I was sixteen years old and had roughly $12 to my name. During my free time I found myself spending quite an excessive amount of time lurking around the electronics department of our local Toys R Us. Think back to what video game stores used to look like — everything was locked-up behind glass or you had to take those flimsy little paper ticket thingies. But they always had a demo unit tucked-away somewhere in the corner playing the latest title. Typically this place would be inundated with kids and their parents desperately trying to get them to look at “real toys” instead of wasting their time playing games.
This Saturday afternoon was strangely different though. There was a large group of people (not just kids either — there were teenagers and adults as well) crowded around the SNES demo unit with looks of utter disbelief on their faces. People were literally standing there with the same perplexed look you’d give when watching a magician perform a trick and you can’t imagine how the heck they did that. Being the inquisitive gamer I was, I decided I had to investigate.
Battling through the crowd, I was greeted by my very first glance at Donkey Kong Country. Frankly, my immediate thought was that someone put the wrong console into the demo unit. There was no way in hell something this advanced was running on a Super Nintendo. It wasn’t just the sprites — they looked like they actually had heft to them. Donkey Kong actually appeared 3 dimensional, like he actually existed inside this world with weight and mass. His fur actually had texture that you could swear you felt ripping off the screen. Hell, even the jungle background appeared to have palpable depth and atmosphere to it — as opposed to other 2D games which would simply use flat sprites moving at different speeds for background detail (a technique known as parallax scrolling).
The poor kid playing kept dying on this barrel-jumping segment — something about this new world impatiently itching my fingertips. Finally after what felt like an eternity, it was my turn. The controller felt every bit as amazing as what my eyes were witnessing. Everything from the characters to the backgrounds just felt chunky. Whereas most sprite-driven games would just… kind of pop-in when you moved your character, Donkey Kong actually felt like you were manipulating a big, gorilla sprite through this world. He had weight to his movements. His jumps had momentum and physics.
Needless to say, I’m pretty sure I played through the entirety of that demo. When the employees at Toys R Us eventually kicked me off so the next family could play, I had a newfound appreciation for what gaming could look like. Buying it was going to be the hard part.
My parents were starting to get concerned about how much time I spent playing video games. And lately my mom kept harping on about how I needed to go outside and “get some fresh air” and “make some real friends.” If I wanted to play this game I knew I had to take a different approach.
“Dad, this isn’t your typical game.” I told him eagerly as we rode home from Toys R Us that day.
“It’s a ground-breaking advancement in gaming technology.” I continued. “Rare has developed a new technology they’re calling Advanced Computer Modeling, which basically lets them render the games graphics on proprietary Silicon Graphics workstations.”
“You mean those super expensive computers that can create 3D animations?” My dad replied.
“That’s right! They render the entire game in true 3D, then convert it into sprites that the SNES can use. It’s the future of gaming right there on our TV!”
He glanced over at me, skeptical. “Son, why do you care about this? What’s so special about this game?”
“Well… Remember when you decided to upgrade and buy a VCR? They were pricey as hell, but you wanted to be on the cutting edge of entertainment and movies.”
My dad gave me a withering side-eye glance. “Son, that has nothing to do with this.”
“Do these expensive SGI workstations sound familiar?”
My mom wound up being my biggest advocate in this discussion. Apparently she read an article in the newspaper about how video games were gaining popularity as a form of entertainment — even eclipsing movie revenue. Couple that with my incessant pleas and her budding respect for video games as an art form and she relented; agreeing to buy Donkey Kong Country for me a few weeks early for Christmas. Scored it off of my dad too — motherfuckers.
I ripped open my present that Christmas morning and dropped the glossy cartridge into my SNES. The opening cutscene once again knocked my socks off. From the camera tracking slowly across Donkey Kong’s treehouse, to the lighting of the setting sun peeking through the trees in the background, I was sold. And then David Wise’s kickass soundtrack started playing. Within minutes of playing I dropped my buddy Mike at his house and proceeded to rave about how awesome this thing was non-stop. Dude — this game looked like a freaking movie! How do you explain the scope of such technical wizardry on the phone? “It’s like they stuck a fucking Hollywood studio inside this game cartridge” was as eloquent as I could muster.
Looking back now, I totally understand how Rare tricked us into thinking DKC was doing things on the SNES that it simply wasn’t. The Super Nintendo wasn’t capable of rendering true 3D graphics. Not by a longshot. What Rare actually did was render every sprite and background on those crazy overpriced SGI workstations I kept mentioning. Then they converted every ounce of that game into big ol’ sprites and background art that the SNES could recognise. It was pure hacking-geniush, but it sure as hell felt magical at the time.
Remember kids, this was 1994. Most people didn’t have access to the internet. Next-gen 3D consoles were still years away. Computer generated special effects in movies were still pretty janky — PJ came out just one year prior and the dinosaurs were the coolest looking thing we’d ever seen on the silver screen. For a lot of kids, Donkey Kong Country was the first time they were seeing realistic computer-generated graphics.
But the game wasn’t just good-looking — it played as smoothly as it looked. Every second of those opening cutscenes taught you how to control Donkey as you traversed through the whimsical backgrounds. It wasn’t until you reached the underground portion of the level that Rare would truly show off their technical prowess. Those silhouette sections where light only emanated from DK’s tie and Diddy’s hat? Fuckin’ game-changers.
And goddamn did Rare throw you into the deep-end right afterwards. The mine cart sequence that starts shortly after catapulted you into high-gear. Everything about Mine Cart Madness was adrenaline-pumping, fist-clenching action. The thrill of speeding through those sets, lightning-fast reflexes required to make each jump at the last second, even the feeling of failure when you messed up and plummeted hundreds of feet to your doom. I remember getting actual sweaty hands playing those levels. One time my mom walked in on me seconds after dying for the what felt like the hundredth time on the same damn section of Mine Cart Madness and exclaimed how I looked “like I was taking the SAT’s.”
She wasn’t lying. That shit required perfect reflexes and memorization of each pattern, along with ice-cold nerves. Anyone who played that game remembers how good those mine cart levels felt with multiple players. Nothing else brought friends together like failing and shouting in unison at someone when they missed the same jump over and over.
Juxtaposed to that excitement were the oddly relaxing underwater sequences. Gorgeous music accompanied each(secret)level set underwater, including some of Wise’s most relaxing tunes. Swimming was implemented fairly early on in Coral Capers, and while it felt pretty awkward at first you quickly got used to DK and Diddy’s lumbering underwater animations. It wasn’t until you were gifted the company of Enguarde that I started to really enjoy swimming. Zipping around the ocean at lightning speed, spear-fishing with the sharp end of Enguarde’s beak was, dare I say it… satisfying.
Each animal friend was a delightful spin on regular platforming. Rambo could smash through walls and enemies. Expresso could run super-fast and fly for short distances. Winky made jumping extra tall. It wasn’t just different ways to play through a level — each animal felt like they opened up a new gameplay palette to master.
Speaking of unique flavor, those dang barrel transformations were something to behold. Watching your diminutive DK hop around a quickly-spinning barrel, until it cracked open to reveal your new animal form was prime Rare Visual-flair. I don’t think a single person I told about Donkey Kong Country wasn’t utterly baffled that this wasn’t pre-rendered video footage. The SNES WAS ACTUALLY RENDERING THIS LIVE WITH ZERO TRAILER ASSETS.
Oh, speaking of coins… Collecting became such a frenzy. Banana coins doled out the path you should take through a level, but also hinted at secret possibilities. Finding every secret KONG letter hidden behind some obnoxiously difficult obstacle placed within each level became some sort of personal accomplishment. Secret bonus rooms were squirreled away behind walls you didn’t know you could break, or placed high above you, forcing you to do some pixel-perfect jumping just to reach them. Donkey Kong Country trained you to be suspicious of your surroundings and always strive to discover more. To this day I keep a handwritten notebook to track how many bonus rooms I’ve found in each game I play. My parents are convinced I use it for school because they see me studiously writing in it like it’s a term paper.
If you listened to the soundtrack on Spotify while reading this, you’re already hip to the wonderous music David Wise bestowed upon us. Each world had a theme that hooked you as soon as you hit the title screen, but also worked beautifully alongside the others. “Aquatic Ambiance” will forever be engraved into my soul as the theme for underwater levels. “Fear Factory” was pure atmosphere for the mechanical levels set in industrial locales. DK Island Swing plugged into my brain so much, I found myself humming it randomly when studying for my calculus final, or just walking down the street to school.
Each world felt distinct from the next. Rare didn’t just dress the same platforms up with different colours. There were snow-covered mountains, factories full of cavernous elevators and hammy boss fights, dark caves and creepy fungus enemies, not to mention levels set high above the jungle using treetop-platforming at its finest. Sure, some people may tediously point out that every world followed the same formula of “jungle -> snow -> factory -> dark area -> treetop” but I personally loved that consistency. It taught you what to expect, but championed creativity within their framework. Rare milked every last drop of uniqueness these gorgeous environments had to offer.
With a game this polished, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to compare Donkey Kong Country to Super Mario World. My $.02? Mario games always had better — and tighter — controls. But Donkey Kong Country made up for that with whimsical visuals and a completely different approach to platforming. Instead of urging you to be pixel perfect with your jumps, DKC rewarded you for maintaining momentum and learning each animals’ move-set. Mario Player vs Donkey Kong Player fights were intense back in the day, and still are if you can find guys who haven’t internet dug all the secrets out of these games. But ultimately it was a fruitless argument. Both games offered up stellar gameplay with their own styles of challenges. Donkey Kong Country was a dazzling beacon of creativity.
The crazy part about Donkey Kong Country is how Rare pushed the SNES to its absolute limits, while somehow ONLY using the tech that SNES had to offer. Yes, DKC made the console do things it wasn’t technically capable of doing. Sure they created sprites with unbelievable depth and dimension by PRE-rendering the shit out of every last asset. But they worked *WITH* the limitations of the SNES, not against it. They were bending the rules of gaming until Nintendo had to officially soften the fecal dumping ground we know today as Cave Story.
Donkey Kong Country was the shining pinnacle of sprite-based 2D gaming. Just as the industry was shifting towards true 3D, Rare put together a love letter to what gamers were used to at the time. Nintendo would release the Super NES Classic just one month after their competitor’s N64 debuted in Japan. By the time DKC2 released, Sega had officially tossed both squares down a well in favour of attempting to make 3D games look better than their rival.
Donkey Kong Country squeezed every last drop of graphical chops our ageing Super Nintendo had to offer. Throughout both games Rare managed to create techno-magic we simply weren’t expecting, let alone accept as possible on a video game console released just five years prior. In many ways, DKC was Nintendo welcoming their competition, saluting them for beating them at their own game, and then saying “fuck you” by dropping one of the most impressive gaming feats I’ve ever witnessed.
And let’s not forget the instant Donkey Kong Country was over — there were TWO MORE GAMES TO COME!
Donkey Kong Country 2 is commonly hailed as the pinnacle of the series. Every mechanic you loved about the first game was tweaked and mastered. The helicopter-spin from Dixie Kong was a masterpiece on ice. Rare even topped themselves with how insanely gorgeous the graphics still were — even on hardware that was starting to show its age.
Remember how I said Rare managed to blow our minds with Donkey Kong Country? They absolutely raped us with every last secret found in Donkey Kong Country 2. Interactive splash paintings? That wasn’t in the instruction manual! You could MAIL ITEMS TO YOURSELF IN THE SECOND GAME? !
I still own my original SNES along with my DKC cartridge. Both still work like champs, which is saying something for electronics that are pushing thirty years old in my house. Every once and a while I’ll fire up the old jalopy, typically after my nephew has spent an hour playing some brand new video game with graphics so ridiculously realistic he’s not blown away by them. I want him to understand and appreciate where gaming came from, even though he’ll tolerate these sessions with as much enthusiasm as wandering through a modern-day museum.
There are times, however, when I catch him leaning in during a tight mine cart sequence; giggling as you bash a Kremling over the head like he was a pinata; or getting completely absorbed by the flow-state of a tough platforming section. During these moments, DKC stops being a game with antiquated graphics and simplistic gameplay.
In these instances, I’m reminded of why Donkey Kong Country was so special to me. Despite the minimalist nature of technology at the time, there was honest to God magic hidden inside that cartridge. Magic that brings me every bit of joy putting a new game in my PlayStation, Xbox or Steam today — young gamer of whatever generation you belong.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
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