Donkey Kong Country is one of the greatest Platformers the world of video games has to offer.
Now the story is very smple and it doesn't need to be any better because this is a Platformer not an RPG or Action/Adventure game. The most important thing here is the gameplay. And boy does the gameplay shine here. The gameplay is awesome. To control Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong is so easy and smooth that you'll hardly ever have porblems with the controls. Also, you can switch members like from Donkey Kong to Diddy Kong and from Diddy to Donkey Kong. And don't just think that that is all. Both of them have their own special type of skills. Donkey Kong is powerful and well, something else, and Diddy Kong can run faster than Donkey Kong, jump better, swing better, well, Diddy Kong is better in swiftness but in strength Donkey Kong wins. So they both have their own special attributes, although many may not even notice this while playing. You kill enemies and go through levels in standard 2D Platformer style. You go from one end of the level to the other, you jump on or hit some enemies as you progress and there are items to find and collect. There are four letters in each level and you must get all four to spell the word 'KONG' and when you do, you will get an extra continue. You can also collect Bananas and when you get to hundred, you get an extra continue. This may sound easy but it isn't always that easy. Sometimes you may just keep on dying at a certain point and that's when you really start to want bananas and 'KONG' letters. You can also collect golden statues of animals and there are around 5 of them. There is a rhino, an ostrich, a frog, a parrot and a swordfish. Each of them also have special abilities and attributes, like the rhino can break some breakable walls and can hit enemies automatically without you pressing anything, the frog can jump high, the ostrich can glide for sometime, the swordfish is very useful in aquatic levels and the parro can get you up and down to places by flying. And when you collect three of these golden statues, you get to a bonus level where you have to collect miniature forms of those golden statues of those certain animals and you'll be riding the animal that has the bonus level. Like if it is the swordfish you'll be on top of the swordfish and you'll have to swim around and get as many mini golden statues as you can, and if you are in the ostrich bonus level you'll be riding the ostrich and you'll have to be gliding and getting as many mini golden statues as you can. There are alot of them in each bonus level, so you should be able to get at least 3-5 continues each time.
There are alot of levels and when you're not in a level, you're in the Kongo Jungle, which is like a hub world for every world you enter. There are stops also in this hub world the Kongo Jungle. Funky Kong's stop can be used to get a means of transportation, which is a plane, Candy Kong's own is used to save your progress and Cranky Kong gives you useful information and sometimes he does make great jokes.
The levels themselves are brilliant. The best levels in my opinion are the Mine Cart Levels, these levels aare great and they would be used in the later Donkey Kong games. The music is awesome in this game. It gives you that feeling that you're in a jungle. The best track is possibly the one you hear first in the first few levels. So the music is awesome too.
The graphics for its time are amazing. It has one of the best graphics to ever been seen on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and even for its generation. The game used 3D Pre-Rendered graphics and it was the first to do this for its time and that is why that is a revolutionary part of this game.
Donkey Kong Country hardly has any negative side to it althoug you may die stupidly sometimes but this happens in almost every Platformer and this doesn't really interrupt the gameplay in any way.
Donkey Kong Country was revolutionary for its time because it was the first to use 3D Pre-Rendered, it also made use of the characters attributes and abilities, the different level designs were brilliant too, there was alot of mixing here and there with levels and also, the tag team patner system works brilliantly too. Donkey Kong Country is a game that shouldn't be missed and even though 16 years have passed since the release and if you haven't played it, I suggest you get it on the Wii Virtual Console with the rest of the Donkey Kong Country games. This game truly shows that Rare were one of the greatest developers of the SNES and Sega Genesis era and the Playstation, Nintendo 64 and Saturn era. In my opinion Donkey Kong Country is one of the greatest Platformers the video game world has to offer.
Reviewer: spooky102
Score: 9.9/10