One of the best games on the SNES, tremendous music and everything. A must for all Nintendo-fans.
//story
Well, I have to say that the story isn't too much to brag about; being that the evil Crocodile king, King K. Rool, stole all the bananas from Donkey Kong's hidden cave, making Donkey Kong determined to get them back. So of that reason, Donkey Kong and the other little monkey Diddy Kong, starts the search for the king and his ship for... getting the bananas back to the cave. Hmm... that's all really.
//characters
The cast of the controllable part of Donkey Kong Country is as follows:
The Monkeys
Donkey Kong - one of the two main characters of the game, while Donkey Kong is the most well-known though. His appearance is like a very strong gorilla.
Diddy Kong - the other main character of the game. A chimp that is able to run and move real fast.
The Animal Friends
-all the animal friends, is possible to play as in some restricted areas, though there are many stages where you can ride it to get some super abilities.
Rambi - a rhinoceros. When you ride it, he makes you able to open up hidden areas using his horn. These hidden areas are, however, possible to open by throwing a barrel at it too.
Enguarde - a swordfish. He is only able to use under water, though it is possible to take him up from the water, but that would just be a waste of time as he nearly can't move there. Well, however, the main reason to use this animal is that you can move more precisely in the water and sting enemies using his "sword".
Expresso - an ostrich. His main abilities are that he runs real fast, and is able to glide in the air. He does not have any defensive abilities such as the other animal friends, though smaller enemies will just walk past him because of his long legs.
Winky - a frog. He can jump real high, and even defeat enemies which the kong's can't even beat, like the bees just by jumping at them.
Squawks - a parrot. The only purpose of this animal friend is that he carries a torchlight which makes you able to see in areas that in other ways would have been entirely dark.
//gameplay and graphics
as many SNES 2D platformers, the game consists of a world where you can walk around on a field of stages to select. So the stages from the "world" would either be marked as; if it's a stage you didn't yet clear, it would have a crocodile sprite, and if you had cleared the stage before, it would be marked as either Donkey- or Diddy Kong (determined by who you walked into the "goal" with).
And talking about inside the stages, the game uses a very easy and basic form of "fake" 3D of some sort. There are a couple of different items you should try to get. The item you are going to see the most in the game is the bananas. The purpose of these is simply to collect them to get extra lives, 100 bananas = 1 extra life, as simple as that. Another item of importance is the K, O, N and G letters. In every stage there are always 1 of each of these letters forming the word KONG. So if you collect all these letters, you'll get 1 extra life. So it won't be a big deal if you don't get all of these letters, just try to get them as you run through the stage, don't get yourself killed just to get them. Some other sort of items is the animal statues. There is one statue of all the animals in the game, These statues are rather rare, and if you get 3 of one kind (for instance 3 statues of Rambi), you'll get teleported into a bonus level, also getting transformed into the respective animal. In theses bonus levels the only purpose is to collect as many of the small figurines of the respective animal that you are as you can. As with the bananas, 100 animal figurines = 1 extra life. These are the items which appears most in the game. So it is in a way a kind of advanced simplicity i feel.
The music in the game is too, truly amazing. 20 very addictive tracks. Old school music at it's best!
So even though the game tends to be very simple, it is really addictive, and not many people can honestly say they hate this game (if you like Nintendo you wouldn't probably at least). The game might be a bit hard the first time you'd tried it if you're like under 12 years old or not a hardcore gamer, though most people would reckon it easy. There is, however, some major differences in the difficulty of the game as far you get in the game. Though, if you're a real pro in the game, you would be able to clear the entire game in 30 to 60 minutes maybe.