Donkey Kong Country is a gem that began Rare’s heyday and rightfully so as this is one platformer you need to play. Though if you played it so many years ago, or even recently on a SNES, there’s little new besides analog stick support that oddly enough, actually improves gameplay. From the multiplayer, to the co-op, to the excellent level design, and the great graphics that still hold up pretty well in this day and age, DKC is a must for fans of the genre.


Classic gameplay featuring evil barrels.
In DKC you play as the big Donkey Kong and his tag team partner Diddy Kong. If something hostile hits you, whoever you’re playing as dies. If you get hit again it’s game over and you get to restart from your last checkpoint. You can of course find DK barrels around that bring back your lost partner. You change partners with the select button in order to use their unique platforming controls to get through the oh-so-many levels. Also, there’s of course a jump button and attack button to help you on your way.

As you’re traversing the many levels, which are accessible via an ever expanding world map, you’ll get a taste of next-gen graphics via 1994. For the first time 3D renders were turned into sprites in order to show off a pseudo 3D visual experience. Oddly enough it didn’t turn out as cheesy as it might sound, and even today all the creatures and environments look good, kind of like well rendered Claymation. The animation also looks great as there are way more frames involved than most SNES games of the time.


Bye bye 800 points. At least luigi came out.
On the gameplay side of things the jumping, swinging, and bouncing off of enemy heads always feels very intuitive and fun. You won’t start to hate the game until the later levels, giving you tons of space to just enjoy things in Donkey Kong Country. Bosses are well orchestrated and progressively get harder, although never really hard. I guess the only complaint I would have is that the situations where you shoot from barrel to barrel can be extremely annoying to try to time perfectly.