Donkey Kong Country 20th Anniversary Retrospective

I remember begging my mother for this game. I was probably in the sixth grade and it was like over 60 dollars brand new at wal mart. Cartridges were getting so pricy at the time, which probably led to a quicker cd adoption rate of the playstation era. Anyway after weeks and weeks of begging one day I come home after school to watch Batman the animated series, and there it was, sitting on my bed sealed and waiting to be played. I'll never forget how grateful I was that mom actually remembered something that always seemed so irrelevant to her. Thanks mom, I'll never forget that day.

Nintendo and Rare even made DKC without a Super FX chip.

I feel it holds up better than Tom makes it sound. It's a fantastic game, but I personally prefer Diddy Kong's Quest. Everything about Diddy Kong's Quest was an improvement over the original, especially the level design. The Donkey Kong Country games are the main reason Donkey Kong is one of my top 10 franchises of all time.

My first memories of this game were when my dad would bring home cardboard boxes and we'd make a fort in my brothers and my room, then family came over, and I saw my mom and aunt playing it inside the fort. I was four then.

It was rather late in the SNES's life time when I received my first console for my birthday in 1997. With the console, my parents also bought Donkey Kong Country 2, probably not knowing the system came bundled with Yoshi's Island (win for me). Those 2 games are intimately intertwined with my childhood and served as launch platform for my love of gaming. Many of what people have said about DK1 is exactly how I felt about DK2. Having played DK2 first, I never fell in love with DK1 but even at that young age I knew it was a quality well made game.

wow long time ago i played this game... .lovely childhood

The original Donkey Kong country was one of my favorite games from my childhood. I still play the rom now and again with my nephew ;)

Mine Cart Carnage from DKC, 'nuff said.

Spent a lot of my childhood playing DK, so I always think of the series fondly. Thanks for the throwback, nice to see your experiences as well!

loved dk64

David Wise - one of the best video game music composer.

Well, Cranky's monologue in the video shows how little times have actually changed...

Oh God, the person playing in the video is horrible... Doesn't he/she/it know there is a button for running?

On topic: The soundtrack of this game is so amazing :')

classic!!!!!...what my childhood was made of right here-

From an era when Nintendo could do no wrong, DLC, microtransactions, DRM, fanboys, forum wars and Half Life 3 confirmed didn't exist.
Either give me HL3 or send me back in time!

dokey kong country was better then the Mario games, yeah I said it

DKC 2 Diddy Kongs Quest was my favourite DKC game - SNES and N64 were the best Nintendo Consoles Ever!! :)

Never owned a nintendo console myself, but remember when Sears sold the SNES and Genesis (and I think the original playstation later on) and would have a station for each console to play the latest releases. This was one of the games setup.

I liked DKC 1,2, and N64 were my favorite

I remember being excited for the release of the game as I was with the 2nd and 3rd Country (which I personally prefer over the 1st). I got them again when they came on the Wii VC so I could complete all 3 again 100+% again.

The Donkey Kong Country series practically defines my early childhood gaming memories. I ended up going back the original trilogy, and (unlike Tom McShea) I feel like those games still hold some kind of special magic. The soundtracks are still my favorite of all time in terms of video-games, the levels radiated so much atmosphere (the worlds felt natural and alive and even foreboding), and I found the gameplay plenty tight.

DKCR rid itself of the natural aesthetic and went for a more cartoony approach which rid itself of the previous games' foreboding atmosphere. I don't know how to put it but I like Retro but it seems like they took a mildly silly/ ominous adventure franchise and turned it into a wacky vibrant Disney ride. Regardless, the original games are still awesome titles and I hold them dear to my heart.

Oh, and Toxic Tower is DKC2 is still a nightmare for me.

The new DKCs are great, but they didn't wow me like the first DKC. With the first one on the SNES, they had done something different with the graphics that just made my eyes buck. Not many games looked like that back then and whenever DKC is mentioned, the first images that come to mind are on the SNES.

I wish they did something special with the graphics on the newer DKCs - just something special like how the first one blew me away or how a game like Mortal Kombat's digital frames from real life actors wowed me when all of the Street Fighter-looking clones were out back then. Even Splinter Cell got me with it's real time shadowing how fence shadows flowed all over the character through the night.

Does anyone else get that Magical feeling when they play the DK country games? When you see the background and hear the music and you take in the wonderfully crafted world and each and every moment feels like a wonderful dream.And As soon as you turn the game on and load up a level you just forget about where you are?..I don't know How to describe the feeling..But I guess that's how you know that a game is a masterpiece. Or at least they are to me.

Like Peter, I was a Sega Genesis kid, loudly espousing the virtues of the system to all of my friends at school, who all had Super Nintendo. I also subscribed to Gamepro magazine (lulz) at the time, and one day they had a cover story on Donkey Kong Country and its revolutionary rendered graphics. This just further enraged my fanboy-ness, and I insisted that Nintendo was just creating shallow games with pretty graphics.

Well, thankfully a couple of years later I grew out of my fanboy-ness, and bought a Super Nintendo, realizing both systems could happily co-exist. And you know which game was really fun? Yep, the original DKC! I believe I eventually 100%'ed the game (and this is before the days of easily available Internet guides to look things up) which took quite a while. I believe there was one mine level that I scoured for over a month, before I finally found a tiny edge of a barrel sticking up from the bottom of the screen...

DKC is gaming in its truest form, I'm sorry but not even Mario represents more what gaming is all about than the original 3 games of this series.

retro's games are garbage even they running at 60-fps

Donkey Kong Country is the reason I even started playing games more than just passively. I'd played earlier games as a kid, but it wasn't until DKC rolled around that I truly fell into playing games.

As a kid, I would spend entire days jumping around, throwing steel kegs at Kremlings, and pausing at every Funky's Flights to hear the badass music (HI-YA!). DKC more or less defined my childhood, and ensured that 20 years later, I would still be holding a controller regularly.

Memories? Man where to start. 2-player team mode, infamous levels like Snow Barrel Blast (shortcut tho) and Oil Drum Alley (Bonus room within a bonus room). The false credits during the final battle XD. You could ride a flippin Rhino, for cryin out loud. And then the music. Simply mention David Wise and you will have scores of people to attest at just how good the music was.

I can return to it any day and still have a barrel blast of a good time. As far as my favorite games that I've enjoyed most, only Metroid Prime surpasses it. Thank you Gamespot, for reinforcing what already were delightful, cherished memories.

Also, I think the game still looks gorgeous, and plays well. The controls are sharp and feel natural, and the music and environments are dripping with beauty and atmosphere.

To this day, DKC 2 (really 1-3) are the best platformers of all time. They put even Mario to shame back then. The new ones, while not bad, lost alot of what I loved about those old games unfortunately.

These games are absolutely awesome. Me and my friends loved playing the SNES games when we were kids, and Retro did an incredible job with Returns and TF. Great gameplay, challenging but in a way that makes you cheer when you conquer the harder levels, incredible graphics and music, what's not to love?

Donkey Kong Country was the first real video game I ever played (I don't count Mario Paint, no offense to anyone else, haha). I remember my frustration of feeling like I would never get past the SECOND level. I remember my parents actually trying to reassure me telling me to keep trying and stop saying I can't. My older cousin beat the game for me first, but it was an amazing feeling when I finally beat it on my own (so many years later). Donkey Kong Country is the reason why I play video games, and it will always have a special place in my heart, along with the entire franchise.

Donkey Kong Country came at during the later part of SNES life and it was surprising for some because the Atari Jaguar came out with promising better graphics with 32 bit. This is the game that showed everyone that bits was nothing more then market hype.

I remember, very vaguely, some sort of trick in the mine carting level. Something about jumping off and flying to the end of the stage. Anybody remember that?

When I got a Super Nintendo for Christmas--my first console!--I got two games for it; Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country. I'd received the tape in the mail (which I still have!) from Nintendo to hype Donkey Kong Country, so naturally my childhood self was anticipating this game unlike anything else before it. The graphics in the video looked unbelievable, and what was that about secrets? I tore open the packaging and played the game for hours on end. Later in the night, after hours of nonstop Donkey Kong Country gaming, I had made it up to the final boss, King K. Rool. That [expletive deleted] took my tired kid self hours to beat--most of which was spent yelling and throwing hissy fits, especially when the boss got back up after seemingly being defeated--but it was one of the best gaming marathons of my life.

McShea never misses an opportunity to take a dig, even in a game he is praising...sort of. Has it not crossed his mind that perhaps the controls are fine and that he is simply not as skilled as he once was?