Donkey Kong Country Review!

Last sunday I decided to play through one of my favourite game on the snes. This game is a game that play every december in while waiting for christmas eve, Donkey Kong Country. This game defines quality in games. It got cool characters full of life, one of the best soundtracks in the gaming world and some awesome game mechanics. It also has some of the best graphics on the snes.

So lets begin describing the story, there are an Island where the Kong lives. The Kongs are the heroes of this game and consists of Donkey Kong (main protagonist), Diddy Kong (main protagonist aswell), Cranky Kong, Funky Kong and Candy kong. Their archenemy the Kremlins have stolen Donkey Kongs banana collection, ofcourse D.K and Diddy sets out to get them back from the Kremlins. The story aint very complex but that is somewhat expected from a platforming game from the 90s. 

The game mechanics are pretty simple aswell, you push B to jump, Y to roll and if you hold Y you run faster. The things that stood out however from other platforming games like Mario is that instead of upgrades such as a mushroom that will make you grow in size and take a extra hit you got your monkey friend Diddy Kong who is following you. This means that you start of playing as Donkey Kong and if you take a hit you change to Diddy Kong while DK is runnign out of picture. You can also swap who you want to play as anytime you like, if you have both monkeys with you. If the player runs out of monkeys he or she will loose an extra life. Why you would like to swap monkeys is because they are different from eachother. Donkey Kong who is a big gorilla, is strong and can jump kill bigger enemies that Diddy Kong would just bounce of from. While Diddy is smaller, faster and can jump higher. However that is not all, there are a couple of animal friends locked in boxes that the player can save and take control of. Rambi the rhino can jump on spikes and smash into Zingers without taking damage (Zinger is a bee like enemy), Engaurde the swordfish grants the player the ability to fight back under water, which could be fatal for the outcome in a level. Nonetheless, if you get hit while riding on a animal you will loose it, but you can easily get him back if you catch it before it runs down a cliff or something. The animals run around like Yoshi does in Super Mario World (if you have played it).

One of the strongest part of the game is the level design. Platforming has never been as fun as it is in DKC, it´s challenging but never feels impossible. I´ve lost countless with extra lives while trying to beat a level. Oh by the way did I tell you that every world has a boss fight? The bosses are huge animals who sits on a part of DKs banana collection. They are fun and kinda creative, they are often bigger versions of some common enemy. They are not so difficult once the strategy against them are learned. By the way there is one song in the game that is actually bigger then the whole game itself, it was way to big from the beginning to even have in the game however the developers really loved it so they somehow made it to work and I can only say thank God for that because it is one of my favourite songs from a video game, the track is called Aquatic Ambiance.

Summary
In Donkey Kong Country you run, jump, swim, blasts from barrels and ride minecarts to get from point a to point b. It´s a fun, sometimes stressful and unforgiving game but that manages to compete against Super Mario and Sonic. If you want more mayhem try out the cooperative gameplay with a friend, fun and challenging. It´s still as fun today as it were back in the 90s and you could listen to the music anywhere and still love it. The visuals are from an era where magical places where players got lost in how beautiful and riched detailed the world really were was something that was a big thing in games. I can start spotify and play Aquatic Ambiance and close my eyes and letting my thoughts wander away.

Overall
10/10, A better platforming game on the SNES is hard to come by, this is the top of it´s class.

Wanna see the game in action? Check this out: