Donkey Kong Country

Rare founders Tim and Chris Stamper in 2015

Prior to Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo's Donkey Kong franchise had been largely dormant since the unsuccessful release of Donkey Kong 3 in 1983. The 1987 Official Nintendo Player's Guide advertised a revival for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), The Return of Donkey Kong, that was never released.[7] Aside from occasional cameo appearances in other games and a 1994 remake of the original Donkey Kong for Nintendo's handheld game console, the Game Boy, the Donkey Kong character had not been seen in video games for nearly a decade. Journalist Jeremy Parish, writing for USGamer, described this as "quite an ignominious twist for a character who had once been one of the medium's most recognizable faces".[8]

In 1985, brothers Tim and Chris Stamper, British developers who previously founded the British computer game studio Ultimate Play the Game, established Rare to focus on the burgeoning Japanese video game console market.[9] Nintendo had rebuffed the brothers' efforts for a partnership in 1983, which led Chris Stamper to study the NES hardware for six months.[10] Nintendo had claimed it was impossible to reverse engineer the NES, but Rare managed to do so, prepared several tech demos and showed them to Nintendo executive Minoru Arakawa in Kyoto. Impressed, Nintendo granted Rare an unlimited budget.[11] Rare went on to develop around 60 NES games, which included the Battletoads series and ports of games such as 1982's Marble Madness. Rare's NES output generated enormous profits, but demonstrated little creativity.[11]

When the NES's successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), was released in 1991, Rare decided to limit its output and, around 1992, invested its NES profit in Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations to render 3D models.[11][12] Rare took significant financial risks in purchasing the SGI workstations, as they cost £80,000 each.[13] The move made Rare the most technologically advanced developer in the UK and situated it high in the international market.[11] Rare tested the SGI technology with games such as Battletoads Arcade (1994)[12] and began developing a boxing video game, Brute Force, using PowerAnimator. At the time, Nintendo wanted a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993), which featured graphics by Disney animators, so Rare informed Nintendo of its SGI experiments.[14] Nintendo was stunned by Brute Force[14] and bought a 25 per cent stake in the company that gradually increased to 49 per cent—making Rare a second-party developer and leading to the development of Donkey Kong Country.[11] According to character designer Kevin Bayliss, after a meeting, Tim Stamper informed him that Nintendo wanted to revive Donkey Kong for a modern-day audience.[14]

Some sources, including character designer Steve Mayles and head programmer Chris Sutherland, indicate that Donkey Kong Country's development began after Nintendo offered Rare its catalogue of characters to create a game using the SGI technology, and the Stampers chose Donkey Kong.[11][12][13] Conversely, lead designer and Steve Mayles' brother Gregg Mayles recalled that it was Nintendo that requested a Donkey Kong game.[15] Donkey Kong Country was the first Donkey Kong game that was neither directed nor produced by franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto,[1] who was working on Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995) at the time.[16] Despite this, Miyamoto was still involved with the project and provided "certain key pieces of input".[17] Nintendo has a reputation for being proactive to protect its intellectual properties but was relatively uninvolved with Donkey Kong Country, leaving most of the work to Rare.[13][15] Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles were the only Rare employees who had significant ties to Nintendo during the project.[14]

The development of Donkey Kong's redesign for the game: Miyamoto's sketch, Rare's sketch and the final render.

Bayliss was in charge of redesigning Donkey Kong for Donkey Kong Country, and wanted the new design to be "simplified" and "compact".[14] The character's features were enlarged to make them clearer, while his eyes were taken from Bayliss' Battletoad designs. Steve Mayles also contributed to the design—specifically his mouth, which formed the basis for the other character designs.[14] The red tie was a design choice suggested by Miyamoto in an illustration he faxed Rare,[14][15] as Miyamoto wanted the character to have a distinctive article of clothing like Mario's hat.[18] To develop Donkey Kong's movements, Rare staff spent hours at the nearby Twycross Zoo watching and videotaping gorillas.[13] They found that on the rare occasions when the gorillas moved, their movements were "completely unsuitable for a fast-paced videogame [sic]", and chose to use other animals' movements as a base.[15] Donkey Kong's animations in the final game were loosely based on a horse's gallop.[15] Donkey Kong originally had only three fingers per hand, but Steve Mayles had to add a fourth because Nintendo informed Rare that individuals with three fingers are commonly associated with the yakuza in Japan.[12]

The idea of Donkey Kong having a companion grew out of Rare's intent to have a game mechanic akin to the Super Mario series' power-up system; Gregg Mayles said "we thought a second character could perform this function, look visually impressive and give the player a feeling that they were not alone in the game".[15][18] Gregg Mayles initially intended for the partner to be Donkey Kong Jr. and created Diddy Kong as a redesign of the character.[14][15] However, Nintendo considered the redesign too great a departure from the original one, and asked that Rare either present it as a new character or rework it to match Donkey Kong Jr.'s original appearance.[15] Mayles felt the redesign perfectly suited the updated Donkey Kong universe, so he chose the former.[15] Naming the character was a challenge;[15] Mayles settled on "Dinky Kong" at first, but renamed him Diddy due to a copyright issue with Dinky Toys.[14]

Steve Mayles created the other new Kong characters using the Donkey Kong model as a base.[12] For instance, he created Funky Kong by taking Donkey Kong's model and adding teeth, sunglasses and a bandanna.[19] Gregg Mayles said the team did not put too much thought into creating the characters, simply wanting a diverse cast.[18] The animal companions, such as Rambi the Rhino (who was Rare's "take on a horse"), were an extension of Diddy's function as a power-up.[14][18] A number of animal companions were created but did not appear in the finished product. One, an owl who provided tips, was retooled into Cranky Kong. Cranky, who Rare considered the Donkey Kong character from the arcade games, was intended to be a character who "hark[ened] back to the old times", while his "very dry, sarcastic sense of humour" was influenced by Rare's British background.[14] Cranky's lines were written by Gregg Mayles and Tim Stamper.[18] Rare avoided mentioning that Cranky was the original Donkey Kong in the game and its marketing materials because the team feared that Nintendo would disapprove of the change.[14][20]

As the Donkey Kong franchise did not have much of an established universe, Nintendo gave Rare considerable freedom in expanding its lore.[18] This included having to create new villains.[14] Rare initially considered using the Super Mario character Wario as the main antagonist and developed a storyline in which he stole a time machine from Mario, but Nintendo instructed Rare to create original characters instead.[18] King K. Rool and the Kremlings were originally created for Jonny Blastoff and the Kremling Armada, a cancelled point and click adventure game Rare planned to develop for Macintosh computers. When development of Donkey Kong Country began, Steve Mayles reworked the Kremling designs to fit in the Donkey Kong universe. The Kremlings were originally going to use realistic weapons, such as guns, but Rare decided against this idea because it conflicted with the game's lighthearted tone.[14] Gregg Mayles also wanted K. Rool and the Kremlings to seem somewhat incompetent,[14][18] similar to the cartoon characters Dick Dastardly and Muttley.[18]

Donkey Kong Country was developed over the course of 18 months,[13] with work beginning around August 1993.[12] Rare assembled a team of 12 people to work on the game, and according to product manager Dan Owsen, 20 people worked on Donkey Kong Country throughout the development cycle.[15] [21] The first demo was playable by November 1993.[14] The staff chose to make Donkey Kong Country a side-scrolling platformer because they had grown up playing Nintendo's Super Mario games and wanted to deliver their own "modern" take.[18] At the time, Donkey Kong Country "boast[ed] the most man hours ever invested in a single video game (a total of 22 years shared out across the development team)".[17] In 2019, Gregg Mayles stated that the number of hours the team put into Donkey Kong Country would be impossible in the modern video game industry.[14] He noted that game development was more of a hobby at the time,[14][18] as much of the Rare staff was young and "just felt like we'd been given an opportunity to make something pretty cool, and that's all we were trying to do".[18]

The level design was heavily influenced by that of Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988). Gregg Mayles said: "For me, Super Mario Bros. 3 was the ultimate pinnacle for 2D platform games. We wanted the same kind of structure, but we also wanted it to be extremely flowing – where a skilled player could move effortlessly through the levels at great speed".[15] He wanted to make a game that was "easy to pick up" but was designed to flow seamlessly if a player practiced.[18] As such, objects such as enemies, swinging ropes and barrel cannons were carefully placed so players could continually move through a level as if they were walking up steps. Levels were designed using Post-it Notes that the team pieced together. Gregg Mayles noted that the Post-it Notes kept design "fluid" and made it easy to scrap mistakes.[14] The team began designing levels by establishing a predominant feature (e.g. swinging ropes), before determining the uses of said feature. As Gregg Mayles said, "it was kind of done by getting the framework in place first, and then filling the gaps in later".[14] Secret areas were added while designing levels on Post-it Notes and were inspired by Super Mario and the Indiana Jones films.[18]

Although Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto (pictured in 2007) did not work directly on Donkey Kong Country, he was involved throughout the development process and contributed design ideas.

The player character's attacks changed considerably during development. Gregg Mayles said that the team wanted moves that would be "iconic".[14] Because he wanted the game to be fast-paced, the attacks needed to suit fast gameplay. Choosing a satisfactory attack proved to be a challenge; Gregg Mayles recalled that the team considered at least six different attacks, such as a slide and a "leapfrog" attack.[14][18] One attack, in which Donkey Kong smashed his fist on an enemy's head to leap, was cut because it interrupted the game's flow. Cutting moves became so common that whenever the team did, Steve Mayles would play the Queen song "Another One Bites the Dust" on a CD.[14] Rare finally settled on the roll, which Gregg Mayles noted worked similarly to a bowling ball. The ability to jump in midair while rolling was implemented because the developers found it was easy to accidentally fall off a ledge during the attack. Gregg Mayles found the change useful, so he incorporated it into the level design.[18]

Donkey Kong Country was one of the first games for a mainstream home video game console to use pre-rendered 3D graphics,[13] a technique used in the earlier 1993 Finnish game Stardust for the Amiga.[21] Rare developed a compression technique that allowed the team to incorporate more detail and animation for each sprite for a given memory footprint than had been previously achieved on the SNES, which better preserves the pre-rendered graphics. Nintendo and Rare called the technique for creating the game's graphics Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM).[15] The ACM process pushed the SNES hardware to its limits and there was concern that it would be impossible to compress the SGI-rendered models, which used millions of colors, into 15-color SNES sprites.[12] A single SGI screen took up more memory than an entire 32 MB SNES cartridge; Gregg Mayles compared it to turning a million-piece jigsaw puzzle into a 1,000 or 100 piece one.[14][18] He described transferring the backgrounds into the game as "the bane of the project"[15] and spent "thousands of hours" trying to split the images into tiles to fit in an SNES cartridge.[18] The team's mentality was to attempt to compress SGI visuals and implement them even if it seemed impossible.[12]

Adapting to the then-cutting-edge SGI workstations was a tense challenge;[13] Steve Mayles said they had "a really steep learning curve".[14] Three programmers handled using the machines with little knowledge of what they could accomplish besides a massive user guide that "wasn't written from an artist point of view".[14] A single model took "ages" to render; the team would often go home at 11PM, and by the next morning the images they were rendering at the time may have completed. The SGI machines required a massive air conditioning unit to prevent overheating, whilst the team worked in the summer heat without relief.[13] A popular rumour suggested that Rare was investigated by the Ministry of Defence for the amount of advanced workstations the studio had; although Gregg Mayles said this was false, Rare did receive complaints regarding the amount of power the SGI hardware used. The Rare farmhouse where the game was developed also frequently lost power, to the puzzlement of the electricity board.[14]

The visuals proved to be a significant focus of development.[12] To showcase the graphical fidelity and immerse the player in the game world, Rare chose not to include a heads-up display, with information—such as the player's banana and life counts—only appearing when relevant.[12][18] The pre-rendered graphics allowed for a more realistic art style, so the team incorporated what would have been simply floating platforms in the Super Mario games into the surrounding environment. For instance, platforms took on the appearance of trees in jungles or walkways in mines to incorporate a sense of believability. Rare also attempted to keep the look of the levels consistent so completely different landscapes would not be right next to each other.[18] Tim Stamper, who maintained constant contact with Nintendo of America and spoke with them every night, encouraged the team "to go to the extremes in terms of visuals"; Steve Mayles recalled that Stamper told the team that he wanted the game to still look good two decades in the future.[12] Programmer Brendan Gunn added that, in addition to Stamper's pushing, the team was also under significant pressure to finish the game in time for Thanksgiving due to Nintendo's competition with Sega.[13]

Simultaneous cooperative gameplay was planned but scrapped due to time and hardware constraints. According to Gregg Mayles, having two players on a single screen was challenging, while split-screen multiplayer was unfeasible. Simultaneous multiplayer also conflicted with his vision of fast gameplay. Mayles has said that if he was to remake Donkey Kong Country, he would want to implement the simultaneous gameplay.[18] Additionally, Donkey Kong was going to wear a hard hat in mine levels, but this feature was replaced by Squawks the Parrot due to the palette limitations imposed by the ACM process, as well as animation difficulties.[12] Sutherland also had to cut down many of K. Rool's animations for the final boss fight so the game could run at a good frame rate, to the chagrin of Steve Mayles.[12] Gunn referred to most of Donkey Kong Country's scrapped concepts as minor, with his "one big regret" being that Donkey Kong walks across "very lazy" dotted lines instead of paths on the world map.[13]

A few weeks into development, Rare, at the point when the team had established how the game would look, presented a demo to Nintendo in Japan. Rare's audience included Miyamoto, Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi, and future Nintendo president Genyo Takeda. According to Gregg Mayles, Nintendo was impressed, though Yokoi said that he was concerned the game was "too 3D" to be playable. Mayles attributed this to the "shock" Yokoi felt by seeing such advanced graphics.[14] Upon reviewing the initial product, Nintendo directed Rare to significantly reduce the difficulty because it wanted the game to appeal to a broad audience; Nintendo thought the numerous secrets would provide sufficient challenge to hardcore gamers. At this point, Miyamoto made some last-minute suggestions, such as Donkey Kong's "hand-slap" move, that were incorporated into the final game.[21] In retrospect, Gregg Mayles called Nintendo's input supportive and helpful, as the Rare staff was inexperienced.[18]

David Wise composed most of Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack.[23] Wise started composing as a freelance musician; he originally assumed his music would be replaced with compositions by Koji Kondo, the Super Mario series' composer, because he understood the importance of the Donkey Kong licence to Nintendo.[22][24] Rare asked Wise to record three jungle demo tunes that were merged to become the "DK Island Swing", the first level's track. Wise said, "I guess someone thought the music was suitable, as they offered me a full time position at Rare".[24] Rare allocated 32 kilobits to Wise.[22] Prior to composing, Wise was shown the graphics and given an opportunity to play the level they would appear in, which gave him a sense of what music he would compose.[12][25] After he figured out what the music would entail, Wise then chose the samples and optimised the music to work on the SNES.[25]

Donkey Kong Country features atmospheric music that mixes natural environmental sounds with prominent melodic and percussive accompaniments.[26] Its 1940s swing music-style soundtrack[27] attempts to evoke the game's environments[26] and includes music from levels set in Africa-inspired jungles, caverns, oceanic reefs, frozen landscapes, and industrial factories.[28] Wise cited Kondo's music for the Super Mario and Legend of Zelda games, Tim and Geoff Follin's music for Plok (1993), synthesizer-based film soundtracks released in the 1980s, early-to-mid-1990s rock and dance music, and his experience with brass instruments as influences.[24][27] Wise wanted to imitate the sound of the Korg Wavestation synthesiser.[26] He originally had "all these wild visions of being able to sample pretty much everything", but could not due to memory restrictions.[22] Wise worked separately from the rest of the team[13] in a former cattle shed,[25] with Tim Stamper occasionally visiting in case he had ideas.[13]

Since Donkey Kong Country featured advanced pre-rendered graphics, Wise wanted to push the limits in terms of audio to create "equally impressive" music and make the most of the small space he was working with.[27][25] He wanted the audio to stand out from other SNES games, just like the visuals.[22] "Aquatic Ambience", the music that plays in the underwater levels, took five weeks to create[25] and was the result of Wise's relentless experimentation to create a "waveform sequence" on the SNES using his Wavestation.[27][25] Wise composed "Aquatic Ambience" after he realized he could use the Wavestation,[22] and considers the track his favorite in the game and its biggest technological accomplishment in regards to the audio.[25] The minimalist "Cave Dweller Concert", which features only a marimba, drums, and synths, was heavily influenced by Stamper, who wanted the track to be abstract and reflect the feeling of uncertainty associated with exploring dark caves.[22][27] Stamper was also the driving force behind incorporating sound effects in the music, as he wanted them to play in levels but was limited by the SNES hardware.[27] The "DK Island Swing" was inspired by jungle and tropical-themed music Wise had been listening to,[22] while K. Rool's theme was heavily influenced by the work of Iron Maiden.[25] The title screen theme, added towards the end of development, is a remix of Nintendo's original Donkey Kong theme and was written to demonstrate how Donkey Kong had evolved since his debut.[25]

Composing Donkey Kong Country helped Wise establish his musical style. Wise noted that when he composed video game music in the 1980s, he was limited by the NES's technological restrictions. When he heard Nintendo's composers create music around the NES's limitations, it encouraged him to go back and refine. Such restrictions helped him understand the importance of a console's sound channels and what would be important to do when composing video game music, so these lessons helped him when he worked on Donkey Kong Country.[14] Wise faced numerous challenges due to the technological restraints of the SNES, such as being unable to directly use a keyboard. As such, Wise composed a "rough" track using the keyboard before transcribing the track in hexadecimal to input in MIDI. Wise had to keep music consistent across the SNES's eight sound channels, noting that if there "was two minutes of music on one of these channels, there had to be exactly two minutes on the other seven channels".[14] Wise noted this was a challenging, time-consuming process.[14] However, it was easier than composing for the NES due to the larger number of sound channels.[13] Wise noted that it likely would have been impossible to create the soundtrack if Rare was developing on the Sega Mega Drive, which had an inferior FM sound chip.[22]

Additionally, Eveline Fischer contributed seven tracks.[23] Fischer was less experienced than Wise, who helped teach her as they worked together. She attempted "to give a feeling of the place you were in [and] a sense of the momentum you needed" through her compositions, which she felt were more atmospheric than Wise's.[27] Funky Kong's theme had originally been written by Robin Beanland for an internal progress video about another Rare game, Killer Instinct (1994). Nintendo decided to use the track in a Donkey Kong Country promotional trailer;[29] Tim Stamper liked the track and wanted to include it in the game itself,[29] so Wise adopted it.[13] Meanwhile, character voice clips were provided by various Rare employees. The chomping noises made by the Klaptrap enemy came from an artist who continually snapped his teeth as he worked, while Mark Betteridge provided the playable Kongs' voice clips and Sutherland voiced the Kremlings.[14] During visits to the Twycross zoo, Wise attempted to record real animal noises for inclusion, but they proved too quiet to be captured by his microphone.[13]

A soundtrack CD, DK Jamz, was released via news media and retailers in November 1994 as a promotional item.[30] A standalone release came in 1995.[31] DK Jamz was one of the earliest video game soundtrack albums that was released in the United States, a practice uncommon at the time.[32]

Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln unveiled Donkey Kong Country at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, which lasted from 23 June to 25 June 1994.[36] The unveiling showcased various gameplay sequences and did not reveal that Donkey Kong Country was an SNES game until the end of the presentation, fooling the audience into believing that it was supposed to be for Nintendo's then-upcoming Nintendo 64. Steve Mayles considered the shock that the audience felt after learning it would release for the SNES the "proudest moment in my game-making career".[14] Donkey Kong Country was backed by an exceptionally large marketing campaign. According to the Los Angeles Times, Nintendo spent US$16 million on Donkey Kong Country marketing in America alone; at the time, significant game releases typically had a much smaller average marketing budget of US$5 million.[35]

Comedian Josh Wolf, who hosted the Donkey Kong Country: Exposed promotional VHS tape

Nintendo sent a promotional VHS tape, Donkey Kong Country: Exposed, to subscribers of Nintendo Power magazine.[1][37] Exposed, hosted by comedian Josh Wolf, provides a "behind-the-scenes" glimpse of the Treehouse, the Nintendo of America division where games are tested.[1][37] Nintendo World Report's Justin Berube wrote that Exposed was "probably the first time most people outside of Nintendo learned about the [Treehouse]" and "allowed players to see a game in action at home before it was released... the path to learning about upcoming games was no longer confined to magazines".[37] Exposed also features gameplay tips and interviews.[1][37] It concludes with a segment reminding viewers that the game is available only on the 16-bit SNES, not on rival 32-bit and CD-ROM-based consoles (such as Sega's Mega-CD and 32X) that boasted superior processing power.[37]

In October 1994, Nintendo of America held an online promotional campaign through the internet service CompuServe. The campaign included downloadable video samples of the game, a trivia contest in which 800 people participated, and an hour-long online chat conference attended by 80 people, in which Lincoln, president Minoru Arakawa and vice president of marketing Peter Main answered questions. Nintendo's CompuServe promotion marked an early instance of a major video game company using the internet to promote its products.[38] Nintendo of America also partnered with Kellogg's for a promotional campaign in which the packaging for Kellogg's breakfast cereals featured Donkey Kong Country character art and announced a prize giveaway. The campaign ran from the game's release in November 1994 until April 1995.[39]

David DiRienzo, writing for Hardcore Gaming 101, described Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country promotion as "marketing blitzkrieg": "it was everywhere. You couldn’t escape it. It was on the cover of every magazine. It was on gigantic, imposing displays and marquees at Wal-Mart and Babbages... For kids of the era, November 20th seemed like the eve of a revolution."[40] The emphasis on Donkey Kong Country's SGI-rendered visuals built anticipation for the release.[41] The Exposed VHS tape also contributed significantly to the hype[42] and Nintendo would repeat the strategy with future releases such as Star Fox 64 (1997).[37] Nintendo anticipated to sell approximately two million Donkey Kong Country units in one month; Main acknowledged this was an unprecedented expectation but said "it's based on the off-the-chart reactions we've received from game players and retailers. It's something they haven't seen enough of, in terms of breakthrough components, that advances the state of game-play, visuals and audio".[35]

An alternate, competition-oriented version of Donkey Kong Country was sold through Blockbuster Video. Its changes include a time limit for the playable levels and a scoring system, which had been used in the Nintendo PowerFest '94 and Blockbuster World Video Game Championships II competitions. It was later distributed in limited quantities through Nintendo Power. The competition version of Donkey Kong Country is the rarest licensed SNES game, with only 2,500 cartridges known to exist.[40]

Different versions of Donkey Kong Country: the SNES original (top left), the Game Boy Color version (top right), and the Game Boy Advance version (bottom)

In 2000, Rare developed a port of Donkey Kong Country for Nintendo's Game Boy Color (GBC) handheld console. The port was developed alongside the GBC version of Perfect Dark[43] and many assets, including graphics and audio, were re-used from Rare's Game Boy Donkey Kong games.[40] Aside from graphical and sound-related downgrades due to the GBC's weaker 8-bit hardware, the port is mostly identical to the original release.[44] One level was redesigned while another was added.[40] It also adds bonus modes, including two minigames that supplement the main quest and support multiplayer via the Game Link Cable, as well as Game Boy Printer support.[45][44] Gregg Mayles was not involved with the port but was impressed that it was possible to recreate the entire game on the GBC.[18]

Although Rare was acquired by Nintendo competitor Microsoft in 2002, the studio continued to produce games for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance (GBA) since Microsoft did not have a competing handheld.[11] As such, it developed a version of Donkey Kong Country for the GBA, released in the West in June 2003 and in Japan the following December[46] as part of Nintendo's line of SNES rereleases for the GBA.[47] According to Tim Stamper, the GBA Donkey Kong Country was developed from scratch—using SNES emulators to rip the artwork—because the original materials were stored on floppy disks with outdated file formats.[48] The GBA version adds a new animated introductory cutscene,[49] redesigned user interfaces and world maps,[40] the ability to save progress anywhere, minigames, and a time trial mode.[49] However, it features downgraded graphics and sound.[40][49]

The SNES version of Donkey Kong Country has been digitally rereleased for later Nintendo consoles via the Virtual Console service. It was released for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan and Europe in December 2006, and in North America in February 2007.[50] In September 2012, the game was delisted from the Virtual Console catalogue; the exact reason is unknown, though Kotaku's Jason Schreier noted it may have been related to licensing issues with Rare.[51] Donkey Kong Country returned to the Wii U's Virtual Console in February 2015[52] and was added to the New Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in March 2016.[53] It was also included in the Super NES Classic Edition, a dedicated console Nintendo released in September 2017.[54]

The game was awarded GamePro's best graphic achievement award at the 1994 Consumer Electronics Show.[80] It won several awards from Electronic Gaming Monthly, including Best SNES Game, Best Animation, Best Game Duo, and Game of the Year, in their 1994 video game awards.[81] It also received a Nintendo Power Award for Best Overall Game of 1994 and two Kids' Choice awards in 1994 and 1995 for Favorite Video Game.[82] It is the only video game listed in Time's top ten "Best Products" of 1994;[83] this achievement is somewhat overshadowed by the game's later inclusion in Time's 2005 list of Top 10 Most Overrated Games of All Time.[84] The game also rated ninth in GameSpy's 2003 list of the 25 most overrated games of all time.[85] Although described as "overrated" by some critics, the game has appeared on many best video games of all-time lists.[86][87][88][89][90][91] Donkey Kong Country was also ranked as the 90th-best game made for a Nintendo system in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list in 2006.[92]