, dorky looking beavers, and vultures that shoot coconuts from their mouth. It’s all designed like a playground with plenty of swinging on vines, bouncing on tires, and blasting out of moving barrels.

While it borrows heavily from Super Mario World, not every aspect was carefully updated. For example, while finding the bonus rooms are necessary for 101% completion, none of them require any real effort; the bonus rooms are not timed and do not have to be completed as they only provide bananas and the occasional 1-up balloon. They also provide golden animal tokens, one of the collectables in the game and also another glaring flaw. When three of one type of animal token is collected, you get whisked into a timed bonus stage where you collect gold tokens to earn free lives. When these bonus stages are completed, you get placed back to the beginning of the level, which I find frustrating and unfair.

The memorable visuals and audio were another way Donkey Kong Country distinguished itself. The pre-rendered backgrounds and foreground elements, as well as the world maps, have a very organic jungle flair to them. At the end of the first level, the sky changes from daytime to sunset; then, in the next, the SNES’s sprite layering creates the illusion of rain in the foreground and lightning in the newly night time  background. Some people nowadays may call the pixelated character models ugly, but they have great animation and personality in them, with my favorite being Diddy Kong and the idle animations for both Donkey and Diddy. In my playthroughs of this game on the Wii VC, I didn’t notice any graphical slowdown, which is a great achievement for a 1994 SNES game.

What really steals the experience are the music and sound effects. David Wise created amazing music tracks for the levels that perfectly set the mood for their respective environments. Despite being synthesized midis, you can hear the styling of drums in the jungle levels and flute tunes in the Aztec levels which give off an air of mystery.

Besides great graphics and music, the power of the SNES made for some amusing and quirky sound effects. The Kremlings make some sort of “Og!” when they’re jumped on, and the other enemies make the sounds you would expect from a defeated snake, bird, or bee. The idle animation for Donkey Kong is funny enough, but they even added the sound effect of an ape doing the Tarzan chest-thumping thing as well.

Even twenty years after its release, Donkey Kong Country is still a fun platformer to play. As an SNES game it is a stellar achievement in visuals and sound. If you live in Japan or Europe, this game, along with the rest of the SNES trilogy is available for purchase on the Nintendo eShop. When the trilogy gets released in North America, and you haven’t experienced them before, take the plunge!