Donkey Kong Country Totally Explained

Everything about Donkey Kong Country totally explained

Donkey Kong Country (Super Donkey Kong in Japan) is a video game developed by Rare, featuring the popular arcade character, Donkey Kong. It was released for the SNES in 1994. It became available through Nintendo's Virtual Console service on December 7, 2006 in Australia, December 8, 2006 in Europe, December 12, 2006 in Japan, and February 19, 2007 in North America.
The game was produced by Tim Stamper. This was the first Donkey Kong game that wasn't produced or directed by Shigeru Miyamoto. Following an intense marketing campaign, the original SNES version eventually sold over 8 million copies, making it the second best-selling game on the system (trailing Nintendo's Super Mario World).

Story

In this game, Donkey Kong must recover his stolen hoard of bananas from King K. Rool and the Kremlings. His banana hoard is located in a cave just underneath his house. He has the special help of his best buddy, Diddy Kong, who idolizes DK. Cranky Kong lends some advice along the way. Funky Kong and Candy Kong also lend a hand. For the first time, Donkey Kong's home environment, Donkey Kong Island, is unveiled to the player.

Development history

Prior to the title's production, Rare's Chris and Tim Stamper had begun programming experiments with a Silicon Graphics workstation, with their initial focus centered around a boxing game. After impressing Nintendo with their progress, Genyo Takeda was dispatched to Japan to advise then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi. Following talks between Yamauchi and Rare, Nintendo acquired 25% of the company, which culminated in the production of a new title using the SGI technology. The Stampers expressed interest in making a game based on Donkey Kong, and were given Nintendo's consent.

Graphics

The game was revolutionary in that it was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3-D graphics. It was a technique that was also used in Rare's Killer Instinct. Many later 3-D video games would also use pre-rendered 3-D together with fully 3-D objects. Rare took significant financial risks in purchasing the expensive SGI equipment used to render the graphics. Both Nintendo and Rare refer to the technique for the creating the game's graphics as "ACM" (Advanced Computer Modeling).
Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto once criticized Donkey Kong Country, stating that "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good." Miyamoto later apologized, saying he'd been too harsh due to Nintendo pressuring him at the time to make more like Donkey Kong Country. Later, the title was made available as a pack-in game in the Super Nintendo "Donkey Kong Set" (which contained the console, a controller, connections and the game). This facilitated sales of over a million copies, making it a Player's Choice re-release title around 1998.
Years later, the game would come under fire from various publications for being overrated at the time of its release. The title received Game of the Year honors from EGM for 1994 although it's now also considered by the magazine to be one of the Top 10 Most Overrated Games of All Time before their 200th issue anniversary. The game also made the #9 spot in GameSpy's 2003 list of the 25 most overrated games of all time. It was also rated the 90th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list.

Donkey Kong Country: Competition Cartridge

A very rare version of the game used in competitions such as the Nintendo PowerFest '94 and Blockbuster Video World Video Game Championship II (1995). The goal was to get as many points as possible before time ran out. Points could be gained by defeating enemies, throwing barrels, collecting bananas, collecting balloons, and collecting KONG letters. This is the full version of the game, but it has been slightly modified:

A timer and point meter were added to the top of the screen, showing how much play time and how many points the player has, respectively. The time limit is 5 minutes.

All maps have been removed; exiting a level will immediately lead into the next one. So the first thing the player sees after the SNES boots up is the beginning of the first level, with no title screen.

When the timer reaches zero, the game "crashes". The screen freezes, but the level's background music will continue playing. The purpose being that nothing about the game would change, but the official had plenty of time to take note of the player's score. A reset (or power cycle) was required in order to allow the game to be played again.

The Competition Cartridges were primarily used for Blockbuster's Video Game Weekend Competition in the late 1990s.

The cartridge and label's appearance are nearly identical to the non-competition releases, but can be identified as a Competition Cartridge if the top-right of the label has orange coloring with the words "Competition Cartridge" on it.
Many finalists in Nintendo's PowerFest tournament were given the cartridge. The carts used in the Blockbuster Video tournament were sold to Nintendo Power magazine subscribers through the Nintendo Power Super Power Supplies Catalog in a plastic case labeled with the Blockbuster championship logo and some game artwork.

Sequels

Two sequels, and, were later made in 1995 and 1996 respectively. All three games also had counterparts on the Game Boy in the form of the Donkey Kong Land series. In 1999, a Nintendo 64 game was released called Donkey Kong 64 that was a direct sequel to the DKC franchise. This title featured a playable version of the original 1981 arcade classic Donkey Kong. In March 2005, Nintendo released Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for the Nintendo GameCube, which used the "DK Bongos" that were also used by the Donkey Konga games. Also in September 2005, DK: King of Swing was released for the Game Boy Advance.

Later versions

In 2000, a version was released on Game Boy Color. In 2003, another version of the game was released for the Game Boy Advance. This version had increased brightness, at the cost of contrast and color saturation, to make the game easier to see on an unlit LCD. Both games had some new features including new minigames, hidden pictures, a new stage in the GBC version (known as Necky's Nutmare), a Time Trial mode, and the GBA version had multiplayer games. Both versions also had lower sound fidelity and a number of minor changes. Candy Kong no longer runs a Save Point, so players can save the game in any area. The GBC version had some of the music scrapped and replaced, often with music that originated in Donkey Kong Land. The GBA version was expected to play as the SNES version did, but the control was different enough to break the "flow" that was designed into the original SNES version. This is because the GBA version was largely re-made for the GBA, rather than being properly ported to the GBA platform. In the original SNES version, some areas were designed and set up intentionally for the player to pass through a specific way and are now broken in the GBA version. Also, some game secrets were left out of the GBA version, presumably because the new development team was unaware of some little-known secrets. For instance, a little known level-skip warp in the stage, "Vulture Culture", wasn't included in the GBA game.
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System version has been released on the Virtual Console for the Wii. The game was released in the Oceanic region on December 7, 2006, in Europe on December 8, 2006, in Japan on December 12, 2006, and in North America on February 19, 2007. It is an emulated version of a 1.1 game cartridge.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Donkey Kong Country'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://donkey_kong_country.totallyexplained.com">Donkey Kong Country Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.