Donkey Kong Country Longplay (SNES) [50 FPS]
42Developed by Rare and published by Nintendo in 1994.
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Foreword: A re-upload to take advantage of YouTube 60 FPS support.
Before diving into the actual game, let us take a moment to consider the fact that Donkey Kong Country is a game of no small significance. Nintendo, a company that is extremely protective of it's intellectual properties, not only granted a tiny UK-based firm a licence to develop titles for it's consoles, but granted them permission to develop games based on Nintendo's catalogue of characters. Rare chose to develop a game based on the Donkey Kong character and became responsible for the style, design and cast of characters that gamers around the world are familiar with.
Rare had invested profits from previous games into the purchase of Silicon Graphics workstations and developed techniques that allowed them to build 3D rendered models and to then transpose the animated outputs into 2D sprites for use in their games. This technique gave the characters in DKC unparalleled levels of depth, motion and resolution; in terms of graphics on home game systems, it really didn't get any better than this.
Donkey Kong's banana hoard has been stolen by a villainous group of Kremlings, a strange race of bipedal, humanoid-crocodile hybrid creatures led by King K. Rool. With the aid of his not-quite-nephew, Diddy Kong, the pair set out to reclaim DK's bananas and defeat the Kremlings.
At it's core, DKC is a platform game, but a simple label such as this is to do the game and developers injustice. The game is divided into a number of islands, each of which is broken up into a series levels in very much the same was that Super Mario World is. Completing each world will open up access to the next and the player gets to chart DK and Diddy's progress on the over-world map.
One of the game's strengths lies in the two starring characters of DK and Diddy. The player can only control one them at a time, but the non-controlled player tags along behind and is invulnerable whilst doing so. The player can switch between characters at any time and doing so initiates a great little tag-team high five animation as they swap over. DK is the stronger of the pair and is able to defeat all opponents by jumping on them, as well as carrying and hurling barrels without effort. In contrast, Diddy is less powerful, but more agile and can jump further than DK; it's up to the player to work out the best character to use at any given moment. DK and Diddy will run away if they take damage, but they can be rescued by breaking open a special DK barrel.
Several of DK and Diddy's animal pals are on-side to assist in their adventures. Each of these is a ridable companion that provides the player with new ways to traverse levels, defeat opponents and to reach areas that would have been otherwise unreachable.
Hidden within each level are four golden tiles that spell out the word KONG. Collect all letters in a level and the player is rewarded with a bonus life. Certain letters are placed in locations out of plain sight, or appear impossible to reach, but there is always a way to reach them; it just takes some thought!
Bonus stages are located throughout the majority of levels too. Secret entrances can be revealed by hurling barrels at cliff-faces, while other areas are accessed by jumping into one of the many barrel-cannons located throughout the level.
Donkey Kong Country is a platform game of considerable pedigree. The 3D rendered graphics look fantastic and are highly detailed. On top of this, there are multiple levels of parallax scrolling giving the play-field a real sense of depth and the scrolling is consistently smooth throughout.
The audio in DKC is easily some of the best heard on any 16-bit machine, both in terms of composition and actual sound quality. The audio benchmark by which all other 16-bit machines will be measured is the Amiga computer, but even I have to admit that the SNES is in a league of it's own here. The game has some fantastic music, with my personal favourite being Aquatic Ambience.
I had great fun in recording this game and remains one of my favourites of all time.
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