In addition, his rolling abilities are vastly improved compared to other characters, and while rolling he can even bounce off the surface of water. Dixie and Kiddy are front and center in DKC3. AGAIN!), the newest addition to the Kong family is Kiddy Kong, Dixie’s younger cousin. With Donkey and Diddy Kong both out of the spotlight (Kidnapped. At a time when new ideas and 3D graphics were becoming the norm, DKC3 represented another fantastic 2D platformer in a well-established genre.
#DONKEY KONG COUNTRY RETURNS WII AND 3DS DIFFERENCES SERIES#
Because of this, the third game in the Donkey Kong Country series was overshadowed by incredible new hardware and a genre-defining 3D platformer in Super Mario 64. The game released on November 22, 1996, only a few months after the launch of Nintendo 64. Just as DKC2 launched almost exactly one year after Donkey Kong Country, DKC3 launched almost exactly one year after DKC2. Rool in the sequel.ĭonkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble Rool, was a (self-proclaimed) king in DKC, he’s donned a pirate hat and coat and refers to himself as Kaptain K. Another difference is the scenery, as DKC2 keeps to a pirate theme. There is one DK coin per level, and their hiding spots become more and more difficult to track down as you progress later in the game. The game is substantially more difficult, and includes even more bonus items to locate in the form of DK coins. While DKC2 plays very similar to DKC, there are some notable differences. Dixie was granted the special ability of hovering by spinning her long ponytail in a helicopter fashion. Diddy was paired with his “girlfriend” Dixie Kong (making her debut). In an unexpected move that Rare would repeat in a year with DKC3, DKC2 mixed up the playable characters by removing the titular character and making Diddy the main character. The game went on to sell over nine million copies, and thus a sequel was greenlit right away.ĭonkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong QuestĪlmost exactly one year after the launch of Donkey Kong Country came DKC2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. Eventually, the game was ported to both the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance handheld systems. This game marked the debut of Diddy Kong, as well as most of the other members of Donkey Kong’s family such as Cranky Kong, Candy Kong, and Funky Kong.ĭonkey Kong Country was a major success, even being bundled with the Super NES console. There were 40 stages of platforming goodness, with mine cart stages and water stages to keep things interesting. Rool, who would go on to be the villain in the rest of the games in the SNES trilogy. These two would compose the music for many future Donkey Kong titles as well, including this month’s release Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. The game’s music was composed by David Wise with help from Eveline Fischer. The game established the formula for every Donkey Kong Country game that would follow: two characters platforming side-by-side, hunting out K-O-N-G letters, riding on animal friends, and jungle imagery. The game was an immediate hit, winning many “Game of the Year” awards in 1994 (against tough competition such as Super Metroid). Nintendo was set on driving home the point that you didn’t need new hardware to deliver “next-generation” game experiences. Donkey Kong Country was being marketed directly against Sega’s new 32X and Sega CD platforms. Although the games didn’t feature particularly rich narratives, a world was created, and it’s proven to be one of the most loved, and lucrative, video game worlds Nintendo’s ever created. Donkey Kong went from being a villain in his title to a member of a larger family. The games were seen as watermark titles for their platform, and also for their characters. What followed were three games between 19 that defined the later years of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. was given permission to breathe life into the old character after impressing Hiroshi Yamauchi with a demo featuring Silicon Graphics technology. All of that changed, however, when UK developer Rare Ltd.
Donkey Kong has been around almost as long as Nintendo has been making video games, but largely he stayed in the background while Mario took over in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While Mario is often seen as Nintendo’s flagship character, this honor should really belong to Donkey Kong, who was at least a named character while Mario was still referred to as “Jumpman”.