DK: Jungle Climber (also called Donkey Kong: Jungle Climber in Europe and Japan) is a Donkey Kong game developed by Paon for the Nintendo DS, released in 2007. It features the characters and visual style of the Donkey Kong Country series, but its gameplay mixes traditional platforming and a peg-grappling mechanic highly reminiscent of the old NES game Clu Clu Land. The game is a sequel to the Game Boy Advance title DK: King of Swing.
The story, such as it is, concerns Donkey Kong and his friends taking a trip to Sun Sun Island. There, they notice an enormous golden banana floating high above a mountaintop. Donkey and Diddy climb the mountain to investigate, only to realize the banana is actually a spaceship belonging to a banana-shaped alien named Xananab, from the planet Plantain. Xananab tells the Kongs that King K. Rool and the Kremlings have stolen the magical crystal bananas from him and are trying to use them to conquer the universe. Moved by his plight, the Kongs agree to explore Sun Sun Island (and a handful of surrounding islands) in search of the artifacts, and defeat their old nemesis once again.
This game provides examples of:
- Another Dimension: Xananab uses magic portals to send the Kongs to other dimensions in at least one level per island, usually to fight a boss. They tend to have unusual settings, such as Level Ate and Toy Time.
- Asteroid Thicket: Subverted: You can go through a few in this game but are never in danger of bumping into any.
- Bootstrapped Theme: Cranky's theme plays in cutscenes with just the good guys present.
- The Bus Came Back: Plenty of enemies from the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy make a comeback in Jungle Climber. Some, such as Neek and Flitter, returned for the first time in over a decade.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Donkey and Diddy have no trouble breathing in the outer space-themed levels.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Barring his appearance as a trophy and sticker in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Xananab has not been seen since this game.
- Clothes Make the Superman: One of the Kritters has a flying, fire shooting dragon suit.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Diddy's use of the blowtorch should burn Donkey Kong at several points but he always remains okay, to say nothing of the rising lava sections.
- Cool Plane: Funky Kong's barrel plane. If you collect enough barrels of fuel for it, Funky can fly you to each island's Brutal Bonus Level.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Every action is controlled using the context-sensitive L and R buttons. This can be highly frustrating at first, given the game's superficial resemblance to Donkey Kong Country.
- Demoted to Extra: Almost everybody that was unlockable in the first game's Jungle Jam Tournament, especially Kritters (who are demoted to "common enemy" status) and Bubbles (who was cut entirely).
- Does Not Like Spam: When he finally arrives on Planet Plantae, K. Rool has this to say.King K. Rool: Oh, sweet, creamy, potassium-rich irony! I hate bananas anyway!
- Heroic Mime: Donkey Kong loses the ability to talk in this game.
- Humongous Mecha: The Mega Amp boss King K. Rool built and a Kritter pilots. It is armed with a gatling gun and a drill on each hand, and it shoots bombs from its nose. Should you damage it enough by breaking the gems on its body, the Kritter would jump out from the cockpit and throw bombs at you.
- Innocent Aliens: Xananab.
- Invincibility Power-Up: Collecting 100 gems enables a move called Going Bananas (it makes Donkey Kong invincible and lets him fly for a limited time), which you can then use at your leisure. You can store up to 300 gems at a time and thus Go Bananas up to three times, but any gems you pick up when you're at 300 are wasted.
- Make My Monster Grow: King K. Rool uses some of Xananab's gems to buff up his Kremling henchmen; these then become the bosses of each of the islands.
- Non-Indicative Name: Cranky is not very cranky in Jungle Climber.
- Offscreen Teleportation: How else would Cranky and Xananab keep up with you?
- Ominous Fog: Fog so thick you cannot see the level around you and must navigate via a map displayed on the touch screen. Diddy holds the map in game play, limiting the actions you can command him to make.
- Poor Communication Kills: Xananab is the first boss, by way of this trope, piloting his space ship against the Kongs he thought were Kremlings. Thus the Kongs have to help him for the rest of the game since they wreck his ship.
- Power Up Mount: Inverted. Diddy is a power-up RIDER that lets Donkey Kong launch him off his back to hit enemies from a distance.
- Recurring Boss: The Mega AMP is fought twice, once in an incomplete state and again in a finished state.
- Spikes of Doom: Attached to vines for living, striking spikes of doom.
- Spin Attack: How Diddy uses hammers, holding then holding onto Donkey Kong with his tail and spinning around while Donkey climbs.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: The game itself uses sprites, but some cutscenes use polygonal models.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Despite the fact Donkey Kong cannot swim.
- Temporary Platform: Few, if any to speak of but there are temporary pegs, which serve pretty much the same purpose.
- Videogame Flight: Besides the super star, their are also wings you can grab and use to mimic bird flight. They do not last very long however.
- Verbal Tic: Xananab's "fanana", as a frequent reference to "The Name Game."
- Walk, Don't Swim: Donkey does not swim in this game
