Donkey Kong Country, known in Japan as is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. The player traverses 40 side-scrolling levels as they jump between platforms and avoid obstacles. They collect items, ride minecarts and animals, defeat enemies and bosses, and find secret bonus stages. In multiplayer modes, two players work cooperatively or race.
After developing Nintendo Entertainment System games in the 1980s, Rare, a British studio founded by Tim and Chris Stamper, purchased Silicon Graphics workstations to render 3D models. Nintendo sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993) and commissioned Rare to reboot the dormant Donkey Kong franchise. Rare assembled 12 developers to work on Donkey Kong Country over 18 months. Donkey Kong Country was inspired by the Super Mario series and was one of the first home console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into SNES sprites with little loss of detail. It was the first Donkey Kong game neither produced nor directed by the franchise's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, though he contributed design ideas.
Following its announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1994, Donkey Kong Country was highly anticipated and backed by a large marketing campaign that cost in America alone. It was released in November 1994 to acclaim; critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music. Its quality and design were favourably compared to the Super Mario series. Donkey Kong Country received several year-end accolades and set the record for the fastest-selling video game at the time. With 9.3 million copies sold worldwide, it is the third-bestselling SNES game and the bestselling Donkey Kong game. Following the success, Nintendo purchased a large minority stake in Rare, which became a prominent second-party developer for Nintendo during the late 1990s.
Donkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a major Nintendo franchise and helped maintain the SNES's popularity into the fifth generation of video game consoles. Journalists regard it as one of the greatest video games, although its pre-rendered visuals became divisive. Nintendo rereleased Donkey Kong Country on the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and digital distribution services. Rare followed it with the SNES games Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! (1996), and the Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 (1999). After a hiatus, during which Rare was acquired by the Nintendo competitor Microsoft, Retro Studios revived the series with Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010) for the Wii and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (2014) for the Wii U.
Gameplay
Donkey Kong Country is a side-scrolling platform game. A reboot of the Donkey Kong franchise, its story begins when the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings, steal the Kongs' banana hoard, which the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong must reclaim. Donkey and Diddy, the player characters of the single-player game, run alongside each other and the player can swap between them at will. Donkey is stronger and can defeat enemies more easily; Diddy is faster and more agile. Both can walk, run, jump, pick up and throw objects, and roll; Donkey can slap the terrain to defeat enemies or find items.
The player begins in a world map that tracks their progress and provides access to 40 levels. The player attempts to complete each level while traversing the environment, jumping between platforms, and avoiding enemy and inanimate obstacles. Level themes include jungles, underwater reefs, caves, mines, mountains, and factories. Some feature unique game mechanics, such as rideable minecarts, blasting out of cannons resembling barrels, and swinging ropes. Each area ends with a boss fight with a large enemy. Donkey and Diddy can defeat enemies by jumping on, rolling into, or throwing barrels at them. If hit by an obstacle, one of the Kongs runs off and the player automatically assumes control of the other. They will only be able to control that Kong unless they free the other Kong from a barrel.
In certain levels, the Kongs can free an animal that grants them special abilities, similar to Yoshi from the Super Mario series. Buddies include Rambi, a rhino that can charge into enemies and find hidden entrances; Enguarde, a swordfish that can defeat enemies with its bill; Squawks, a parrot that carries a lantern; Expresso, an ostrich that flies; and Winky, a frog that can jump high. Each level contains collectible bananas, letters that spell out K–O–N–G, balloons, and animal tokens. These items can be found within the main level or by discovering hidden bonus stages, where they are earned via solving puzzles. The player starts with six lives. Collecting 100 bananas, all the K–O–N–G letters, a balloon, or three of the same animal token grants an extra life.
The player can visit other members of the Kong family from the world map. Funky Kong operates a flight service allowing the player to travel across different areas of Donkey Kong Island; Cranky Kong, the aged incarnation of Donkey Kong from the original Donkey Kong (1981), provides tips and fourth wall-breaking humour; and Candy Kong operates a save point service. The player can increase their completion percentage by finding bonus stages. Reaching the maximum 101 per cent unlocks a different ending. Donkey Kong Country includes two multiplayer modes. In the competitive "Contest", players take turns playing each level as quickly as possible. In the cooperative "Team", they play as a tag team.
Development
In 1985, the British game developers Tim and Chris Stamper established Rare Ltd. The brothers previously founded the British computer game studio Ultimate Play the Game and founded Rare to focus on the burgeoning Japanese console market. After Nintendo rejected their efforts to form a partnership in 1983, Chris Stamper studied the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) hardware for six months. Rare demonstrated it was possible to reverse-engineer the NES and showed several tech demos to the Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa; impressed, Arakawa granted Rare a Nintendo developer licence. Rare developed more than 60 NES games, including the Battletoads series.
When Nintendo released their next console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), in 1991, Rare decided to limit their output. Around 1992, Rare invested their NES profit in Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) Challenge workstations with Alias rendering software to render 3D models. It was a significant risk, as each workstation cost £80,000 (). The move made Rare the most technologically advanced UK developer and situated them high in the international market. In 1993, Nintendo formed a partnership with SGI to develop the SNES's successor, the Nintendo 64.
Conception Though they had purchased the workstations to produce games for the Nintendo 64, Rare discovered it was possible to use them with the 16-bit SNES. Rare tested the SGI technology with Battletoads Arcade (1994) and began developing a boxing game, Brute Force, using Alias PowerAnimator. Around this time, Nintendo was embroiled in a console war with Sega, whose Mega Drive competed with the SNES. Nintendo wanted a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993), which featured graphics by Disney animators, when Nintendo of America's chairman Howard Lincoln learned of Rare's SGI experiments during a trip to Europe. Nintendo sent several representatives, including the chief technology officer Genyo Takeda; they asked the Stampers if they could demonstrate Brute Force on the SNES hardware. Within two days, the Stampers developed a working build, impressing Nintendo.
Tim Stamper—inspired by Mortal Kombat (1992) use of digitised footage in place of hand-drawn art—suggested developing a platform game that used pre-rendered graphics. Nintendo granted the Stampers permission to use the Donkey Kong intellectual property. The franchise had been largely dormant since the unsuccessful Donkey Kong 3 (1983), so Nintendo figured that licensing it posed minimal risk. Some sources indicate that the Stampers obtained the licence after Nintendo offered them their catalogue of characters and they chose Donkey Kong. Conversely, the lead designer Gregg Mayles and his brother Steve recalled that it was Nintendo that requested a Donkey Kong game. Donkey Kong creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, said that Rare approached Nintendo and offered to handle Donkey Kong since other developers were preoccupied with franchises such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda.
Rare assembled a team of 12, the largest in their history at that point, and development began in mid-1993. Nintendo codenamed the project "Country" (based on Rare's location in Twycross), leading to the title Donkey Kong Country. Other titles considered included Rumble in the Jungle, Monkey Mayhem, and Donkey Kong and the Golden Bananas. Nintendo is usually highly protective of their intellectual properties, but was relatively uninvolved with Donkey Kong Country, leaving most of the work to Rare. The programmer Brendan Gunn noted that the Stampers worked to shield the team from outside influence. Donkey Kong Country was the first Donkey Kong game that was neither directed nor produced by Miyamoto, who was working on Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995). Miyamoto was still involved with the project and Rare said he provided crucial input.
Rare spent 18 months developing Donkey Kong Country from an initial concept to a finished game, and according to the product manager Dan Owsen, 20 people worked on it in total. It cost an estimated 1 million to produce, and Rare said that it had the most man hours ever invested in a video game at the time, 22 years. The team worked 12–16 hours every day of the week. Gunn said they were under significant pressure from the Stampers and to finish in time for Thanksgiving due to Nintendo's competition with Sega. They developed it simultaneously with Killer Instinct (1994) in a former farmhouse; the Killer Instinct team worked in the stables, while the Donkey Kong Country team worked upstairs.
Graphics
Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3D graphics, a technique used in the Amiga game Stardust (1993). Rare developed a compression technique, Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM), to incorporate more detail and animation for each sprite for a given memory footprint, which better preserved the pre-rendered graphics. Nintendo was sceptical of Rare's approach, concerned it would hamper playability. Early in development, Mayles and other developers presented a demo to the original Donkey Kong team in Japan. Mayles recalled they were largely uncomplimentary, with one member, Gunpei Yokoi, saying it "looked too 3D". Conversely, Miyamoto thought it looked "awesome" and gave Rare his approval to continue development. Miyamoto said he felt "blessed" to have Rare developing Donkey Kong Country because they had their technology prepared in advance.