Is Donkey Kong Country Consistently Good or Consistently Inconsistent?
65One of my favorite games from the Super Nintendo is the original 16-bit Donkey Kong Country. It was such a great reenvisioning of the original Donkey Kong from a single-screen arcade game to a true action platformer that stood on its own with the likes of Mario and Sonic. The music was terrific, the pre-rendered graphics looked fantastic, a true look into the future and a promise at what we might expect from the then-named Ultra 64. But with that original Donkey Kong Country game it set such a high standard that the sequels just didn't match the greatness, at least for me.
One of the things I loved that was removed from Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3 was that you didn't actually play as the title character. You actually played as Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, or Kiddie Kong trying to rescue Donkey Kong, which never quite felt right to me. Dixie added a neat mechanic with her hair attack and floating jump, but it wasn't original as it was similar to Yoshi's flutter jump or Princess Peach's float jump from Super Mario Bros 2. It felt derivative and not fresh, new, or unique.
After the Super NES, one thing that was a bit odd at surface level is that we didn't get another Donkey Kong Country-inspired game on a home console for 2 consecutive home console generations. Neither the Nintendo 64 nor the Nintendo GameCube had an entry from the series on them. On handhelds, we did get Donkey Kong Land, a graphically reduced version of Donkey Kong Country, along with direct ports of DKC to the Game Boy Advance and the Game Boy Color. Part of the reason behind this is that Rare, the publisher behind the series, was sold to Microsoft and it took quite some time for Nintendo to find a replacement.
Enter Retro Studios, who brought the series back to its roots with the excellent Donkey Kong Country Returns. Part remaster, part reimagining, all excellent in my view. It brought back the paring of DK and Diddy Kong, which had been missing from DKC 2 and 3 for me. It was then followed up with DKC Tropical Freeze on the Wii U and Switch, and they are both fantastic.
What do you think? Do you think the Donkey Kong Country series has been consistently good or consistently inconsistent? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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