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Donkey Kong Country (Super Donkey Kong in Japan) is a video game developed by Rare, featuring the popular arcade character, Donkey Kong. It was released for the SNES in 1994. It became available through Nintendo's Virtual Console service on December 7, 2006 in Australia, December 8, 2006 in Europe, December 12, 2006 in Japan, and February 19, 2007 in North America.

The game was produced by Tim Stamper. This was the first Donkey Kong game that was not produced or directed by Shigeru Miyamoto. Following an intense marketing campaign, the original SNES version eventually sold over 8 million copies, making it the second best-selling game on the system (trailing Nintendo's Super Mario World).

Story

In this game, Donkey Kong must recover his stolen hoard of bananas from King K. Rool and the Kremlings. His banana hoard is located in a cave just underneath his house. He has the special help of his best buddy, Diddy Kong, who idolizes DK. Cranky Kong lends some advice along the way. Funky Kong and Candy Kong also lend a hand. For the first time, Donkey Kong's home environment, Donkey Kong Island, is unveiled to the player.

[edit] Development history

Prior to the title's production, Rare's Chris and Tim Stamper had begun programming experiments with a Silicon Graphics workstation, with their initial focus centered around a boxing game. After impressing Nintendo with their progress, Genyo Takeda was dispatched to Japan to advise then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi. Following talks between Yamauchi and Rare, Nintendo acquired 25% of the company, which culminated in the production of a new title using the SGI technology. The Stampers expressed interest in making a game based on Donkey Kong, and were given Nintendo's consent.

[edit] Graphics
First level of the game
First level of the game

The game was revolutionary in that it was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3-D graphics. It was a technique that was also used in Rare's Killer Instinct. Many later 3-D video games would also use pre-rendered 3-D together with fully 3-D objects. Rare took significant financial risks in purchasing the expensive SGI equipment used to render the graphics. Both Nintendo and Rare refer to the technique for the creating the game's graphics as "ACM" (Advanced Computer Modeling).

Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto once criticized Donkey Kong Country, stating that "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good."[1] Miyamoto later apologized, saying he had been too harsh due to Nintendo pressuring him at the time to make Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island more like Donkey Kong Country.[1]

[edit] Music

Donkey Kong Country also had a popular soundtrack which was released on CD under the title DK Jamz. Composers Robin Beanland, Eveline Fischer, and David Wise collaborated on this ensemble of jungle music. The diverse composition consists of over 20 tracks.