A few years ago I bought my dad a Super Nintendo Classic for Christmas. I knew he had played Master System as a kid and had played Nintendo 64 when I was young, so I figured he probably had some memory of the 16-bit period in between. I showed him several of the games on it, but only one caught his eye enough for him to play it on his own time. Donkey Kong Country is still a genuinely captivating game even more than 25 years after its original release.
In some ways I genuinely consider Donkey Kong Country to be a more true successor to Super Mario Bros. than any of the actual Mario sequels (perhaps excluding one or two of the New Super Mario Bros. games). Super Mario World, for example, is absurd: there are powerups that will allow you to completely bypass certain levels, and many levels present little interesting mechanical challenge. In many ways Super Mario World is more of a playground than an obstacle course, which works both against it and in its favor. For the mostpart, Donkey Kong Country continues the original Super Mario Bros.' trend of having a character with a simple, clear moveset, and building courses which thoroughly explore and test those capabilities. The secrets are also very well placed, with the presence or absence of certain in-game objects effectively communicating to an astute player that there's more than meets the eye.
It's a shame though that there are still a number of levels which instead rely on some gimmick or a fairly lazy type of challenge. Clam City features wide rectangular spaces full of haphazardly placed swarms of enemies, punctuated by thin corridors lines with projectile spewing turrets. The barrel-focused levels are unbearably tedious when lining up the cycles of your aim and the enemy positions, and the actual required timing of the button press is so precise that it's borderline unplayable with any degree of input latency. I probably wasted about 30 lives on Snow Barrel Blast before I found the shortcut that skips the most difficult section.
The subtle differences between the two playable characters are interesting, and usually without interrupting normal gameplay. Diddy's barrel holding hitbox is generally favorable to Donkey's, who holds them above his head rather than in front. However, being without Donkey Kong in later levels can be frustrating, as the game starts to employ more of the larger enemies that Diddy can't jump on. As odd as it may seem that Donkey Kong isn't playable in the sequels, I think it makes sense: Rare redesigned Donkey Kong with the goal of making him more compact, as you generally want a platformer character to be as round as possible, but during certain animations he still sprawls out across nearly a quarter of the screen.
I'm not terribly interested in Game Theory-tier readings of this game which declare it to be allegorical for western imperialism or literal banana republics. However, I do find it interesting that one of the first games where every object in game was rendered in 3D, creating such an aesthetically realized sense of place, presents itself as a struggle between nature and industry, apes against lizards, the animal against the alien.
I think this particular contrast is the most singular defining element of the game's surface. We see these detailed characters and environments, but all of it is mediated by the limitations of much weaker hardware than that which was used to create it. We can barely perceive what Donkey Kong Country was to the people who made it, and that makes it all the more beautiful. I think that's why fan "remasters" of these games seem hokey to me, and why I think the newer Retro Studios games have a kind of cartoonish crass feeling. They are simple, open, and truthful about what they are, in a way that isn't as poetic as the SNES games' decrepit ambiguity.
The soundtrack needs no introduction, though I think there are some interesting choices to note. The overworld theme is pleasant, bouncy; despite K. Rool's presence, this place is still Donkey Kong Country, it's home. Bonus rooms have a light-hearted tone, unlike the frenetic music found in the later games. This is probably because there aren't collectables here as there are in the sequels, so there's less pressure, nothing to miss. The palette swapped water levels in World 5, which alter the textures of the environment to look like a toxic waste dump, recontextualize the more electronic sounds and industrial percussion of the soundtrack. The song takes on a feeling both of wonderment in the early levels, of the magnificence of undersea life, and of crushing melancholy at its pollution.
Compared to the later games this one does lack some polish. Early levels themes like the jungle and water stages feature a lot of impressive effects, with both several parallax layers and line-scrolling to simulate a great sense of space. By World 3 most of the new themes that are introduced are rather static by comparison. Sometimes the visuals don't seem to line up particularly well with the actual hitboxes, the frog animal buddy sticks out as particularly odd.
King K. Rool is not a character I have as much fascination with as others, I was rather nonplussed by his addition to Super Smash Bros. That said, he has a kind of Rankin/Bass sort of charm to his visual design. His final boss fight isn't very fun; there's a lot of delay between his attacks, in particular the one that reveals his weak point, which makes the battle primarily a test of patience.
And I guess that's how I would sum up the game as a whole. It has a lot of charm, and has fun moments throughout, but its most interesting moments are a bit frontloaded, becoming more and more of an endurance test as it goes on. Even using the BARRAL cheat code to start with 50 lives, I ran out right after the final save point. Probably more than half of the lives I lost were depleted across only a few particularly egregious levels. If you can put up with these occasional roadblocks, Donkey Kong Country is a genuinely good game with a unique sense of real artistry behind it.
In some ways I genuinely consider Donkey Kong Country to be a more true successor to Super Mario Bros. than any of the actual Mario sequels (perhaps excluding one or two of the New Super Mario Bros. games). Super Mario World, for example, is absurd: there are powerups that will allow you to completely bypass certain levels, and many levels present little interesting mechanical challenge. In many ways Super Mario World is more of a playground than an obstacle course, which works both against it and in its favor. For the mostpart, Donkey Kong Country continues the original Super Mario Bros.' trend of having a character with a simple, clear moveset, and building courses which thoroughly explore and test those capabilities. The secrets are also very well placed, with the presence or absence of certain in-game objects effectively communicating to an astute player that there's more than meets the eye.
It's a shame though that there are still a number of levels which instead rely on some gimmick or a fairly lazy type of challenge. Clam City features wide rectangular spaces full of haphazardly placed swarms of enemies, punctuated by thin corridors lines with projectile spewing turrets. The barrel-focused levels are unbearably tedious when lining up the cycles of your aim and the enemy positions, and the actual required timing of the button press is so precise that it's borderline unplayable with any degree of input latency. I probably wasted about 30 lives on Snow Barrel Blast before I found the shortcut that skips the most difficult section.
The subtle differences between the two playable characters are interesting, and usually without interrupting normal gameplay. Diddy's barrel holding hitbox is generally favorable to Donkey's, who holds them above his head rather than in front. However, being without Donkey Kong in later levels can be frustrating, as the game starts to employ more of the larger enemies that Diddy can't jump on. As odd as it may seem that Donkey Kong isn't playable in the sequels, I think it makes sense: Rare redesigned Donkey Kong with the goal of making him more compact, as you generally want a platformer character to be as round as possible, but during certain animations he still sprawls out across nearly a quarter of the screen.
I'm not terribly interested in Game Theory-tier readings of this game which declare it to be allegorical for western imperialism or literal banana republics. However, I do find it interesting that one of the first games where every object in game was rendered in 3D, creating such an aesthetically realized sense of place, presents itself as a struggle between nature and industry, apes against lizards, the animal against the alien.
I think this particular contrast is the most singular defining element of the game's surface. We see these detailed characters and environments, but all of it is mediated by the limitations of much weaker hardware than that which was used to create it. We can barely perceive what Donkey Kong Country was to the people who made it, and that makes it all the more beautiful. I think that's why fan "remasters" of these games seem hokey to me, and why I think the newer Retro Studios games have a kind of cartoonish crass feeling. They are simple, open, and truthful about what they are, in a way that isn't as poetic as the SNES games' decrepit ambiguity.
The soundtrack needs no introduction, though I think there are some interesting choices to note. The overworld theme is pleasant, bouncy; despite K. Rool's presence, this place is still Donkey Kong Country, it's home. Bonus rooms have a light-hearted tone, unlike the frenetic music found in the later games. This is probably because there aren't collectables here as there are in the sequels, so there's less pressure, nothing to miss. The palette swapped water levels in World 5, which alter the textures of the environment to look like a toxic waste dump, recontextualize the more electronic sounds and industrial percussion of the soundtrack. The song takes on a feeling both of wonderment in the early levels, of the magnificence of undersea life, and of crushing melancholy at its pollution.
Compared to the later games this one does lack some polish. Early levels themes like the jungle and water stages feature a lot of impressive effects, with both several parallax layers and line-scrolling to simulate a great sense of space. By World 3 most of the new themes that are introduced are rather static by comparison. Sometimes the visuals don't seem to line up particularly well with the actual hitboxes, the frog animal buddy sticks out as particularly odd.
King K. Rool is not a character I have as much fascination with as others, I was rather nonplussed by his addition to Super Smash Bros. That said, he has a kind of Rankin/Bass sort of charm to his visual design. His final boss fight isn't very fun; there's a lot of delay between his attacks, in particular the one that reveals his weak point, which makes the battle primarily a test of patience.
And I guess that's how I would sum up the game as a whole. It has a lot of charm, and has fun moments throughout, but its most interesting moments are a bit frontloaded, becoming more and more of an endurance test as it goes on. Even using the BARRAL cheat code to start with 50 lives, I ran out right after the final save point. Probably more than half of the lives I lost were depleted across only a few particularly egregious levels. If you can put up with these occasional roadblocks, Donkey Kong Country is a genuinely good game with a unique sense of real artistry behind it.